The Price Group

the use of QR codes

resulted in the most-successful sweepstakes campaign it's run. More than 20% of the 25,000 entries it received during a four-week period came directly from QR code scans.

Best Buy has also created a "Live Mobile Scan Map" at bbyscan.com/map which tracks the items scanned in stores across the country.

Mr. Knisely said the company has even been experimenting with QR codes as a polling tool. A sign hanging in Best Buy headquarters asks employees to scan a code corresponding with how they're feeling. One code is positioned inside an image of a thumbs up, the other a thumbs down. When the code is scanned, employees see how many others are in a good or bad mood. Mr. Knisely says that sort of tool could be used to ask customers about their experience in the store.

About half of the marketers surveyed expect their social/digital marketing expenditures will increase slightly while 23% see their expenditures greatly increasing.

Almost 40% of those surveyed said they are using a few ad-hoc tools and 30% said they are reporting regularly to management. In addition, almost 30% claim they have very little understanding of the social media conversations happening around their brand or those of their clients.

A little over half of those surveyed (57%) feel their brand (or client’s brand) is somewhat at risk and are taking action to fix the challenge. 13% said they know they need to better engage but haven’t taken action and 7% admitted there were major concerns, but didn’t know where to start to fix the issues. Lastly, about a quarter of the marketers claimed their brand (or those of their clients) was not at risk and they were fully engaged with their customers.

need to create experiences

The 84 official Facebook pages boasted an average of 1.8 million fans. In a single month, fans contributed on average 857 fan posts to each corporate wall, and each corporate wall post averaged 1,456 Likes and 157 comments.