eView - Mobile Marketing: A Best Practices Guide
Gain consumers’ trust, then tread lightly.
May 2009 By Mike Wehrs
The mobile marketing industry has seen exceptional global growth over the past 12 months. Increased collaboration between brands, wireless carriers and digital agencies has led to many mobile marketing success stories.
One of the major remaining challenges for the mobile industry, however, is building faith among consumers that mobile marketing is a positive way to engage with their favorite brands. Since the consumer is central to the mobile marketing experience, this is the only way we can ensure success as marketers.
Create consumer confidence
Because mobile devices are so highly personal, to make marketing messages powerful and valuable, there must be an underlying element of trust; otherwise, marketing messages get diluted and could be viewed with suspicion and mistrust. Consumers must have confidence in the mobile marketing experience.
Brands and advertisers must be able to provide positive and valuable experiences. If consumers don’t truly buy into and understand the rules of engagement for the messages and marketing programs they’re receiving, chances are they’ll hit the delete button without even looking at the content.
Brands using mobile as a marketing channel need to project and deliver messages that consumers believe are positive, highly relevant and of specific value to them individually. When customers know that the marketing messages they receive are trustworthy and offer something they're looking for, then they’ll engage with you.
The 6 Cs for a positive experience
The trick is knowing how to build and develop this level of trust, and developing a true dialogue of interaction with customers. Education of both consumers and marketers is crucial. Marketers must make customers aware of all the policing mechanisms in place to ensure that the mobile marketing experience they receive is a positive one, and provide them with a way to report any behavior that they question.
Most of all, marketers need to move away from traditional push — or interruption-based — advertising and adopt the six central tenets of a positive consumer experience: choice, control, customization, consideration, constraint and confidentiality. These form the basis of the Mobile Marketing Association’s global Code of Conduct and Consumer Best Practices. Here’s a more detailed look at these tenets:
- Choice. Consumers must opt in to mobile marketing programs. Once that’s done, include clear directions on how to unsubscribe from communication should it become unwanted. This ensures consumer pull rather than consumer push.
- Control. Consumers should have control of when and how they receive mobile marketing messages, and must be allowed to easily terminate or opt out of unwanted programs.
- Customization. Any data supplied by consumers must be used to personalize content — such as restricting communications to categories they specify.
- Consideration. If consumers allow you to communicate with them on their mobile devices, offer them something of perceived value, such as product and service enhancements, requested information, entry into competitions, discounts, and more.
- Constraint. Manage and limit mobile messaging programs to a reasonable number of campaigns.
- Confidentiality. Make and clearly communicate a commitment that you won’t share consumer information with nonaffiliated third parties.
The ideal ambassadors for the mobile marketing cause are consumers. So brands trying to reach them via this medium should make sure their communications are interesting, relevant, valuable and, above all, requested.
Mike Wehrs is president/CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, a nonprofit trade association.Reach Mike at mwehrs@mmaglobal.com.
