Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
The Never-Ending Concert
Posted by 
on Friday, December 18, 2009 
at 9:19 AM 
in 
Alright, let’s set the stage (sorry for the pun):
You just received an email alert from your favorite “live music” related websites. Tickets are going on sale for a new band that you’ve recently heard about. Blogs and music magazines have been hyping up the band, and you have their first single climbing up the Most Played list on your iPod. So of course, you buy tickets for the concert.
From that point until the day of the concert, that band becomes one of the only things you focus on. You buy and download whatever music you can find from them. You read concert reviews online. You set their band picture as the new desktop wallpaper on your computer (okay, maybe don’t do that). You plan out the entire concert day — where you will go before the show, where you will park, what time you’ll arrive for the show. Yes, your focus is set.
The day of the show arrives and you have a great time at the concert.
But then what happens? Well, I’ll tell you what happens to me a lot of times – Starting with the day after the concert, I have no desire to listen to that band! Sure, I might play a song or two the next day to try to re-live the memories, but oftentimes the spark is gone.
How about your marketing activities?
Perhaps your company is exhibiting at a big trade show. No doubt, that type of marketing effort may take months of thoughts and planning. There will be excitement as you think about attending the show. You plan activities for what you’ll be showing and doing during the show.
But what happens when the show ends and you go home?
Certainly, there exists the possibility that you may be a bit tired and almost burnt out from the show. At a music concert, you are the fan. But when it comes to marketing activities, you are part of the act. You can’t go home early. In order to fully capitalize on the hours that you’ve already put into executing your marketing effort, you must keep the music playing.
You must put in efforts to follow-up on the leads from the show, and to continue the conversations with connections you’ve made.
You must post videos, pictures, and other content that provides a show recap from your company’s perspective.
You must act on the items you jotted down at the show that will help make your company’s next trade show experience even better.
Yes, while marketing campaigns certainly do eventually have an end date, we must make sure that we keep the music loud and the energy up until the very end.
Photo Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_Midas_%28rockband%29_concert_1.jpg
Tags QR Codes with Premium Features Screencast – Up on YouTube
A few day ago we shared with you some of the basic features of QReateAndTrack.com
But today we’d like to show you some premium features of this application.
With the premium features you can go beyond generating your QR codes one at a time. You’ll have the ability to upload lists and generate QR Codes in bulk. Yes, you can create thousands of QR codes all at 300 DPI – opening up a wide range of options for your next printing job.
Also, our premium features allow you track the effectiveness of your QR Codes via real-time reporting dashboards. Find out when a QR Code was scanned, the device it was scanned by and more.
Check out the video below to see all the options you can work with and head over to app.qreateandtrack.com to start using the premium features today.
Adding a bit of color to your QR Codes
The possibilities for QR Codes to help increase the impact and effectiveness of printed materials continues to increase.
Of course, the QR Code is not the one and only solution. For a marketing or educational effort to work, you still must consider the message, the design, and the target audience.
To help you with the design portion, we recently released an enhancement that allows to generate QR Codes in various colors.
For example if you are creating a QR Code for your company, make it the company colors. Or if you are designing a holiday card you can make your QR Code red or green.
Standard black-and-white QR Codes may allow people to respond to your printed pieces – however, adding color to your QR Codes may be necessary to ensure your creative design can truly come to life. A QR Code in the right color(s) can enhance a printed piece and complement it. Designers put a lot of thought into the placement and colors in their designs and this is just one more way the QR Code can truly be incorporated as part of the design.
Check out how you can make your own QR Codes today at QReateAndTrack.com. And while you are there check out some of the other useful tools that we just added like the ability to make QR Codes all different sizes and at 300 DPI high-resolution image.
Be creative, you have a lot of colors to choose from.
New QR Code Screencast Up on YouTube
QReateAndTrack.com’s QR creator application has added some new options for you to play with when creating your next QR Code.
QR Codes now have a simpler look, can be any color you desire, and can be downloaded as 300 DPI high-resolution image, all for free!
Check out the video below to see how or head over to app.qreateandtrack.com to try it out for yourself.
For more information on QR Codes please visit www.QReateAndTrack.com
ilink.me gets even better with Search & Sort features
Three months ago today we released our URL shortening service, ilink.me to the public! To celebrate this milestone, we’ve released a couple new features that should make our tool even faster and easier for you to use.
You can now add a short description to help remember what the long URL points back to, as well as customize the My Links list in the sidebar. You can filter by date/time, sort the list in ascending & descending order, or run a quick text-based search. (And the best part? These actions all happen in real-time, in the background, so you can quickly get the data you need without waiting for the whole page to reload.)
Watch this short screencast to learn more, and let us know what you think!
