Nice article from Business Week via Textually:
Short messages are a bonanza for wireless carriers, but one that’s now reaping only a fraction of its potential. Why? The marketing side of the text-messaging business is just now getting started. The 1.3 billion cell phones in the world give marketers a possible person-to-person link with consumers everywhere.
The potential is there to harness the cell phone to the vast databases of user profiles — the dossiers that supermarkets, retailers, and mail-order companies have created on their customers. A phone marketer with this data could use short messages to deliver millions of personalized pitches and ads, some of them tailored to the user’s whereabouts and the time of day.
A GIVE AND GET. So far, however technical challenges and privacy concerns have kept many marketers from venturing into customers’ pockets and purses. It’s a sensitive business. Anything resembling mobile spam could provoke an angry backlash against marketers.
I certainly agree with the point about mobile spam. The frustrating thing in Europe has been the operatorís refusal to stamp on it from the beginning. I believe that they saw it as a revenue opportunity, forgetting that spam would potentially kill the golden goose before it truly started laying.
I also think itís interesting that US marketers seem to understand instinctively that mobile marketing is a quid pro quo ñ something must be in it for the consumer. As such, to talk about ìmobile advertisingî is a misunderstanding of the branch of marketing at work here. Itís ìMobile Promotionsî strictly speaking, as messages must contain some added value for the consumer.
Many otherwise savvy marketing people confuse the adding value concept and attempt to bribe the consumer with some kind of payment in return for reading marketing messages. Despite the fact that this model has been debunked hundreds of times online, some will try it again in the mobile space and it wonít work again.
The fact is that the message itself must add value to the consumer.
Iíve written about this extensively in my 50 page FREE white paper. If youíre interested in mobile marketing or location based marketing and promotions, drop me a line and ask for a copy.
What’s your email address? I am interested in the mobile marketing white paper.
I am very interested in the mobile marketing white paper. How do I get hold of it? Chris
I am very interested in the mobile marketing white paper. How can I get a copy???
I look forward to reading your white paper
What’s your email address? I am interested in reading the mobile marketing white paper.
I would like to read your white paper on mobile marketing, could you send me a copy?
thnx and great writing
I would like to read your white paper on mobile marketing, could you send me a copy?
thnx,great writing
S
I’m very interested in having a read, can you please send me details on how to get it?
Many thanks,
can I get a copy of it ?
I’d be very interested in reading your white paper as well.
Thank you and have a wonderful day!
I would like to read your white paper about the present and future of marketing: mobile marketing.
It’s funny you should put this up just now; earlier today I put this post up on my blog, it certainly relates:
New Media Convergence; why the handset is all that matters
Recently, a fellow subscriber to AdRants requested comments relatng to the future direction of media and advertising.in response to that request, I started thinking about this topic and came to a fairly strong conviction; the mobile handset is all that matters.
I honestly beliieve that mobile marketing will change everything. There are now almost 1.6 billion (with a B) cellular handsets on the planet. This number is skyrocketing every year as less-developed countries like India and China and even Mexico leapfrog the wired infrastructure and move straight to wireless.
New technologies are being developed that make it possible to reliably locate any individual handset to within less than 10 meters with no change to the underlying handset, no subscription, in fact, without the approval, awareness of or event consent by the consumer. This technology will open a new world to the marketer; highly targeted location based advertising straight to the phone.
This has the potential to be, with apologies to Dickens; the best of advertising or the worst of advertising. IF driven by a permission based model where the consumer has established preferences and controls about who gets to market to him or her, when, where, and how often, the consumer will have a degree of granular control so precise, so convenient, that it will actually change the way people shop and buy. At the opposite end of the spectrum, out of control unsolicited messages to the consumer could render the phone a useless permanent “pop-up” buzzing mindlessly in your purse or pocket, interrupting your calls, your thoughts, and your conversations to attempt to hawk goods and services that you don’t want, don’t need and probably will find offensive.
The power to determine which future we will see is largely in the hands of 3 groups; the advertisers and their ethics, the carriers and their conflict between revenues and responsibility, and the consumer and their immediate and negative vocal reaction to anything other than a completely permission based approach.
There are many ways that this could go down, just as there are many ways that these new marketing paradigms could manifest themselves. The key issues will be determined in the next few months as the early adopters make decisions that will influence the market and the mechanics of the technology for the next decade at least.
I truly hope that those of us in a position to make good decisions do so, that those of us capable of making ourselves heard when we witness decisions that are not good speak up quickly and loudly, and that at the end of the day, the best of advertising is a far far better thing than any advertising we have ever known.