Confronting the mayhem in Media and Marketing

The Future of Mobile Barcodes is Utility not Marketing

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Ryan McAbee • 0 Comments

Scan to like us on Facebook. Scan to get a 5% off. Scan to join our newsletter. Scan to see our exciting new video. Boring.

Marketers have created such bad experiences with mobile barcodes over the last few years that consumers are ignoring them. There is not a lot of recent research to support this other than observational. Have you seen the number of mobile barcodes decline in your magazines, in stores, on signage? You betcha but are they dead?

According to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends speech at this year’s All Things Digital conference, the answer is no. Meeker points to a 4.5 times increase in QR Code scanning in China (slide 64). A closer look reveals that only a third of those scans are promotional or marketing related. The majority of the scans are transactional used by consumers to check-in, purchase an item, or to exchange information. Another example of mobile barcodes used to complete a transaction comes from the Australian company ExpressQ. Their system allows event goers to purchase items ahead of time and then skip the queue and pickup their items using a mobile barcode on their smartphone or from a print out.

Marketers and print service providers have to think beyond simple marketing gimmicks like those listed at the start and instead focus on mobile barcodes and platforms that provide a useful service for the consumer and business. If that means creating solutions like ExpressQ, the mobile barcode opportunity may be out of reach for most print service providers.

Note: The entire presentation is worth your time to flip through.

 

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Filed Under: Future of Print, Mobile Barcodes

Social Print Niches

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Ryan McAbee • 0 Comments

Out of Australia comes another example of an innovative print e-commerce startup known as Jellybeanstreet. The company combines the social goodness of a Tom’s shoes or Warby Parker by donating a portion of its sales to charity with a user generate content approach of a Threadless or Printstagram.

Parents submit original artwork from their kids which then gets digitized and jazzed up by a designer. The parents then receive an e-mail with three options to choose between which can be output to canvas, iPhone cases, etc.

Both Printstagram and Jellybeanstreet prove that generating revenue from print does not require a huge investment in equipment, but rather a novel idea and a little IT chops. (Jellybeanstreet uses Epson wide format printers.)

photo: andreaarden

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Filed Under: Printernet, Social (Print) Media

The Commerce Tipping Point

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Ryan McAbee • 0 Comments

When mobile commerce is larger than in-store purchases or traditional e-commerce, what does that mean for your business? The customer acquisition (marketing) funnel changes. The sales funnel changes. Most, if not all, of the ways you currently conduct business and engage your customers changes.

Let’s start with digital marketing as a way to gain the attention and interest of your consumer. Since the mobile experience is chopped into 1,000 individual apps, paid search is not as reliable a method to generate sales as on a PC. Due to the relative screen size of smartphones, which has a larger install base than tablets, banner ads are not a good option since they take up valuable real estate. E-mail and content marketing still work but the rest of your business systems need to be optimized for mobile too. A simple, yet nagging, example would be a link sent in e-mail that redirects to a full page website.

If you live in Brazil, you may not have much time to figure this out. A recent study by Opera software found that more Brazilians access the web via their phone than other methods. Businesses still get a slight reprieve since 72% of those accessing the web through their phone had not made a purchase. I suspect this gap will close before most business and marketers are ready.

photo: Jason A. Howie

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Filed Under: After the Web-to-Print, Marketing