With all the different mobile marketing platforms and new mobile marketing strategies being developed these days, it’s easy for even a veteran mobile marketer to lose sight of all the options. Today, I’m here to remind you that Quick Response is still a great way to bolster your existing mobile marketing strategy without investing in a huge new mobile marketing solution. Some have doubted the QR code, but the numbers are shaping up.

Here are some important facts:

• June saw the highest number of QR code scans ever.
• That pans out to about 5.3 million scans during June.
• Comparing Q2 2011 to Q2 2012, there’s been a 500% rise in scans-per-minute.
• Users aged 25-34 were tied with users aged 35-44 at about 24% of all scans.
• QR users were predominantly male, with a 69% to 31% split.
• The biggest share of campaigns by type was held by contests.
• The biggest share of campaigns by industry was held by the toy industry.

If You’re a Mobile Marketer, Take Responsibility (and Credit!) for QR Innovation

These numbers challenge the notion that QR is a fad that isn’t expanding fast enough out of its home base in Japan and Korea. Quick Response is growing, and doing it fast enough that even mobile marketing companies that have had lackluster results from QR in the past should look at their mobile marketing strategies and see if anything can be improved. More users “get” QR, so standing out is more important than ever.

Brands like Guinness are making use of QR codes in a big way. Check out this Guinness glass QR code that can only be scanned when the glass is full; the result is a quick social media message about the pint you’re enjoying. Speaking of big QR and Guinness, the Guinness Book of World Records recently certified the world’s largest QR code in an Alberta, Canada corn maze. Scanning the code leads to the maze website.

QR codes may be just one part of your mobile marketing strategy, but they are quickly becoming another tool you should consider. In a sense, they’re more than that, too: They’re pop art. An effective QR campaign uses the visual nature of Quick Response as a way of differentiating it from every other distraction out there; then it follows through on the implied promise by offering truly interesting multimedia content.

Don’t Forget the Power of Consent for Your Mobile Marketing Advertising

Before we sign off for now, I’d like to say a quick word to all the mobile marketing advertising experts out there. Remember that there’s a huge difference between permission-based marketing and interruption-based marketing. Quick Response codes require the user’s active participation, which leaves them feeling like they are in control. You can extend that positive feeling throughout your mobile marketing strategy.

Users never get tired of feeling as if they are in control of their personal information and the course of your relationship. Plus, the more opportunities you give them to say “Yes,” the more you’ve warmed them up to say “yes” when it really counts. Don’t forget to collect feedback directly from users when nothing else seems to be working; it may be hard to interpret sometimes, but it can catch things that your experts won’t!

How young is too young to have your own mobile device and be a potential target for mobile marketing advertising? No matter what kind of mobile marketing campaigns you do, you probably already know that just about any middle school-aged kid in the United Statesis going to expect to own a smartphone. The prevalence of mobile devices in school is so dramatic that banning mobile phones in schools is turning into a major public policy debate, with countries including the United Kingdom and Spain enthusiastically endorsing a ban on cell phones in schools.

Yes, these debates will shape the world of mobile marketing solutions to some extent, and mobile marketing companies should be aware of how they’re playing out. But if you think the market for appealing to young people with mobile marketing advertising begins at age sixteen or even thirteen, think again. More than half of children in the age range of 5-8 years old have already used a mobile device to learn or play. Kids under twelve are already significant users of the family mobile device. By the time kids own their first cell phone, it’s an extension of habits they’ve built up for years.

And when do they get that phone? More and more kids are getting theirs in middle school, and parents are seeing the phones as a way to extend the “safety net” of the home outside into the classroom and local community — allowing kids, for example, to walk to nearby destinations that would have been out of bounds for safety reasons before. (In effect, cell phones are giving kids the freedom they already had decades ago.)

What does it all mean for your mobile marketing campaign?

Ethics and Other Concerns in Mobile Marketing Advertising for Kids

Young folks have always started receiving marketing messages earlier than anyone would like to admit. Saturday morning cartoons were full of tempting commercials. Now, the traditional ways of marketing to younger people through “fixed schedule” television advertisements have been destabilized. As shopping online has become more common, even traditional retail marketing to young people has lost a lot of its influence.

Naturally, nobody wants kids to be sitting around looking at ads in school; but there are some businesses that must build awareness among younger people. How do you do it both effectively and without going beyond the bounds of good taste? Just as importantly: What do kids expect from successful mobile marketing campaigns?

