Smartphone Applications Used As Marketing Tools

Sara Beaudoin is the Marketing and Communications Manager for SearchPro Systems

In the world of marketing, there are hundreds of thousands of ways you can advertise for your company, and of course, not all of them work.  The most important thing to remember in marketing is that you must adapt and stay current.  We already know to focus our efforts on internet marketing, such as SEO, VSEO, Website design, Blogging, and Social Media, but we also know there must be ways incorporate smartphones as it’s projected that 50% of us will be using smartphones in the very near future.

One intriguing way smartphones are being utilized is through the scanning application.  You could send out a mass mailer with a QR code on it that looks like a barcode, and when smartphone users scan the code, they’ll be directed to any type of information you’d like!  The code can simply direct them to your website, it can direct them to you Facebook page, and it can even automatically load all of your business’s contact information right into their phone.  The benefits are obvious; more traffic to your sites, a simplified way for them to contact you, automatically enter them into a contest, mailing list, etc.

Google is experimenting with a similar tool called Google Goggles.  Goggles allows smartphone users to take a photo of an advertisement, then Google will return relevant search results.  For example, Disney is a participant in the experiment, so say a user sees a poster for a new Disney movie called Finding Harry and they want to know what kinds of reviews it got.  The user simply takes a snapshot of the poster through the Goggles application, and among the search results, they can find a list of reviews and ratings.  I can see this application being useful in some situations and technically impressive, but in many cases, the user could simply type the name of what is being advertised into a Google search box and get the same results.

Obviously, the marketing challenge begins with enticing the smartphone user to pull out their phone and scan the barcode or open their Google Goggles app.  However, if used well, these tools could make a significant difference in your SEO marketing plan.  People always have their phones on them, 50% of those phones are smartphones, and most of us have our phones out and in our hands all throughout the day, so asking users to do something with their phones will be a no brainer to most.