For
early Articles and Press circa 1997/98- see
Archives
Consumers Promote the Brand
with Bar Codes.
By Rob Cummings
keyword.com Bar Code Service can help promote brands (and products within
brands) by enabling consumers to share their likes with others in a very
specific way - by using bar code numbers. Bar code numbers are unique to each specific product making
them an ideal way to tell others about specific products.
It is faster, easier, and far more effective to tell a friend to 'enter 01232507 at keyword.com'
to encourage trying the Starbucks Mocha
Lite Frappuccino coffee drink than it is to try to help someone properly
spell Mocha
Lite Frappuccino and hope they will remember it. If the product web
page is product-specific and has a unique web address (the importance of
which is explained below), the web address will be lengthy and far too
difficult to write down or remember. In this case, Bar Code Service is
the ideal way to get people from a product directly to a
content-specific web page about that product. Entering the bar code
number in GOOGLE does not produce the expected web page since GOOGLE is
not geared to launch specific web pages with unique bar code numbers as
keyword.com is.
A
search in GOOGLE (or Yahoo!) for 'Starbucks Mocha Lite Frappuccino' does not produce
the results you may expect, and that's assuming that everyone can properly
spell Frappuccino (one 'p', one 'c', or two?) and realizes 'Lite' is not
spelled 'Light'.
The fact is, that even if properly spelled, many searches in major
search engines for brand name products do not produce the results
expected.
This is not the fault of the search engines but instead due to the fact
that there are many distributors and resellers of brand name products,
and often their web pages come up first in the results (well above the
brand owner's pages). For example, I am not a distributor yet I wrote
an article about a Bar Code Service application using Campbells cream of celery
soup as an example since I like Campbells cream of celery soup.
At the time of this writing, if you search GOOGLE for 'Campbells cream of celery
soup', the first result is the keyword.com application article that I
wrote, not Campbells... and the first Campbells result is well below it.
I mention this because searching and finding should be two
different processes managed by two different systems.
People search with GOOGLE for all the relevant results (plural)
for a given search term. GOOGLE does this extremely well and is getting
better all the time (which is why it has become the leader in search).
keyword.com has an opposite purpose... people use keyword.com to find
just one result (singular) which is the exact web page associated with
the one unique search term (such as a bar code number) entered at
keyword.com. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), brand name
Sites or products often do not appear on the first pages of search
results of GOOGLE at all depending on the term searched. This is not the
fault of GOOGLE since a distributor or other Site page may be more
relevant to the search term.
Even if the brand name Site can be found in a search, it still may not
be possible to send a friend or associate a link to a product-specific
web page.
Try searching for 'Moet Chandon White Star'.
Though moet.com may be the first result, you will not easily find the
page about White Star... and to do so will require numerous clicks and
choices - many more than most have the patience for. Once you do find
the web page specifically about Moet Chandon White Star you will notice
that its web address is the same as every other page on that part of the
Site.
Therefore (as much as I may love this product) I cannot even tell you
the web page specific to Moet Chandon White Star without saying you
"go to moet.com, then click the link 'VISIT MOET.COM (US)', then
click the picture of the champagne bottle under the words 'discover our
champagnes', then click 'White Star' on the list on the right of the
picture on the next page, then mouse over the image of the bottle that
slides out from the left, then mouse over the squares. Are you still
with me? Probably not. The web address of every page I just mentioned
including the White Star page is exactly the same - http://www.moet.com/moet.htm?to=us/homef.htm
- so I cannot even send you direct to a content-specific web page by
phone or email or even with a link in this article (much less with a bar
code number). The 'every web page has the same address' problem is
common to many web Sites, and surprisingly, many of premium brands.
This same 'not able to send direct to a product-specific page' problem
occurs with Dior.com and Heineken.com and Campbellsoup.com and Kraft.com
and countless others.
All great Sites, great companies, and great products, yet, no matter how
much I may wish to, I cannot send a friend to a specific web page to see
a specific product, or a specific offer, promotion, contest,
sweepstakes, or other. These Sites are beautiful and engaging, yet
they do not enable content-specific results, and do not enable consumers
to help promote specific products via word of mouth, email, or over the
phone. They also do not enable the brand owners to do the same in any
form of advertising, marketing or promotion.
While a brand marketer or promoter may feel that forcing a consumer to
click through an entire Site to find a content-specific page increases
overall brand impression and awareness, in reality, Internet users are
an impatient bunch. I believe, more often than not, that Internet users
click away from a Site before ever finding the product they seek. The
key to making Bar Code Service work is for the manufacturer or
distributor to be let people know they can enter the bar code at
keyword.com (via whatever means they wish), and be sure the web page the
bar code launches when entered at keyword.com is content-specific, has a
unique web address, and has the product information the consumer needs -
what it is, where to buy it locally, and perhaps a promotional offer or
other incentive. The problem with unique web addresses is that they
are far too long to write down and often far too complex to remember.
keyword.com Bar Code Service resolves this problem in a highly effective
way. Making keyword.com Bar Code Service work is very simple,
inexpensive, fast, and easy to set up and administrate.
A web page with a unique web address can be created in minutes. A bar
code number can be registered to that unique web page through
keyword.com in minutes. From that point on, all the brand needs to do is
promote the words 'enter the bar code number at keyword.com', and
maintain the web page this process launches. By integrating Bar Code
Service with other marketing and promotional efforts, brand marketers
and promoters enable consumers (and brand marketers themselves) to
promote brands (and products within brands) in a way never before
possible via any other method.
Return to the Articles Main Page
|
