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!

To keep people 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 User-Generated Content

What could be more genuine than the marketing your fans create for you?

More than 8 in 10 people say user-generated content from people they don’t know serves as an indicator of brand quality and influences their purchase decision. Surprisingly, 51% say opinions from strangers are more important than opinions from friends and family.

Surely, there is a lot to be gained from loosening the reigns around your brand and creating a space for the people to speak for you.

Ratings and Reviews

Including a ratings and reviews section on your website or Facebook page conveys a willingness to be transparent that assures your audience of the quality of your offering. Set up ways to respond publicly to ratings and reviews to further indicate your responsiveness and caring.

Photos and Videos

Who doesn’t want to be e-famous? Set up a section on your website, promotional microsite, or Facebook page to highlight photo and video submissions from customers. Compose tweets or status updates to call out new entries to your social media audiences. Take inspiration from Oreo’s Facebook profile picture, that the company uses to feature a different Oreo fan every week.

Tweets and Comments

Why not reward your fans for clever tweets and comments around your branded properties? Create lists like “10 Best Responses to #twitterheist Campaign” to highlight text-based fan contributions and compile them into blog posts or company newsletters.

Most of all, keep it genuine. Show people you want to listen, you want to respond, you want to put them in the spotlight to thank them for being a part of your brand.

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

2. Reward Gaming

As “gamification” becomes the hottest marketing buzzword, companies are increasingly gravitating toward games as the format of choice for branded experiences. The benefit of a game versus a static marketing piece is plain to see – a more engaging experience that necessitates repeat visits, creating a strong community of regulars around your marketing.

“[Traditional marketing] is failing because people today are seeking more reward and more engagement from experiences than ever before,” argues Gabe Zichermann, author of Game-Based Marketing. To this end, developing gaming mechanics that stimulate initial plays and repeat visits is key.

Points:

The most commonly used form of game mechanics, points allow you to measure achievements in a linear and limitless way. This creates an environment of competitiveness in the form of scoreboards, or, to use the gaming term…

Leaderboards:

Leaderboards encourage users to become power players to the end of seeing their name reach top rankings. To maximize competitiveness, create a universal leaderboard and one that compares a user’s points with those of their friends.

Levels:

Levels make a game more “sticky” by giving users an accomplishment to work toward, similar to…

Badges:

Like levels, badges provide an incentive to keep users playing in order to unlock symbols of virtual accomplishments. Badges also become part of the user’s identity, as they can be featured on a gamer’s page within a type of “digital trophy case”.

Prizing:

Of course, none of these mechanics should exist in a vacuum. Gaming initiatives work most effectively when players can exchange their digital achievements for real world prizes. This can range from company merchandise, to company products, to larger prizes that do not necessarily utilize your product but speak to your brand – like an exotic vacation for a company that makes travel backpacks.

Social:

The final step to ensuring your game creates maximized impact is to integrate a social layer in the rewarding dynamic. Compensate users for sharing interactions with your game to their audiences on Facebook and Twitter. There are mechanisms for prompting users to post such updates, even going so far as suggesting the content of the update to enhance fluidity between playing and posting. At the very least, posts that get rewarded with points should include @-mentions (or tags, in the case of Facebook) of your company. This maximizes exposure of your company to your user’s audiences, who can click-through on their friends post to your company’s page, and gives you a way to tabulate company mentions resulting from game play. For increased impact, ask users to recognize the promotion name in the form of a hashtag (Twitter) or event link (Facebook).

Other Posts in This Series
Reward In-Store Interactions
Reward Social Participation
Reward User Generated Content

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

1. Reward In-Store Interactions:

While apps like Foursquare allow businesses to reward customers for checking in to their locations, there are far more interesting ways to customize the behavior that gets rewarded at the moment of in-store interaction.

For example, a pizza place could give away a free slice to any customer who posts a photo with their pizza on Facebook or Twitter – with an @-mention shoutout to the awesome restaurant that gave them a free pizza.

Snapping a photo is a lot more engaging than simply checking in, from the customer’s standpoint, and also from the standpoint of their audience – who is more likely to click on a picture or video than recall a checkin.

This also provides the business with ideal content for creating a strong presence on short-form, image-driven platforms such as Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest. In case you haven’t heard, these are the places to be right now.

Creating a custom in-store promotion may be more involved than a simple Foursquare campaign, but in terms of brand exposure – an in-store photo/video campaign can make far more of a viral splash. Clients are sharing more engaging content to larger audiences on websites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. Creating mechanisms to stimulate content creation and content sharing is the best way to approach this trend in social media consumption.

Other Posts in This Series
Reward Gaming
Reward Social Participation
Reward User Generated Content

You’ve probably noticed recently how QR codes are being used more and more in marketing and advertising initiatives across the globe. Many argue that QR codes have now gone mainstream. But lots of companies aren’t yet up to speed with what they can really offer.

What are QR codes?

QR codes are a form of two-dimensional bar code originally created to track automotive spare parts, and now increasingly used in mobile marketing. For example, if you find a QR code printed on an ad and scan it with your mobile phone, you will be transported, almost instantly, to a specially designed website where you can learn more about the product, get more details on a promotion or perhaps get a discount offer.

