What NFC marketing campaign do you have planned for the holidays?

What NFC marketing campaign do you have planned for the holidays?

This fall there is expected to be an explosion of NFC phones in the marketplace, which for the first time makes NFC marketing a viable engagement strategy for retailers to create campaigns. However, the concept of NFC marketing is somewhat new and marketing departments are slow on the uptake in deploying bricks and mortar virtual campaigns. The beauty of NFC marketing is that it can be simple to put together, or it can be highly technical and embedded with other technologies.

On the simple side, an NFC marketing campaign can be as simple as a smart poster that signs people up for your company’s newsletter and then rewards them with a discount coupon. Your tracking metrics can be done at the register and you could even run a concurrent tell-a-friend campaign on the same smart poster. That could work out great for a mom & pop store who wants to dabble in NFC marketing before investing in an integrated platform approach when ROI is known. An investment of a few hundred dollars could be all that is needed to secure more sales if your campaign is creative and novel. On the technical end, if you have the ability to accept NFC payments or have an NFC marketing system, the sky is the limit.

When it comes to marketing, NFC offers an unparalleled opportunity to engage your customers in an immersive experience and win you the opportunity to keep the lines of communication open all year round. Those who embrace NFC marketing will quickly gain a competitive advantage over competitors. So we ask, are you ready to maximize opportunity this holiday season with an NFC marketing campaign? After all, it is now September and you should start planning now.

Considerations for an NFC marketing campaign

However you decide to put together your campaign there are some key things you need to consider. We can’t give you a full marketing education here in one post, but we can point you in the right direction of how to approach your holiday campaign.

1. NFC marketing: What is your goal?

Different campaigns have different goals. Some NFC marketing campaigns are aimed at shifting certain product lines, some at opening the channels of communication with permission based marketing while others are purely aimed at creating loyalty. Of course you could combine many goals into a campaign but we suggest that if it is your first attempt at an NFC marketing campaign, you define your goal and follow the KISS (keep it simple stupid) mantra. This will help you define better metrics, but we’ll get to that soon. Whatever you do, ensure you have your NFC marketing goals defined and that they stay paramount in your mind before defining your campaign any further or thinking of your creative copy and imagery.

2. NFC marketing: Define your campaign.

Marketing works best when campaigns tie in to people’s basic needs. Whether your campaign is based around entertainment or actions, you should try to ensure it is novel, fresh and easy. Us humans are pretty predictable most of the time and all want the same things out of life. We attempt to get those things in a myriad of different ways, but in the end most things come down to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or even Quality of Life Indicators. Savvy marketers utilize basic human needs for effective NFC marketing campaigns. This is true of NFC marketing campaigns also and, in fact, because the nature of NFC tags being in the real world can provide a powerful edge to any campaign.

Maslows’ Hierarchy of Needs is a little in depth for the sake of our post today, so we are going to take a look at Quality of Life Indicators which, quite frankly, do just as well for an NFC marketing campaign. First, let us tell you a little about Quality of Life Indicators (QOL). Conceptualized and brought to the forefront by Sirgy et al.’s QOL is a fundamental psychological acknowledgement of what makes humans human. It was not intended for marketing, but we have always used it in campaigns. In very basic terms QOL is the measure based on satisfaction of human needs. It is broken down into four main categories that are defined as: (1) survival needs, (2) social needs, (3) ego needs and (4) self actualization needs.

Okay, we won’t go too deeply into the subject but wanted you to know that your NFC marketing campaign needs to embody and emulate the needs of your audience, or in other words – it’s all about your target market and has little to do with you products, brand or store. The whole concept revolves around the thought on the end of one’s life and what factors would make a person feel that their life was accomplished. To understand this concept gives the power to create campaigns that are able to connect with people at the hardwired deep level of their being. Yep, it’s that powerful and when you get in the swing of it you will find it simple to build into your NFC marketing campaigns and will even start to recognize it in others successful campaigns whether they realize they have embedded the theory within their campaigns or not. There are seven QOL indicators which are as follows:

