National Clothesline

Today, we live in a world of digital solutions. The computer world has opened endless possibilities in almost every area of life.

Using netbooks as notebooks and tablet LCDs as blackboards, our classrooms are now furnished with countless new tools and methods of learning.

Smartphones have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other.

In general, people prefer digital technology to the standard physical counterparts because of their attractive appearance and convenience.

And marketing is no exception. In fact, marketing by means of age-old tried and true physical media is being used less and less.

Paper-based marketing such as flyers, brochures and direct mail are increasingly considered to be not as cost-effective as Internet advertisements. It’s no surprise that many print magazines and newspapers have closed down completely.

From the perspective of the reader or recipient, standard print media holds limited information and is sometimes difficult to handle. And advertisers who have tried both claim that standard methods are costly and do not offer as good an ROI as some of the newer digital methods.

In addition and to its favor, digital advertising solutions offer an enormous capacity to hold information and are more likely to convert interested prospects into clients.

Mobile marketing involves contacting and communicating with customers and prospects by way of their mobile phones. QR Codes — short for “Quick Response” — is somewhat new and very powerful innovation in mobile marketing.

This is essentially a two-dimensional barcode that looks like some black blocks printed over a white background. Compared to the commonly used barcodes (they are essentially one-dimensional) that you will usually find in stores, QR codes are able to store more data.

It requires a scanner (freely downloaded apps) to read data. In order to truly appreciate the real power and capability of a QR code you’ll need access to a Smartphone.

What is really cool about a Smartphone is that wherever you are, you can access the Internet; The Internet, of course, is currently the hub of all marketing activities. Because a smart phone offers all services in one package; one can use the Internet, call someone and buy something all from one single platform. The accessibility that it provides is the reason for its success in mobile marketing.

People who use mobile phones to research products and look for services are more likely to take action than others. Research conducted by Google reveals that 90 percent of mobile phone users who are looking for a product or service actually call or visit the company.

QR codes can be used in a variety of ways to promote your service.

You can put these codes in your shop’s front window so that people passing by can scan it and directly get to your website or get your contact information. You can also embed these in your business cards. On scanning these codes, your contact information will directly be stored in the person’s Smartphone.

Retail stores use these codes on or beside their products so that customers may get detailed information of the product on the web.

Since advertisements are scattered everywhere on the Internet to attract prospective customers, the question arises as to how any business uses QR codes to reach these prospects via the Internet.

Here’s a simple method that illustrates only a single function of the QR code.

Let’s say, you have embedded QR codes on your brochure, business card or direct-mail piece. When a user scans a code with their Smartphone, it will channel that person directly to your site — preferably a mobile landing page and not a web page).

The landing page is the most important step in the QR process because that’s where the owner of the business creatively handles the response.

For example, the landing page could be used to collect information such as name, e-mail address and cell number. Of course, this would be done as a permission-based “opt-in” by the prospect.

If this were the sole purpose of the QR, it would offer the business owner a gold mine since one could build a list of prospective clients quickly and then follow up by auto-responder with special offers and interesting information.

Many business owners have never collected names and have no list to contact. In fact, they have never quantified their customers to any extent at all.

QR codes can carry a lot of information, including videos, voice mail messages and images such as maps and photos. As such, they offer many other ways to respond to a landing page visitor. Here are a few more.

1. You could provide mobile users with contact and location features such as a map to your location and a click-to-call phone number.

2. Using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to increase mobile following.

3. Offering incentives, such as coupons and other mobile offers. Studies have shown that mobile coupons are redeemed at a much higher rate than print coupons.

4. SMS (Short Message System) allows you to target just the right people at just the proper time for a very special “brief window of opportunity” offer.

The advances in mobile marketing are coming fast. Putting your business in the palm of your customer’s hand is no longer a wish, it’s a reality and it’s constantly being improved… almost daily.

The drawback to QR is the fact that, currently, only about 27 percent of the mobile phones in the U.S. are Smartphones and only people with smartphones can scan the codes. It is projected that within two years all phones will be smartphones.

In the meantime, Jagtag (www.jagtag.com) has come out with its own version of the QR code that can be read on any phone-equipped camera and almost all phones fall into this category.