Since Mobile Marketing is the youngest among the media channels, marketers are still cautious in using mobile marketing as an advertising medium. Guidelines and metrics are being set to provide consumers protection and for Industry players to strictly comply to.Although there are organizations that look after the regulation of mobile marketing activities, ie Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the industry has yet to gain the trust of consumers above everything else. In this day and age, technology is easier to access, inexperienced sales people are using it in invasive ways to sell their products and services - think spam e-mails, you didn’t request for it, yet they keep sending you information you don’t need. Mobile devices are considered to be very personal trusted device that, nowadays, we can’t do without. Text messages can sometimes be intrusive, and people do not welcome unsolicited messages sent to their handsets.

As marketers, we already have an idea why people are becoming more and skeptic about using mobile marketing, its time for us to turn this around and make consumers realize that engaging in Mobile Advertising can be of value to them. The consumers are the most valuable segment of the whole Mobile Marketing ecosystem, its high time that we focus on efforts on how we’ll earn consumer trust.

Laura Marriot, President of MMA laid out pointers to consider in attaining Consumer Trust:

Permission and content related requirements

1. Providing sufficient information that allows consumers to make an informed decision on whether to receive a marketing programme is the first step on the road towards consumer trust.
2. Respecting the consumer’s preferences and privacy is also key. Giving them the control to Opt in and Opt out of any campaign.
3. Marketers must also always ensure that the information being provided to the consumer is always relevant to the recipient.

She also stressed that planning and execution of mobile marketing campaigns is also a key indicator of consumer experience. In compliance to the ideology of the Opt in rule, marketers should only send messages to those who opted in and marketers should closely monitor the number of times they will have contact with the consumer who opted in for each program.

Having the right information will equip marketers to plan and implement well targeted campaigns.  Ultimately, the goal here is for consumers to have a positive experience. If this is achieved, consumers will then have a positive reception towards mobile marketing, leading to acceptance and continuous use of different mobile marketing services.

Tags: "Mobile Marketing for radio, Brand, consumer trust, mobile advertising, mobile marketing blog, mobile marketing news, Print, sms application, SMS mobile marketing, sms platform, Television, text advertising, text application, text platform

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under mobile marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.