Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Multi-channel marketing communications - all in one!
Using QR Codes in your Marketing
Posted by 
on Thursday, March 11, 2010 
at 10:49 AM 
in On March 11, 2010, Mobile Commerce Daily featured an article on QR Codes from interlinkONE’s President/CEO John Foley, Jr.
The article was entitled “Tips for using QR codes in Marketing”. In the article, John provides a few basic strategies for companies that are looking to push the usage of QR Codes forward.
Here is a link to the full article: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/tips-for-using-qr-codes-in-marketing/
Tags interlinkONE to discuss QR Codes & Social Media at the PINE Digital Forum
We are the excited to announce that we will be participating in the PINE Digital Forum on March 25, 2010.
John Foley Jr., President and CEO of interlinkONE, will be speaking on the subject of “How to Use Social Media to Build Your Business.”
Also, Jason Pinto of interlinkONE will be on the panel for the subject of “QR Codes: Augmented Reality and other Mobile Marketing Opportunities”
The forum is being held at PINE Headquarters in Southborough, MA
Here is an overview of what John will be discussing:
LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook- these sites are growing in popularity in all vertical markets and are being leveraged to promote printing and marketing services. In this session John presents advice on how to use these social media sites to grow your print and marketing services provider business. He presents real-world scenarios and shares the pros and cons of each of these popular sites.
For more information about the PINE Digital Forum, you can visit their website at http://www.pine.org/Education/digital_forum.html
The Value of a QR Code
QR codes are appearing every where. While the two-dimensional bar codes have been popular in Japan and Europe for years, it’s taken the move towards smartphones in the U.S. to make them useful here. You can download a reader for just about any smartphone with a camera: when you take a photo of the QR code, your phone interprets the website address hidden in the pattern and takes you to it. That website can have anything on it: a coupon for the store you might be standing in, more information for an ad you passed by or something else entirely. A QR code can contain other information, as well, from phone numbers to an event. It depends on what the person who generated the QR code wants.
Creating Your Own QR Code
There are a wide variety of uses for QR codes. You can print them on just about anything: t-shirts, signs, postcards. If you can print an image on it, you can put a QR code on it. That means that you can direct attention to a piece of information in a variety of offline settings, without expecting passers-by to write down the details. And while creating a standard bar code can require some work, creating a QR code is just a matter of having a piece of information, such as a web address where you want to send visitors, in mind. With a QR code generator, such as the free tool at http://www.QReateandtrack.com, you just plug in your information and the code is spit out. You can download your code as a high quality file, ready to run off on your own printer or send off to a professional printer.
You’re not just limited to one QR code, either. If, for instance, you’re running two separate advertising campaigns with different deals, you can set up separate pages for each on your website. Using those separate pages, you can create two different QR codes — one for each advertising campaigns.
Determining the Success of a QR Code
It may be relatively easy to determine just how successful a QR code containing a website address is. It’s just a matter of checking the increase in traffic at your site. You can also check whether you conversions have increased — if viewers of the code have followed up in the way you want (like making a purchase). However, having hard numbers on how many people have scanned in your code can help you tweak your campaigns to improve the ROI. If you’ve created your code through http://www.QReateandtrack.com, you have the option of choosing a premium plan that will track how often your code is scanned. Such an approach can help you determine which codes are more effective, especially if you create separate codes for different locations. Tracking is also useful if you’re taking a broader approach to marketing with QR codes: locating a certain code could be the goal of a contest meant to give away a prize. Knowing how many times a code has been scanned could be crucial in such an approach.
Happy Scanning!
- John
Marketing Automation – Best Practices
The term “marketing automation” is a mouthful – but it’s one that is worth repeating. Using technology to build a marketing campaign and send out consistent, relevant messages in an efficient, cohesive manner is always a good thing! So if you’re a little tech-hesitant, don’t get scared off by the term. Because marketing automation is really all about making your marketing easier on you and more effective overall. In fact, there are several things that are really important when it comes to marketing automation:
1 – The gathering of data that can be used to target your audience in a relevant and valued way. Think about all the information that could be collected about your target market. And think about how much could be collected over a period of time. That kind of information is worth its weight in gold, don’t you think? To be able to see the habits of your audience, pre-determine their decisions based on historical data…it’s all a gold mine at your fingertips. Marketing automation software allows this data collection and analysis and it’s obvious how important this information is for your future marketing campaigns. Why shoot in the dark for leads when you don’t have to?
2 – The ability to build a multi-channel campaign that reaches the target market within the channel they are in and the media in which they use. Your audience resides in a vast universe. And not all of your prospects will respond to a message sent via a single channel. Imagine resting your marketing campaign on a banner ad. Okay, so the banner ad is on several highly visible sites that your audience frequents. And the banner ad is actually pretty cool and you’ve received great feedback when you’ve tested it. But not everyone clicks on banner ads. And many people may turn a blind eye to them after cruising the internet for too long. Multi-channel campaigns allow you to send a consistent marketing message across several channels. Email. Direct mail. Text messages. Larger campaigns that seemed unmanageable with your current manpower are within your grasp when you implement automated marketing software.
3 – The development of an information map for your audience. You can make it easy for your prospects to find the information they need by having a clear call to action and the ability to follow through. Landing pages, personalized URLs…when your call to action is combined with an offer, your prospects are induced to move, heading to the automated responses that you have set into place. And in fact, as they move forward and receive those automatic responses, your sales team is in the wings, waiting to work the warm and hot leads.
4 – The ability to score your leads. Not every lead is equal. Some people are ready to buy. Some need more time and information. Some are just looky-loos. And you don’t have the time or resources to waste on the leads that aren’t ready. So one of the best things about automated marketing software is the lead scoring capability, informing your sales team who is cold and who is hot!
5 – The measurement of campaigns. If you throw a marketing campaign out there you want to know what parts of it were a hit and what parts were a miss. Did the email message fall flat? Was the text message the best received? The more you can analyze, the better, because it will enable you to design and implement further campaigns that are even more successful.
Marketing: Channel and Media Review in the Airport
One of the ways that I measure the use of marketing items is when I am roaming the airport before my flight. Yes, that’s right; I watch the humans and observe the channels and medias in use. I want to know exactly what channels the travelers are using, whether it be Print, Electronic, or Television at that precise moment while at the airport waiting. I also look into what medias in that channel they are using. For example, in print, it may be newspapers, magazines, or books. In electronic, it may be mobile, laptop, net books, e-readers, iPods, and more. In television, I want to see what station is on, and then I try to gauge the interest of the people watching. I do a quick count of the folks in a specific area and get a rough number of the audience. Then, I do a quick count on the channels and medias so that I can report via Twitter and Facebook. It is very interesting to see how things have changed over the years, but even day to day or the time of the day makes a difference.
I do it for fun, but if you were marketing to an audience in the airport it may be helpful to gather this sort of information. I actually did a count several times, in the same way, while on the plane. Some airlines have planes carrying Direct TV which changes the game, but typically the amount of printed material rises dramatically while on the flight. On one trip I was really blown away by the amount of e-readers in use. Now, Wi-Fi on board is finally making the push– something I have been waiting for a long time. The ways to reach the target audience in the airport and in flights is changing. As always, Marketing must remain flexible.
See you at the airport. – John