Interactivity: Interactivity gives young people a sense of control and ownership that they typically lack in their own lives. They do not usually appreciate having to passively receive information, since they do that all day long.

Gamification: Again, giving something a game component allows young people to feel that they are in control. It also builds an incentive for young people to create a relationship with your brand or product and learn more.

Community: Remember that whenever you introduce community elements into a platform intended for young people, you are expected to adhere to a variety of laws restricting access and material! Before a certain age, young people can’t patronize avenues like Facebook, leaving them open to other alternatives.

Reduced Challenge: Although young people enjoy games, mobile media has taught them to expect satisfaction faster than ever. They will not usually respond well to having their intentions foiled by anything that is too challenging.

Mobile marketing advertising is poised to become the most “typical” way of building long-term brand loyalty among young people. In order to do so, a mobile marketing platform needs to deliver a completely seamless experience that includes not only a mobile site, but integration of the content that young people care about. For products that both young people and mature consumers seek, it is a good idea to divide your mobile marketing services so that each demographic gets whatever it’s looking for.

Not too long ago, whether you were an average mobile user or a mobile marketing advertising guru, you had a trade-off to make when using your mobile device. You could opt for a device with a tiny keyboard or you could get used to typing and navigating on your device with your thumbs. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten used to typing with my thumbs; I alternate between the keyboard and a stylus, which is a little bit like trying to type on your phone with half of a pair of chopsticks.

Mobile marketing strategies usually take into account the ways that users can develop “tunnel vision,” because all but the youngest users will tend to try to shut out distractions while they’re focused on a particular task with their phone. A mobile marketing platform has to take into account the fact that, no matter how effective your mobile marketing solution is, the user still has to be able to get back to whatever they were doing before they clicked your ad; and, unfairly, they’ll blame you if they can’t.

Mobile media marketing will benefit from a mobile control scheme that allows people to multitask better than they can on today’s smartphones (or even on today’s tablet computers, which are much better in these situations.) Until recently, though, it hasn’t been clear when mobile marketing companies would have the chance to benefit from new ideas in device operation. Luckily, that day is coming up fast.

Haptic Feedback Will Be the Next Big (and Small) Thing in Mobile Marketing

When technologies change, it’s up to us to change with them. “User experience” is the new watchword in many parts of the tech sector: The curious idea that building products and services around what the end users want to accomplish will result in a better experience for all. This is an idea that has been around in marketing, especially mobile marketing, for a very long time now — but it’s becoming key to other fields, too.

With this new user-centered approach, companies are looking at ways to resolve the perennial dilemma users have when handling complex tasks on their smartphones. They may be on to something: Raised “haptic feedback” buttons that appear and disappear on your smartphone’s touch screen in response to your needs. These buttons will emerge out of your glass touchscreen and provide responsiveness similar to “real” buttons.

The value of haptic feedback is that you know whether your fingers are in the right place as you type, not afterwards — as is the case with sound effects and vibrations — and without having to look directly at the screen to figure it out. This is bound to help many users, especially older ones, enjoy and use their mobile devices much more.

What Haptic Feedback Will Mean to Mobile Marketing Solutions

Haptic feedback keys will respond to the app that’s being used on the screen at a given moment rather than being pre-programmed in hardware specifications. This will allow each individual app, and even your ads, to adopt their own control scheme at the user’s whim. For the first time, the physical experience of using the phone will be completely interactive and aligned with the specific needs of whatever’s displayed on the screen.

Just as importantly, mobile marketing advertising stands to grow, too. As haptic feedback keys become more and more commonplace, they will encourage the expansion of mobile technology into demographics that are currently under-represented in the mobile marketing mix. Both older people and the very young will be more likely to respond to ads thanks to the higher level of interactivity and convenience haptic keys offer.

The introduction of haptic feedback could be anotherhigh pointin the growth of mobile marketing. If these keys are useful in expanding market penetration, we could even see them in devices marketed to lower income individuals and casual users who are currently using pre-paid or “no contract” phones. That means a higher rate of exposure to mobile advertising for these demographics, too.

Last, but certainly not least, it could be the end of an era for typing with our thumbs!

Ask a room full of marketers what their opinion about direct mail is and you’ll get a room full of different answers. Experience shows that slick, easily consumed direct mail can be a very effective way to introduce a local business.

