Because You Did Not Take It from Us: QR Code Best Practices

BeQRious has been very serious in educating the public about QR codes. We have been writing about tips on how to create a successful marketing campaign using QR codes, as well as best practices and ideas on how to make your QR codes more interesting. Admittedly, not every marketer has been reading our blogs, although they should.

It is interesting to see that mainstream media and popular blogs have been coming up with their own advices on how to effective use QR codes in marketing. Here are just two.

Drew McLellan at Business2Community.com notes that there are really a lot of businesses that are using QR codes, but most of these codes lead to what he calls a “dead end.” McLellan laments that not only serves up uninteresting content such as a print ad, a video or worst a non-mobile optimized site and then goes nowhere.

McLellan reminds marketers that marketing is a series of next steps where you should give your customers options on what they should do next. From the content you serve up, you should take them to something that they could use, such as:

• Signing up for your newsletter.
• Getting the chance to win something good.
• Getting their opinions.
• Requesting a sample or trial.
• Sharing your content to their Facebook or Twitter.accounts.
• Downloading a coupon.
• Making it easy to contact your office or store.
• Buying something.

This would make QR codes more appetizing for consumers. Or else, it would lead to QR code fatigue.

QR code fatigue, writes Mark Milian at BusinessWeek.com, is what consumers go through when they scan a QR code. They make the effort to whip out their smartphones, fire up the scanner app, and get disappointed by the content they get from it.

The article quotes Kelli Robertson, a director at AKQA, a digital agency, opining that only a few people would want to visit your corporate website. Milian writes that advertisers have not been very creative with their QR code campaigns. Because of this, QR codes have not been very effective as advertising tools. Milian, however, notes that QR codes might succeed in uses outside of marketing. QR code tickets, for one, is seen to flourish especially with the introduction of Apple’s Passbook.