Did your mobile ad campaign drive a consumer to a store that carries your product and can you prove it?
If you can use opt-in consumer behavior to prove that a customer visited a specific retail location and bought a product (and link this to a specific call to action), you are touching the future of mobile marketing. Social network platforms that can effectively capture these “Mobile Proof Of Presence” (MPOP) metrics, can offer brands powerful new marketing tools and quantify ROI by linking them to incremental product interactions.. at point of sale.
Lest we forget, companies make money by driving consumers to buy their products, in real stores with real money. Using traditional blanket print/radio/TV advertising for “top of mind” branding is fine, but new tools allow brands to quantify ad campaigns by tracking incremental store visits, product interactions, and even payment for that product.
Three ways to capture MPOP metrics are: Checkins, QR codes, and NFC. Each has it’s own merits.
Popular “checkin” platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla are proof that consumers will volunteer where they are and what they are doing, for an incentive. By checking in to a specific place, individuals are rewarded with product specials or freebies and broadcast their location to their social networks. The platform that captures this information can use it to build metrics for brands, showing results as incremental traffic to real doors. A downside of checkins is their fad-like meteoric rise and that unverified rotten checkin apples could spoil the metrics barrel. Foursquare, for example, has had some issues lately with fake checkins. Gowalla validates checkins, by real location.
How much potential is there here? Recent rumors are that Yahoo might buy 1+ year Foursquare for $100+ Million.
How Do Checkins Work? Watch The Video:
Quick Response (QR) Codes can be used to verify that someone was at a specific location and capture when that interaction occurred. QR codes are ubiquitous in Japan and taking hold in Europe.
They are easy to implement and serve as a viable “proof of presence” without the requirement that the device knows where it is. This is key..If the QR code is unique to the location, then a physical scan of it verifies a consumer was there.
For print ads, QR codes serve as “real world hyperlinks” to the virtual, online world. A company to watch is Mobile Discovery (video intro), a top provider of QR code campaign creation and management. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about Mobile Discovery or how QR codes can serve as a bridge between real-world point of purchase display or print ads and your mobile/social media campaigns. Get ready, QR codes could be huge!
How Do QR Codes Work? Watch the VIDEO:
NFC (Near Field Communication) is not new technology and many Americans use NFC every day. Contactless metro cards are the best example. NFC is potentially important for mobile marketing because it can generate MPOP metrics and enable real financial transactions via the device, instantaneously. No opening scanner apps or multi-step checkins. You simply pass your phone over a contactless terminal node and you are done. The downside is that NFC requires a significant investment in retail point of sale hardware and payments will require (messy) Carrier involvement. This is why it has not taken off, to-date.
Major device manufactures like Apple and Nokia are expected to launch NFC equipped smartphones soon, for the US market. Nokia has been doing pioneering work on NFC for many years. The Nokia video below is from 2007! A recently-uncovered Apple patent details “Peer-to-Peer Financial Transaction Devices and Methods”. The new iPhone might have NFC integrated and a payment app on-deck.
How Does NFC Work? Watch the VIDEO:
A Hot New Way To Measure ROI
While trendy checkin platforms dominate the news, be sure to learn the other ways to verify, track and capture all-important MPOP metrics. There is a lot of pressure on mobile advertisers and social network platforms to prove they drove real consumers to real touchpoints, where real products are purchased. As well there should be…
If you want to learn more, contact me. I can help.
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