The huge opportunity that Apple’s NFC announcement presents

Apple has announced support for NFC tags on their newest phone and watch models. Whilst Android has supported the technology since 2010, Apple is now joining the party and allowing brands to connect with millions of extra smartphone users.

As the world looks towards mobile first, there are still many wide-ranging applications for NFC at different stages of the customer journey. NFC is effective at engaging with lingering audiences in specific environments. We’ve been running this kind of campaign for brands for over four years. Here are a few ways that brands can utilize them to engage with their mobile customers.

Interactive content

Brands can use NFC as a part of their existing physical advertising strategy by adding interactivity to real-world advertising. This adds another dimension to your advertising and allows customers to access digital content through the physical world.

NFC tags vastly improve product engagement inside a store or venue. The tags are very small and can be placed inside product labels. Tapping the tag with a device can reveal product information and ensure that your message directly reaches the customer when they in the optimal micro-moment.

For stores or venues, the possibilities are endless. Think making your food order by tapping the item on the menu. Or for stores that have large items, it’s possible to tap an assembled item in a showroom to arrange for collection or delivery at the end of the store journey.

App downloads

Have you recently seen a physical advertisement for an app and liked the look of it? The customer journey from this moment to downloading the app to your device is lengthy and there’s a high potential for audiences to not get past in the App Store search bar. With NFC you can simply tap your device on the advert and it will automatically take you to the relevant page.

For brands with a dedicated app, this can help to drive sales and app downloads simultaneously. Improving the customer journey from advert to download should be a priority for app-driven businesses.

Drive social campaigns

Brands can utilise NFC to allow audiences to quickly engage with and add a social element to their campaigns. Whether it’s tap to check in or tap to follow/like a brand page, NFC provides an interactive social aspect to physical advertising. Nearly every active consumer is linked to a social media account and engaging with this can provide brands with long-term value from a single interactive engagement.

Beyond the immediate like or check-in, it’s important for brands to look at the lifetime value of having someone engage with their social media account. NFC makes this interaction simpler for the consumer.

Insights for brands

As with all aspects of mobile marketing – insights are key for brands that are keen to develop their mobile marketing strategy and understand their customers. NFC campaigns provide value beyond engagement by offering brands in-depth insights around the audiences that interact with their content. This provides the opportunity to retarget those who engage with their brand. Social tags can provide further insights into audiences. It’s possible to retarget users based on social brand interaction and NFC can facilitate this.

Tamoco is already well placed to help brands benefit from NFC tags. We’re monitoring what the Apple announcement will mean for NFC accessibility – whether it will be a native feaature, or require an seperate app to activate. But the general consensus is that brands will now have a much larger audience at their disposal, and can utilise the power of NFC tags to drive engagement.  Connecting the offline product and the online world with NFC technology can help brands to create more relevant relationships with their audiences.

Apple’s history of avoiding NFC seems to be a thing of the past. Tamoco is on the cutting edge of NFC technology – we’ll be working closely with brands to reach new audiences using NFC. Get in touch to discuss how to plan your mobile marketing strategy once the new devices ship later this year.