The New Albany Chamber of Commerce joined with local Chambers in Johnstown and Pataskala to celebrate small businesses in central Ohio. These Columbus suburbs have seen a recent boom in small business growth, so they hosted a networking event for entrepreneurs. They also wanted the event to serve as an opportunity to convert community members into valued customers. The New Albany Chamber came to us as a long-standing partner and asked for a way to help businesses owners increase engagement with their potential clients. Our solution was to create individualized NFC tags for each of the businesses at the event. This allowed guests to touch their phones to a card that directed them to the company’s website or mailing list.
There were nearly 90 small businesses at the Chamber event, so our team customized an NFC card for every booth. We programmed each NFC tag to direct to the business’s desired page. For many, this was the home page of their website. For others, we linked to a social media account. With so many requests, communication between the Columbus Chamber and our team was crucial.
The Buckeye Innovation team also created a visually appealing Leaderboard where visitors could see real-time data of how many people had visited each of the 80+ links from the NFC tags. This process included both programming and design.
The day of the event, each booth had its own NFC tag, embedded in a custom card. Anyone interested in a business could simply tap their phone to the card in order to find out more information. This eliminated the need to carry around marketing materials from multiple booths. Because of this, visitors could easily locate the business site later, which made them more likely to become a customer.
The Leaderboard was also very popular, and it created a level of friendly competition between the vendors. It demonstrated the impressive rate at which users were actually utilizing the NFCs.
Overall, the NFC tags created an easy way to convert fleeting in-person interest to lasting online engagement.
