Imagine receiving a text message informing you that your favorite shop around the corner is selling its wares at 50% of the retail price. You immediately call your friends to share the good news. Good service, great deal and, best of all, it is free!
If advertisers and marketers play their cards right, this could well be the future of marketing. And the dawn of this new age is already close at hand, literally. According to Neil Montefiore, CEO of Singapore-based mobile phone operator MobileOne (M1), within a month of the launch of its location-based advertising in October last year, M1 had delivered over a million text messages.
With the company adding that the opt-out rate for such services is less than 0.4%, it appears that the willingness of customers to participate could revolutionize the way mobile phone companies and advertisers maximize the potential of mobile phones.
However, such forms of advertising could well turn subscribers off as the flurry of text messages becomes more of a nuisance than a value-added service. Concerns over the issue of privacy tied to location-based advertising are another factor that could prevent this advertising medium to fall short of its potential. Advertisers in Singapore are wary of these challenges and are adopting a wait-and-see approach before they pour more advertising dollars into the domain of mobile advertising.
Mobile marketing offers another dimension to advertisers and customers who are increasingly looking for more personalized and value-added information. Rather than supplant traditional marketing, it will likely become a key part of the marketing mix used to reach consumers–in Singapore, in Asia, and around the world.
-Kelvin Teo, FH Singapore