1. The feeling of having been secure. People find campaigns that are based locally, for the local population less intimidating and thus more secure.
2. The feeling of having given to (and received help from) others. Gifting, sharing information or resources.
3. The feeling of having developed close friendships. Relationships and identification with your brand, staff and a sense of belonging ie. a club, loyalty program, etc.
4. The feeling of having been “in the know.” Discovery of new information, a way around the normal rules of buying.
5. The feeling of self esteem (pride) a person has about oneself. Acknowledgement of participation, unique rewards.
6. The feeling of prestige (reputation) one person has about oneself. Acknowledgement of participation, unique rewards.
7. The feeling of having experienced independent thought and action. Campaigns with options and choices built straight in to the foundation.
8. The feeling of having determined my life course.
9. The feeling of having experienced personal growth and development. The ability to learn more to receive more benefits.
10. The feeling of having experienced self- fulfillment. A defined achievable goal and benefit for your campaigns participants.
11. The feeling of having had worthwhile accomplishments. Simply ensure your consumer feels that the experience was fruitful and worthwhile.

3. NFC marketing: Develop creative

Okay, for the sake of the post we are going to suppose you have created a scavenger hunt around your store for kids, where upon completion the child gets a small prize and the parent gets a worthwhile discount to use in your store. We are going the say that NFC tags are hidden around the store with clues and a child needs to find those clues to reach the next NFC tag. When the puzzle is complete, there is a piece of knowledge given to the child about Santa Clause and this information has the ability to be shared with friends through the parents email, SMS or social networks to other children’s parents.

As part of our example campaign, you have a way for the parent to learn more about your company and get rewards and coupons throughout the year and be the first to know when you launch a similar campaign. Look at this example campaign and see how it fits with many aspects of the QOL indicators. Now you have to develop creative to captivate your audience and attract them to your campaign.The goal of our phantom campaign is to collect contact details for further marketing opportunities and build some loyalty for our phantom store.

Smart posters are cost effective, have your creative guru build a promotional poster that has an NFC tag embedded with information about your NFC marketing campaign. If you allow consumers to discover and learn about your campaign on their own, they will fulfill another QOL indicator. Remember a smart poster doesn’t need to be a poster and can be a leaflet or handout. Ensure your smart poster is aesthetically pleasing, with simple information that outlays the basic of your campaign and leave a little information missing so they your store employees have the opportunity and reason to open dialogue with potential participants (ice breaking, relationship building). Posters can be printed at a local printers, NFC tags can be bought online for $1 – $2 each. As far as marketing campaigns go, an NFC campaign can be very cost effective. Don’t forget to design in hotspots for your NFC smart posters and keep tags at least 3 inches apart from each other.

4. NFC marketing: Deploy your campaign

Set a date to launch your campaign. Ensure every member of staff is educated and part of the process and understands the goals of the campaign. If you can get some press coverage about the nature of your campaign locally and it is novel enough, the consumers will come. If you have built your campaign to include children they will come in droves.

5. NFC marketing: What you need to deploy an NFC marketing campaign

To deploy your NFC marketing campaign for the holidays, you will need an NFC phone for reading and writing NFC tags, a creative design and some NFC tags that can be purchased from a myriad of online stores cost effectively. NFC marketing doesn’t need to break the bank and in fact creativity is the main capital outlay of an amazing NFC marketing campaign.

NFC Marketing for the holidays summary

NFC marketing is set to become a major driving force in marketing. Key metrics and analysis is set to become big business. There are likely to be a lot more platforms that concentrate exclusively on delivering content and capturing permission based contact details. Enrollment in clubs and loyalty programs will also be a major part of NFC marketing, with features that also tie into your company’s website and newsletters. Where as all of that is wonderful, for larger companies there is nothing saying you cannot deploy a smaller scale campaign without those costs and investments of time.

The winners this year in NFC marketers will be those who creatively approach campaigns and not those who simply throw money at a campaign. With the global economy set to hit another road bump, there has never been a better or more needed time to give NFC marketing a try with a modest budget. Hopefully we have given you a few ideas and a basic understanding of how you can shape your own NFC marketing campaign for this holiday season.