Money Rail: How Mobile Marketing Can Add To Consumer Trust

Mobile marketing is one of the hottest topics of any marketing conversation at the moment. Oftentimes though the focus is where it is missing the mark. One of the favorite subject matters regarding mobile’s ‘unrealized potential’ is the use of QR codes. Complaints from consumers about these mythical beasts range from useless to “What’s that again?”. Of course they are not all bad but thus far, the QR code has been a bit of a disappointment.

So what works in mobile marketing? Anything that will create more trust in customers and prospects alike is good place to start. A recent study from About.com (our own Cynthia Boris covered another aspect of this study recently) lays out just what consumers feel works in the mobile space to increase trust. Here is eMarketer’s repackaging of that data

It looks like the elements for making mobile marketing effective is pretty simple and not far off the mark of objectives of all other marketing efforts.

1. Don’t take the hard sell approach

2. Give the content consumer something they haven’t seen before

3. Because the mobile consumer may actually be mobile at the time (as opposed to just multi-screening at home), give them information that is relevant to their current location

These all make sense and aren’t terribly confusing. Then why is it so hard for marketers to consistently meet these criteria? That’s simple. It requires a lot of extra work. Work that may not fit into the current staffing limitations that many marketers have. Work that requires a different mindset than other marketing messages. Work that creates the need for looking at products from a different angle which takes time and resources.

Until marketers think about mobile as a regularly used and effective channel they will continue to silo it. When anything is put in a silo it is at risk of being overlooked even if its increasing importance is painfully obvious. Search suffered for years as a ‘bolt on’ marketing effort. Now that it is more accepted a standard piece of any real marketing campaign it gets the benefit of being integrated in multi-channel plans and, as a result, has gotten even better.

What are you doing to make mobile a part of your standard marketing offering? Are you still treating it as a standalone ‘nice to have’ or is it being given full attention in your marketing plans from the planning stage?

What is your experience with mobile and trust? Have you benefited from having it or have you suffered from not having enough of it? We would love to hear from experts as to their experience.