Every business that wants to grow and be successful will want to market its services and products on the internet to increase its reach. While digital marketing and online marketing strategies effectively expand reach, businesses must also consider looking into NFC marketing to supplement their efforts. Near Field Communication marketing is a proximity marketing strategy where people interact with certain physical objects with NFC stickers embedded in them at small distances. After interacting with them, customers can access certain marketing materials found encoded in the tag. NFC technologies, like QR codes, are useful to supplement and improve any existing marketing campaigns and written below are some of them.

 

Boost Engagement Using NFC Tags

Integrating NFC labels in products and stores can boost customer engagement with the brand. For example, integrating NFC Digital tags  into a piece of clothing’s label will allow people to tap it to see additional information about said clothing. They can even see matching clothing or other colour schemes when tapping the tag whenever they want to look for more clothes. NFC can also be used to engage with customers by showing video content about your brand or products. Samsung did this when showcasing their phones’ feature of instantly sharing content through NFC. They used NFC posters to showcase the feature by sharing e-books and songs. This both improved engagement while also creating product and brand awareness.

Offer More Products

Because retail spaces tend to be limited to the point that many businesses can’t display their extensive inventories properly, it’s good to have an option. Using NFC tags will allow businesses to show customers their inventories by providing links to certain web pages showing variations of a displayed product. The only problem presented by driving traffic to business websites is that on-site customers will want to see the products when they’re in the store and won’t likely want to refer to a website. Incentivising doing so on-site with vouchers might help improve engagement and make a difference in in-store and online purchases.

Create Interactive Advertisements

In addition to boosting engagement through tags embedded in the products and shops themselves, it’s also possible to improve engagement through advertisements. Marketers can create interactive advertisements by setting up NFC stickers on signages and banners. Tapping the stickers can give consumers information on the items featured in the ads, videos featuring the product, the location of nearby stores, and others. It’s even possible to incentivise participating in such campaigns by offering vouchers at the end of the interactive campaign. Lexus leveraged NFC in print ads by embedding stickers to a magazine that people can tap to open the brand's new app suite.

Connect Customers to Loyalty Programs

You can also leverage NFC to enrol your loyal customers on a loyalty program that will give them more reason to stay with you. Using NFC at checkout kiosks and POS machines will allow customers the opportunity to enrol and earn points seamlessly in their next purchase.

Tap to See Product Reviews and Ratings

The main difference between shopping online and in malls and physical stores is that the only shopping method where people can view reviews is online. Positive reviews can influence people to buy a product, while negative reviews can make people stay away. This can work the same for restaurants. You can further improve your already positive image by allowing shoppers in your physical shops to tap an NFC sticker to see the online reviews of the product they’re looking at. Even a screenshot of a good review will work when the customer doesn’t have internet access but still wants to check reviews.

Tap to Learn About a Product or Service

Some people might want to know more about your products, and it's a good idea to have a contactless way to provide information even without an internet connection. NFC tags are perfect for this since they can be encoded with all the necessary information about a specific product. Using NFC for tap-to-learn purposes can help inform people about the data below:

• Product description
• Warranty information
• Manual

If you’re selling food to customers, providing the ingredients to show allergens is ideal for keeping people from suffering from allergies.

Encourage Repeat Sales

NFC stickers can be integrated into the packaging of certain products so that customers can tap them to order more online. This is good since it drives traffic to the site, especially when marketed properly, and customers are notified about this feature. Using NFC to encourage repeat sales reduces the possibility that customers will look for other providers when restocking supplies. Introducing voucher codes to landing pages accessible through NFC stickers can further encourage repeat customers as a sort of loyalty program.

Gain Surprising Insights

NFC technology can also be used to gather customer engagement data and reveal insights to get clear information on who a brand’s customers are and how and when the products are used. For example, producing NFC-enabled products can give companies an idea of how long it takes for their products to reach the stores and time their advertising campaigns accordingly. Having an idea of when's the right time to launch a marketing campaign can help keep a business from wasting money on ads and promos when their items are still in the warehouse and not on the shelves. Without such insights, there’s a significant chance that businesses will waste money with poorly timed ad campaigns.

Conclusion

NFC technologies are extremely useful for many businesses, especially since they can supplement existing marketing strategies and even improve the overall campaign. Many industries are already using NFC technologies for different purposes, including marketing. Marketers are already using QR codes to supplement their marketing efforts. Between NFC tags and QR codes, NFC is arguably the more versatile technology and has more functionality even without internet access. Marketers can leverage the fact that .txt and JPG files can be encoded in NFC stickers to provide more information on the product or service and customer reviews to convince others to trust in a particular brand, something that can’t be done with QR codes. NFC can help boost marketing just like how QR codes can, but with arguably more benefits. Some notable advantages are that NFC can be used for offline marketing and is simpler to use than QR codes because data transfer through NFC can be done with a simple tap. Businesses will need to look for a reputable NFC supplier to ensure that they have an ample supply of NFC business cards, tags, and other hardware for their needs. NFC Tagify is one such supplier; you can even help plant trees for each order made with the company.  

Sources:

• https://easitag.com.au/blog-articles/using-nfc-tags-in-retail-marketing-to-drive-engagement-and-build-community
• https://blog.beaconstac.com/2019/03/5-companies-nailing-it-with-nfc-campaigns/
• https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/5-ways-nfc-technology-can-fine-tune-your-marketing
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-boost-your-marketing-strategy-nfc-st%C3%A9phanie-girard?trk=read_related_article-card_title