Brandmovers recently worked with a leading beverage company and quick service restaurant to develop a sweepstakes that would reward consumers for scanning QR codes on their soft drink cups.

By scanning the QR code, users were taken to a mobile-optimized landing page where they could enter to find out if they are an instant winner. Prizes ranged from a year’s worth of beverage/food products to a trip to Las Vegas.

Entry rates for this sweepstakes were high, a result of connecting with the consumer at a moment when competing distractions are low and they are in-store, interacting with the brands.

To engage online audiences and maximize buzz around this campaign, Brandmovers developed a social media component that allowed users to share the sweepstakes with their Facebook friends and Twitter followers to get additional codes, and more chances to win prizes.

The promotion exceeded pre-launch expectations in terms of sweepstakes entrants and social media mentions. This can be attributed to the ease of entry on the mobile site, the consumer context when presented with a call to action, the prizing incentive, and the social sharing mechanic. The result was an on-brand promotion that engaged relevant audiences in both in-store and online channels.

To learn more about this promotion check out this article from Mobile Marketer.

In today’s day and age, it should come as no surprise that effective digital marketing initiatives deliver excellent value back to businesses. A strong online presence is an investment that can impact an organization in a variety of ways.

As a branding tool, few other mediums offer the flexibility and responsiveness of the web, which can be refreshed instantaneously to reflect new promotions and embrace user-generated contributions. The phrase “your brand consists of your customers” has never been truer.

Beyond brand equity, effective digital marketing translates to tangible business impacts in the form of sales growth. Social media and email integration allow companies to penetrate a customer’s online repertoire, and a well built website facilitates and encourages online purchases.

The web has also allowed companies to improve the customer service experience. The public nature of company updates and responses on social networks allows companies to show a responsive and caring attitude toward customer questions and qualms. This results in more resolved complaints and a cut in support costs, as online help desks free up bandwidth and expenses previously dedicated to telephone customer service.

A strong digital strategy also permits businesses to reallocate their marketing budgets to more efficient channels, resulting in more effective media buys. The metrics available to tie business performance back to specific digital initiatives result in a more transparent and true assessment of marketing impact.

Lastly, a web presence that inspires and gives people a place to express themselves can result in a breadth of consumer insights. This amounts to a truer form of market research, as opposed to traditional survey research, as analysis is based on organic user contributions.

See the chart above for stats collected by the Boston Consulting group, which recently surveyed marketing executives at over 30 corporations across Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US, researching the benefits of effective digital marketing across the areas of (1) Brand Equity (2) Sales (3) Customer Service (4) Media Buys and (5) Consumer insights.

Sources: Forrester Research, BCG Interviews, BCG Case Work, BCG Analysis

To keep customers coming back for more, there is nothing more powerful than saying “thank you”. Here are 4 new ways to reward your loyal customers for visiting your stores, purchasing your products, engaging with your content or creating content for you.

Reward Social Participation

Earlier this week we shared an article spelling out what Facebook’s new Timeline brand pages mean for your design and content strategies. The greatest takeaway is that, more than ever, content is king. In addition, Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm has recently undergone a facelift that gives increased exposure to content with the greatest number of likes, comments and shares.

This post breaks down the engagement mechanisms on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to jog your creativity on ways your company could reward people for their likes, tweets, and pins.

Facebook:

While Facebook has rules against using their mechanisms as entry methods to promotions, there are other ways to leverage people’s likes, shares, and comments. As administrator of your page, you have access to information on your power users. Why not run a promotion that rewards people for being in the top 10, or for being the #1 fan of your Facebook page – as designated by their social actions? Attribute different points to each action, as a share to a user’s own page results in greater incremental exposure than a like or a comment would.

Furthermore, any user-generated content that you request of your audience (be it photos, videos, or blog posts) can be made to tie back to your company’s Facebook page. Ask users to post user-generated content with a tag that links to your brand page. Content that fans post to their followers is even more important than the content you post as your brand, because it reaches an entirely new audience. Asking users to recognize your page in their post is a way to encourage click-through and “likes” from their friends.

Twitter:

An effective Twitter campaign will also encourage users to recognize the company or promotion behind the initiative in the form of an @-mention or hashtag (#). All communication supporting the campaign should make it clear that in order for a Twitter action to be recognized, brand properties should be linked to in the ways outlined above. Retweet-to-win campaigns are less preferable than higher engagement requests-for-interaction. An effective format is to pair a compelling question with a promotional hashtag.

To promote 2011’s Tower Heist, Brandmovers’ #twitterheist campaign asked people to tweet something they would like to heist or even to confess something they have heisted. All tweets with hashtag #twitterheist were then aggregated onto the sweepstakes’ website into a “tower of tweets” that unlocked prizes as new tweets were added. Initiatives like this one create a showcase of user submissions in such a way that makes them more involved and brings the promotion to life.

Pinterest:

The hottest new social network just happens to be a perfect tool for sourcing a cornucopia of content from your users. In the same way that you can tabulate Facebook actions according to the extent to which they boost your brand’s exposure, a Pinterest heart (or like) would be worth less than a re-pin, which places another user’s content on your boards, with credit to the original poster.

Yet the tool can be used in much more interesting ways. You can ask users to pin content that they find from across the web, and incorporate a trackable shout-out to the company or promotion in the form of a hashtag or @-mention. For example, a furniture company could communicate “Pin your favorite home decoration inspirations with #pintowindeco and @thehomedeco in the description to be entered to win select items from our Spring collection!”

With this approach you create a digital treasure hunt scenario in which your users are curating content for you. Content that is proven to be interesting enough, that can be re-posted and re-attributed to create yet another cycle of social media goodwill.

Stay tuned for the next Brandmovers Blog Series!

We’ve seen games on phones and games on Facebook but have video game houses gone too far? The new urinal game from Sega allows users to compete against each other when they head to the restroom:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/18/sega-toylet-become-a-video-whiz-at-the-urinal/?hpt=C2

Is this too much? Maybe, but it sure is interesting to see how integrated and acceptable games are in our lives.

Understanding where games fit into your marketing mix is essential as a marketer. Did you know that games can be used to engage employees and sales channels in addition to consumers? How about the fact that U.S. internet users log 407 Million hours of game time every month. Games are outlets for us to have fun and to be comfortable in a stress free environment. When the benefits of games are integrated into a branded environment, the results can be astounding.

So get out and find a game to play, you’ll be “relieved” to know you could have so much fun with one.

I wanted to share some breaking news about Facebook’s Promotional Policy that will positively impact your ability to easily and cost effectively run promotions on your Facebook fan pages!

In a nutshell:
• You no longer have to seek permission from Facebook for administering promotions on Facebook
• There is no longer a minimum media investment required to support a promotion on Facebook
We’ve recently conducted a number of very successful Facebook promotions on behalf of our clients.

Here is a link to a recent program for HGTV’s House Hunters:
http://www.facebook.com/Brandmovers?v=app_142548245781030

Our Agilent creative team did an excellent job helping our clients increase ROI by 278%
You check it out here Summer Of Fun