Unfortunately, declining mail volume and rising postage costs have led to a sustained and fairly dramatic drop in direct mail as a proportion of advertising budgets. But there is a way to combat rising mail costs and use Quick Response codes to bring direct mail into the 21st century. In this post, we’ll discuss a little bit more about using principles of mobile marketing advertising to make direct mail work for you again!

One of the most effective forms of direct mail is the glossy postcard. Part of the reason for this is convenience: People sort through their mail while standing over the trash, and the majority of prospects will never open an envelope. On the other hand, if something on a postcard catches a prospect’s eye, the battle is half won. You can’t unread a postcard. By the time you glance at it, you’ve absorbed half the message — and there’s no envelope to get in the way or test the customer’s patience by looking “suspicious.”

Instead of old-fashioned long ad copy, take a lesson from mobile marketing advertising in your direct mail efforts. Provide a postcard — experts generally agree that the bigger and more colorful, the better — and a QR code. The postcard should do all that traditional marketing does: Entice the prospect and offer benefits. The QR code should do the rest: Giving the prospect offers and information specific to their needs.

QR codes are exceptional at helping you track response to your ads. This has traditionally been the number one problem in determining the effectiveness of direct mail. When you make the direct mail portion subordinate to your mobile marketing strategy, the problem disappears. That alone is a good reason to become familiar with QR.

Of course, you will still have to do some of the traditional foot work involved in direct mail. The quality of your mailing list will determine how well you can target your prospects, and targeting is what elicits a positive response. But specialist mailing list companies can help — and they can also print and mail your postcards much less expensively than would be the case with “stuffed envelope” direct mail.

The best thing about QR is that you can make an ad seem like it’s just for one person. Tricks that might seem cheesy in another context (like setting up the landing page so it greets the prospect by name) work much better and look much more natural on a mobile marketing platform. Illogical as it might seem, a mobile landing page doesn’t have the same ugly “mass mail” quality that an envelope automatically creates in so many prospects. Ensure that your mobile content is good — optimized for rapid viewing, focused on what the customer really needs — and you can get them to opt in for more.

Any business planning a mobile marketing campaign has to stay creative. Your mobile marketing strategy is one of the most measurable elements of your marketing and advertising mix: If you keep an eye on results and stay ahead of trends, you can refine your campaigns to become consistent earners. One of the best trends to get involved with right away is Quick Response Codes, and the latest Entrepreneur proves it.

In the Entrepreneur article on QR codes, author Ann Hadley discusses the pitfalls and “best practices” surrounding QR. There are some important bites here, including some sharp statistics about the emerging importance of QR: 40% of consumers in the vital 25 to 34 demographic have scanned a QR code in the last year. A full 30% of consumers who have scanned a QR code have a household income over $100,000, putting them well into the highest quintile that most non-specialist marketers will target.

A lot of Ms. Hadley’s suggestions might already be familiar to readers of Mobile Marketing. But the article as a whole represents an emerging consensus that will be very valuable if you use QR as part of your mobile marketing platform. Ms. Hadley describes her disappointment and aggravation at scanning a code only to be asked to fill out a long, counterintuitive contact form on her phone — surrendering her personal information in exchange for a nebulous promise of “specials.”

This is exactly the wrong way to use QR, and it’s very prevalent among the big brands. Some of the best ideas about how to use QR are coming from smaller, hungry brands. For example, take the case of Sacre Bleu Wine (but be sure to leave some for me!) The minds behind Sacre Bleu realized that they wanted to target the millennial wine market and that these consumers generally don’t look for wine information in traditional, paper-based sources. QR codes made it possible to communicate with them at the point of sale.

I haven’t been able to pick up a bottle of Sacre Bleu lately, but if the article is accurate, it sounds like exactly the right way to handle a mobile marketing campaign. Scanning a Sacre Bleu bar code leads to a customized, completely mobile landing page that includes special offers and wine pairing pointers from up-and-coming star chef Brad Sorenson. Sacre Bleu’s president, Galen Struwe, states: “We’re going to take the consumer down a richer road of discovery.”

It’s just that sense of discovery that combines with the instant gratification of mobile and QR to create a dynamic marketing package — one that has the opportunity to capitalize on a consumer’s immediate wants, even if they haven’t gone through the whole sales pipeline. With mobile, and especially with QR, you can “sneak up” on a consumer’s needs and then hit them with the kind of presentation that inspires an instant feeling of savvy and brand loyalty. Hats off to Sacre Bleu for being a great example!