How do I generate QR codes?

There are plenty of online sites where you can generate QR codes for free www.qurify.com/en/ is one of many.

What can I generate QR codes for?

You can generate QR codes not only for website URLs, but also for email addresses, social media profiles, text, and even maps.

How do I scan (or read) QR codes?

If your phone doesn’t come with one already installed, you need to download an app called a QR code reader. Basically, the way a QR code reader works is by allowing your mobile phone camera to act as a scanner. Just take a picture of a QR code and you’re automatically transported to the destination page.

What can I use QR codes for?

You can use QR codes for many different things. You can direct customers to your mobile website or a promotional page for your products. If you sell tools and equipment, you can link your QR code to a video showing how to use them. If you sell property you can use a QR code to direct customers to an online virtual tour of your homes. If you own a restaurant you can point a QR code to Google Maps showing customers how to get there. If you’re an independent professional you can create a QR code for your email address, website, blog or LinkedIn profile. The possibilities are endless.

Source: University of Manchester http://alumni.newsweaver.co.uk/newsletter/1ifi9hrq14a1ugkeyqj6rf

For example a company that manufacturer’s high quality golf balls can now target promotions to an individual searching for golf related products or tee times. These types of tactics are the polar opposite of traditional promotions which depended on mass media reach to connect with potential customers. Instead they focus on relevance and timing to consumers who are considering a purchase of a specific product.

The next few years will see a wave of digital natives and other tech-savvy folk leaving their office and home PCs and stepping out into a world swarming with internet-connected devices and context-specific information services LeSourd (2011). LeSourd coined this trend SoLoMo (Social, Location, Mobile) meaning the convergence of people, information, services, things, and places on modern mobile platforms. Futhermore he suggested that the effects of these changes would impact retailers on the high street, because high touch points rule brand loyalty

Shapiro (2011) defines the marketing world as two camps: the “one-to-many” camp representing the marketing model of the last 25 years (e.g. one brand markets to many people), and the “many-to-many” camp, where we reframe social media as a lead performer (but not the solo performer) in a bigger, newly emerging community-centered marketing system. Her construct gives an excellent contrast of traditional mass media versus social media.

In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively. Research indicates that “lurkers make up over 90% of online groups”

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

While traditional marketing continues to emphasize branding and creative as the most important features of a campaign, digital promotions are evaluated almost entirely on performance results which are captured and measured digitally. Justifiably marketing budgets are rapidly migrating to new media channels, because traditional perceived success factors, such as emotional stimuli created by the warm and fuzzy feeling of a traditional campaign can no longer compete with actual facts and figures.

Edelman (2011) contends that up to 90% of spend goes to advertising and retail promotions. Yet the single most powerful impetus to buy is often someone else’s advocacy. For this reason numerous new models and performance measures have emerged in the sales promotion industry. A recent UGC video contest we built had 132 entrants and 636,774 video views, meaning 98% of the participants were viewers.

Reach is a vital element of any promotion, however traditional methods continue to produce diminishing returns. Therefore promotions need original engaging content, mainly produced from its own customers.

The digitization and networking of information has forever changed the way marketers and consumers connect. So be prepared to change or risk extinction

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” Facebook told Reuters.
The product, which launched in late April, was an attempt to bring the popular daily deals phenomenon to Facebook’s 750+ million users. It launched in San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego, but quickly rolled out to other cities.

The idea was for Deals to serve as an incentive for Facebook users to integrate the also now defunct Facebook Places (a poor copy of Foursquare) in their daily lives — and they were also an incentive for marketers and major brands to put more money into the Facebook platform.

However, the Facebook Deals were less like a Foursquare coupon awarded to the user after a checkin and more like a Groupon voucher, meaning the user had to buy a certificate for a certain good or service at a steep discount, typically half off its retail price, then redeem it later.

Examples of the new breed of Facebook Deals from brands include “unlimited bowling with six friends for an evening for $60 (75% off)” and “luxury winery tour and 25% off all wine purchases for $50.”

The market for daily deals has become more competitive in recent months, however, and many are questioning the entire business model in light of Groupon’s questionable financials.

It’s no secret that a brand’s success on Facebook is largely contingent on Facebook-only discounts and content, but Facebook’s Deals had been – in the words of Vinvius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit.com – “an underwhelming product and experience”.

This does not necessarily mean that daily deals are ineffectual. Vacanti said it best: “I don’t believe this means daily deals are not a viable business. It more suggests that large media and tech companies can’t just ‘turn on’ daily deals and expect them to work. It has to be more thoughtfully integrated into their existing product”.

In other words, customization is still king. And, consumer engagement needs to be customized to the space, the way people interact within that space and the content and brands they care about. AdAge conducted a study about the deals space revealing that 52% of people feeling overwhelmed by the amount of emails they receive and 60% feel the deals market is just too crowded.

With this much competition, the quality of the deals can dwindle to the point of becoming SPAM instead of exclusive content customized to the consumer’s interest.

As Christopher Au tweeted, “Nobody needs more laser hair removal daily deals in their inbox anyway.”