Tag & Small Businesses

Mobile is
the buzzword these days, and businesses everywhere are starting to use Tag
connect with their customers. Partners like GVB in Amsterdam are using Tag
as to let their public transportation customers know about arrival and
departure times for trams and buses. Over at Conde Nast, you’ll find Tag
woven throughout the editorial features in Golf Digest as a way to share more
content and videos with readers. In Italy, businesses are starting to
integrate Tags right into their yellow page ads as a way to help consumers
learn more about their products and services. And major brands like Ford
and Dodge are starting to integrate Tags into their print ads, brochures, and
other content. Each day, we see more and more interest in Tag and we’re
seeing adoption across more industries and across the globe.

 

Tags are
also perfect for small businesses; because they’re so easy to set up, you can
use them to do everything from sharing content like menus or reviews, to
dialing your business phone automatically, to sharing promotions and offers
with your customers. They’re a snap to
set up and manage. The real question you
may ask is: why Tag?

Our partners
are choosing Tag because they recognize it is the next leap forward in barcode
scanning technology. Compared to earlier technologies, like QR codes, Tag
offers our partners significant benefits. For starters, the Tag itself is
dynamic. What that means is that your
Tag can point to any mobile web page you create. Other barcode technologies force you into
pointing to a specific website that you cannot change. For example, let’s say you place a Tag on the
front door of your restaurant and you want it to point to your business web
page. You can do that. Now next month rolls around and you decide to
create a new web page with a special coupon for your customers. With Tag, you keep the same barcode but you
can easily change the experience so that it points to your new coupon page.

This
underscores a significant advantage for businesses- with Tag, you determine the
content and consumer experience your customer will have when they interact
with your Tag. You decide what content- text, videos, maps, discounts,
promotions or offers- you’d like your customers to see and you’re free to
change what that experience is whenever you’d like.

Helping
decide what content makes the most sense to show is also something that Tag can
help businesses understand. Unlike other technologies, Tag offers
detailed impression activity so businesses can determine where, when, and which
offers consumers are responding to- all of which will help businesses refine
their mobile consumer experience. Microsoft Tag makes it simple,
convenient and fun for your customer to connect with your brand with their
mobile device and provides the analytics to measure that interaction. You can
better inform your marketing spend with Tag: influence the purchase decision,
enhance loyalty, and monitor the success of your campaigns.

Businesses
tell us they want to use their Tag in all kinds of places- in print ads, on
business cards, on menus, even on coasters. Because Tags can be one
quarter the size of other two dimensional barcodes, it’s versatile enough to go
wherever partners want to use it. And because we built the Tag camera
phone reader for the real world, partners have the confidence of knowing that
when a consumer scans a Tag, it will work. Our reader is also free (you
can get it, as you know, at https://gettag.mobi).

Finally, Tag
offers businesses the opportunity to customize their Tags, something you can’t
do with other technologies. In many cases, businesses have spent a great
deal of time and resources developing a branded image that they want to
use. With Tag, businesses can use their color logo, for example, as the
Tag background- they’re not limited to black and white barcodes that lack
individuality.

If you’re a
business looking for an easy way to create a compelling mobile experience for
your customers, we encourage you to give Tag a try- we’re confident you’ll like
what you see. And since we’re always
working to make Tag better, please feel free to share with us any ideas or
suggestions you have!

 

By Jeff Somers