When arguably the most powerful economy in the world shakes things up with some tweaks to the tariff system, the world takes note. And it is fair to say that US president Donald Trump’s tariff announcements last week – both the blanket imposition of them and then the partial volte face of pausing them for 90 days (except for China) – is going to affect not only global trade, but pretty much global life.
The main upshot for the ordinary people of the world is the likely recession and downturn that such a reset of the global economy will bring about. This may or may not affect the money in their pocket, but will also impact their confidence as to how long they may have that money in their pocket and that affects spending.
While this is bad news for most businesses, such as downturn can be quite positive for telemedia and mVAS as, while consumers don’t want to spend on big ticket items, they still want some light relief, so are more likely to snack on small bursts of micro-billed content. This is a proven fact: the downturn of 2008 boosted telemedia use, as did the pandemic – there is every reason to believe that any Trump-tariff implementation could be the same.
There will be other side effects – rising cost of hardware and devices and the possibility of tariffs on digital services coming into play, but there is every reason to be hopeful that it might not be as bad as we all fear. Fingers crossed on that one.
RCS and the shift in business
What is interesting is that the move by Trump signals a shift in global business and could be, in the medium to long term, revolutionary in how the world economy works. And that will drive changes in how consumers consume.
This is already starting to happen. Ecommerce purchases driven from RCS messages are growing fast and are set to grow by 30% in the coming three years. This chimes with a survey carried out by Twilio at Mobile World Congress this year that found that not only are almost half of marketers surveyed using RCS already, many see it as a game changer for engagement.
According to the survey, marketers said that RCS streamlined communications with customers (25%), fostered deeper, more engaging relationships with them (17%), drives high ROI (11%), and deepens trust with customers (10%).
The ROI figure is particularly interesting as it shows that not only do consumers and businesses both like what RCS delivers, it also delivers something that actually drives up revenues.
Need to engage
How does this relate to Trump’s tariffs? Well, whatever he chooses to do, there will be a global financial impact and consumers the world over will feel some pain. This will drive mVAS services – but it will also drive competition for those services. And it will be the players that use the most engaging ways to market what they have that will win.
RCS is clearly starting to become one of the tools that could well be useful in driving this. The usual traffic generation channels of Google, social media and affiliate marketing will all also play a key role, but it is worth looking at how messaging based marketing can also drive users, particularly in the more developed and mature markets where RCS is more established.
As the various panels at World Telemedia Dubai on 11-13 May that look both at mVAS regionally and at traffic generation and marketing generally will cover, much comes from these online sources, but it will be interesting to see just how messaging services – both OTT and RCS – will also have a role to play as the markets develop.
While we should all be trepidatious about what President Trump does actually do with tariffs and what that might mean for the global economy in the months ahead, we should also be looking at how tech like RCS can help the world of telemedia at least rapidly pivot to a new way of doing business regardless of US trade policy.
Image: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America via Wikicommons
