QR codes, benefitting business and the consumer

QR codes, to most people, seem to be a recent innovation. Until recently, we never really saw them around. These days, QR codes are absolutely everywhere. From posters and billboards to the sides of vehicles, you’ll find QR codes on pretty much anything that is promoting a product or a service, and they allow you for you to gain quick and easy access to a particular part of the Internet, website or photo in an instant.

QR Code FACT!

QR codes are much older than you think, however. They were actually invented during the mid 1990s, and were used to track car parts during the process of manufacturing. As smart phones became popular, however, QR code scanning entered a broader market – advertising and marketing. Smart phone owners can now scan the QR codes and receive information about products and services in an instant.

The possibilities are pretty much endless when it comes to QR codes, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. It could cause an issue – where would it end? When will we stop using these QR codes and are people not going to get sick of them eventually? We’ll have to wait and see.

Whilst at present, QR codes are beneficial to a wide range of consumers – there’s no reason to say why the codes aren’t useful for businesses as well. Given that QR codes are able to provide a wide range of data and information on the performance and efficiency of the adverts too, then it could mean that a company would benefit from the codes as well.

Print ads obviously don’t have a way to measure their own performance. The only print ads that can do this are those that have a unique phone number, URL, email address or other form of contact. So a company is never really able to measure the success of their advertisement. QR codes fix this problem, use it in a clever way and you have cracked it.

Obviously, by ‘counting’ the amount of times that a website is visited (the website linked to the QR code), we can measure how successful a print advertisement was. Hence, not only is a QR code a great way to quickly get information, but it also tells the company behind the advertisement how well their advertisement has gone down and whether people are interested in the product. There are many exciting ways we could use QR codes, so maybe we’re using them in the wrong way right now!

5 QR Code Tips:

  • Introduce QR Everywhere – Make sure QR Codes are used consistently and in as many places as you can.  Once your users get used to it, they’ll love the ease of being able to grab information with little more than a push of the button!
  • Give Value – give away special discounts, free tickets, exclusive access which can compel users to interact and scan your QR Code.
  • Simple is the key – make sure you use black and white versions, don’t try and do anything fancy as you could limit success rates with your QR Code
  • Build affinity with your customer – if you can, build a landing page for mobile users or the whole site! A customer who has just scanned your QR Code is probably a mobile, on-the-move person and therefore will expect where ever you take them to, to be equally mobile friendly.
  • Analyse – build brand loyalty, customer engagement and educate your audience. Arm yourself with this information and it will be easy to formulate a analytical report

Written bybrave

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