How QR Codes Could Enhance Your Current Marketing Efforts

We have said it before and we don’t think that we could say it enough.  QR codes are here to help you market yourself, your company, your products and services more efficiently.

For those who are still unconvinced, take a look at how QR codes enhance your marketing efforts.

1. Give Added Convenience.

QR codes make it very convenient for people to remember you and visit your website.  For example instead of typing in your URL into their smart phone’s mobile browser, all they have to do is to scan your code and voila! they are directed to your own Web page.   This is doubly important if you use an URL that is nonsensical such as shortened URLs or YouTube videos, where a string of characters both lowercase and uppercase are used.

QR codes are also very appropriate when you want to corner the out of home market.  People usually see your flyers, posters and whatnots when they are outside the house.  Usually, they see your ads when they are on a hurry.  QR codes allow them to visit your intended sites or get the information you have for them even when they’re waiting for a bus, or standing inside a train.  They do not need to remember a long URL, which they would probably forget once they get home.

2. Be the Talk of the Town.

Because QR codes are quite new, a lot of people are still looking for it.  People could go out and see your QR codes and tell their friends about it, or blog about it.  That’s additional word of mouth advertising that you just cannot get anywhere else.

If you are lucky, a local newspaper would be bound to pick it up.  Imagine a story in your local paper with the words “Your business uses QR codes for marketing”.

3. Tap into Their Imagination.

Successful marketing is very much reliant on understanding your target market’s psychology.  What sets your advertisements apart from those that are ignored and forgotten, depends on whether you know what your target market is thinking, and what they want.

QR codes plays well into their need to be in on a secret.  A QR code hints at a certain kind of mystery, available to them if they scan it.  This curiosity, combined with valuable content (which, in turn would help satisfy your target market), can help ensure that your ads get noticed and that your target market acts in such a way that you’d want them (go to your site, sign up for your newsletter, follow you on Facebook or buy your products).

4. Fast and Free!

QR codes are easy to implement and it costs you almost nothing to add to your existing marketing collaterals.  You could print your QR codes on stickers and add them to marketing posters, brochures, direct selling catalogs, flyers even if they have been already printed.

You could easily add a QR code to any layout that you have for your marketing materials, with is square shape and small size, it is literally very easy to incorporate them to any design.

5. Know Your Market Better Or Just Measure Your Success.

As with any marketing initiative, your QR codes are now trackable and measurable.  QR code tracking services are now available that allows you to get more metrics such as what time of day your QR codes are scanned, who scanned them or where.

This will allow you to find out more about your target customers.  And they might be an altogether different demographic than what you have in mind.  One client of ours sold household products, but they were surprised to find that their codes where being scanned equally by men and women, usually around 5pm to 6pm.  So instead of focusing solely on women, their next ads were geared towards male office workers.

QR codes could easily help you learn more about the people who are interested in your products.  But that’s not the only way you could utilize QR codes to streamline your marketing for that valuable ROI.

Another client of ours employed different QR codes for different advertising outlets.  They used one QR code for a newspaper advertisement, another for flyers, another for brochures and another for their in-store campaigns.  They found out that the scans they received from each outlet differed, and they were able to find out where their QR codes were scanned more often, thus enabling them to focus on that marketing outlet more the next time they rolled out their ads.