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Free Music, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, and Mobile Marketing

I found myself at Taco Bell recently and I was pleasantly surprised. No, not by their claim of using real beef in their tacos but, by their use of QR Codes in the store.

Mountain Dew is sponsoring a free music promotion where, when you scan the qr code, you are taken to a mobile enabled page with several music video links. They do a great job with the campaign and, it seems to be successful with over 150k scans in the past 30 days.

From a best practices perspective, the campaign does a great job with the “big three”.

Mobile Marketing Best Practices

Short URL – The campaign uses bit.ly to shorten the domain name and keep the QR Code simple and easy to scan. This also give us excellent stats on scans. Currently, it’s over 5k scans per day.

Mobile Enabled Web Page – After scanning the QR Code, you’re taken to a simple, mobile enabled, page that’s easy to navigate and use on your phone. I scanned the QR Code on my iPhone and these are two screen shots from the site.

Compelling Content – To have a successful campaign and keep QR Codes relevant, marketers need to have compelling content delivered to the mobile device. In this campaign, the patron can watch and listen to music videos while they eat or, more importantly, now they can take the Mountain Dew message with them when they leave the store.

Bonus – At the bottom of the mobile home page, there are icons to share on Facebook and Twitter adding a social component to the campaign.

Too many times, we’ve seen campaigns where the QR Code was too complex due to a long URL, the QR Code didn’t resolve to a mobile enabled page, or there was no real content after scanning. It’s nice to see a QR Code campaign done right.

Mobile Marketing Best Practices

I subscribe to the Mobile Marketer Daily which is an excellent trade newsletter for our industry. Neustar, a company that helps its clients implement mobile bar codes, has an ad campaign going now that asks if you can read a QR Code. The ad also states that your customers can (at least the number of customers who can is growing).

Mobile Landing Pages

I see companies, almost on a weekly basis, who tout their abilities to help clients implement a mobile marketing campaign who don’t follow at least one of the top best practices for mobile marketing. In this case, Neustar may have an excellent service offering but, when one scans their QR Code, it does not resolve to a mobile landing page.

After scanning the code on my iPhone I’m sent to their white paper opt-in page. While one could zoom in and pan around on the screen, mobile landing pages are one of the top 3 best practices companies need to implement to help ensure a successful mobile marketing campaign.

Compelling Content

After scanning a QR Code, not only does your prospective customer need to be taken to a mobile landing page, but, the content on that page needs to be compelling. Neustar missed a great opportunity to include a video overview of their services or what’s included in the whitepaper they are offering.

According to the CTIA, over 187B (yes that’s a B) text messages are sent monthly in the US. If it’s not now, mobile phones will soon be the primary medium your prospects are using to consume information, entertainment, and communicate with others. More than newspapers, televisions, and computers. By communicating a compelling message and keeping to mobile marketing’s best practices you too can have a successful campaign and build your business.

Today, Tim Treasure retro-fitted the sign for one of his listings with Columbus’ first QR Code for commercial real estate. The QR Code resolves to one of our mobile-enabled websites with a video, photos, directions (for those who scan the code away from the building), and Tim’s contact information.

Tim also hung posters in the cafe that’s located in the building.

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QR Code Poster

Tim Treasure of Treasure and Associates listed a beautiful office building downtown Columbus and wanted to reach the widest possible audience. Epic Business produced a brief music video with images of the building and built a mobile enabled web page.

There are two QR Codes (for tracking purposes) that resolve to the same mobile web page. One code is outside on the signage and the other is on a poster displayed inside the building.

Because QR Codes are still new to the US market, all of our signs, posters, ads, etc. with a QR Code printed on it, have a short education message about what to do with the code and how to get a reader.

The QR Code resolves to our In60 mobile enabled web page.

My oldest son just started his freshman year at Miami University. Today, he sent me a photo of a QR Code on a poster in the school library.

The title of the poster is “What’s This?” with a prominant QR Code found in the center of the poster.

It does a good job educating the students as to what to do with a QR Code with their phones. Along the bottom is the 3 step process to get a scanning application, scan the code, and view the information.

Miami does a good job with this QR Code implementation. They educate their audience and the QR Code resolves to a mobile website for their library system.

What are some other uses of QR Codes in libraries that you’ve seen (or would like to see)? Leave a reply below.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)