Kodak / ActiveRain June Mobile Marketing Challenge

We have been progressing along with the Kodak challenges and we hope that each of these exercises has allowed you to look at an aspect of your business and see if there is room for improvement, or maybe just come up with some cool new ways to market your business. This month's Kodak Challenge is no different.

This month, we would like to really challenge people to expand into something they may not currently be doing, which is to create a mobile marketing experience.

QR codes this, QR codes that. No doubt you have heard the hub-bub about QR codes as a powerful new (are they really that new? They've been around since 1994) mobile marketing tool. If you are not familiar with them, I like to think of QR codes as a web link, in the real world. It's a way for people to use their smart phone to be taken to a website, video, somewhere on the web automatically.

I recently had a conversation with a member of ActiveRain who was a little bit confused about how she could/should be using QR codes in her business. She had them on her signature line and her sidebar of her ActiveRain blog. After we chatted about it for a bit, she quickly realized, that wasn't necessary, or practical. On a website, a link would be better than a QR code. However, in the real world, since you can't actually get someone to click on a link when they pick up your flyer, a QR code gives them an easy way to use their smart phone to be taken to a video of the property.......or wherever you want to take them.

Maybe you want them directed to your lender to get pre-qualified. Maybe you want them directed to your virtual tour. Maybe you want them directed to a video of you dressed up in a chicken suit screaming "I will lay an egg before you get a better deal on a house". Maybe you want them taken to the video you shot with your Kodak Playtouch HD Video Camera (which by the way you can get for 20% off by following that link).

It doesn't have to be a flyer. It could be on your postcards that you mail out after a home sells in your neighborhood. The QR code could point them to a video you did about how you rank #1 in Google when someone searches for homes for sale in their sub-division and that's why you were able to sell that last home so fast. Another great idea would be to attach a neighborhood video tour to a QR code on a listing flyer so people can 'get to know the neighborhood' just by picking up the listing flyer.

The bottom line, we want you to get creative with your use of mobile marketing applications. QR codes are the most obvious one, but you may very well have something even better. Mark from Kodak has written about Microsoft's Mobile Tag system. You can use that approach for this contest as well.

The ways to use QR codes are just now being tapped. I gave you a few basic examples above. We are looking to you to give us more ideas.

The Challenge:

Create a marketing piece that incorporates a QR code, MS Tag or other mobile marketing application. This could be on your real estate sign, a rider, a postcard, something else you mail out, on your flyer, your business card.

The QR Code should send a consumer to somewhere on the web which relates to where you are using that QR code. If you are using it on a listing flyer for instance, the QR code may launch to a video tour of the property.

Write a blog post explaining your submission. Let us know about your marketing piece. In the blog post, include the QR code so that it is able to be scanned by those of us here at ActiveRain, so we can see where the QR code leads. (So if you have the QR code on your marketing piece, and you put a copy of the marketing piece in your blog post, make sure the QR code is large enough so that we can scan it with our phones when reviewing the entries.)

Once you have written your blog post, leave a link to your blog post in the comment section of this blog post.

Deadline for entry is June 30th, 2011 at Midnight Eastern Time.

The Prizes:

The winning submission as selected by a panel of judges from ActiveRain and Kodak will receive a Kodak 2170 All-in-one Printer and a Kodak Playtouch Video Camera. Since you are going to have just submitted this great idea of how to utilize mobile marketing in your overall marketing program, you are going to want a great printer to be able to print your new marketing pieces. Not to mention, Kodak's water and fade resistant ink will make it so that consumers can scan your QR code rain or shine. (If you follow that link above, you can get $30 off that printer right now.)

The second place submission as selected by the panel of judges will receive a Kodak M580 Digital Camera.

Each post submitted will be given 2000 ActiveRain points.

We will randomly select 4 submissions to receive one of the following:

• Two ActiveRain T-shirts
• The ability to feature two posts on the feature board of ActiveRain
• One hour of one-on-one time with Bob Stewart to review your blog and your participation on ActiveRain (or talk about anything you want......he's particularly fond of discussing the Seahawks, Mariners and his horrible golf game)
• Super Secret 'Wow em' ActiveRain Pass (we'll let you know what this is once you win it. Since it is 'super secret' we aren't really at libery to disclose the full coolness of this prize)

(I realize it is strange to use a QR code on a website......or at least I think it is, because no one is going to take out their phone and shoot their computer screen when they could just click on a link and be taken to the same place. But I had to test how hard it was to create a QR code and it took me about six seconds to create the one above.....but if you'd like to know where it goes, all you have to do is click here. My son appears about half way through the video)