Whilst out on my travels over Christmas this QR code caught my attention. It was in a prime position on the building and immediately my eyes were drawn to it so I thought what a great bit of QR Marketing.
I scanned the code, the good news is that it worked and took me to the right website; however to a 404 page, with no contact details, personalised message or special offer. It felt like a pointless exercise and a wasted marketing opportunity.
What is a QR Code?
Now you may see these little bar codes out and about but have no idea what they are for. QR stands for Quick Response and QR codes are becoming more popular for marketing and advertising purposes. They are easy to use, you need to have a QR Reader application on your smart phone to be able to use them and there are several Apps that are free to download.
Scan away
You grab your smart phone, scan the code if you are interested and it stores the relevant URL web link so you can click immediately or save it to look at later. They are getting more sophisticated and can be a good marketing tool for small businesses too.
Create your own
My mission today was to see how easy it is to create my own QR code and I used KimTag it was free to set up and you can download the code and share the QR links pretty easily. I have embedded the code within the Scarletta contact page for now and after a bit of faffing around it does work. Visitors can scan and store the Scarletta contact page.
However I feel there needs to be a bit more of an incentive to use them other than book marking a website and as a consumer I want to know where I am likely to end up by scanning.
Some are better than others
Some QR codes work better than others and it is a marketing area that is seeing growth however I think they do need a useful purpose for the consumer and business to be a success. The worst example I have seen is an ad on the London Underground, there is no signal down there therefore doesn’t work!
If you are thinking of creating your own QR codes here are some ideas of what to use them for:
- Special offers and incentives
- Links to blog posts
- Business cards
- Marketing materials
- Events
- Directions and maps
- Free downloads
- Something fun
QR Codes and Social Media
A site I have come across is Likify it enables users to like something directly on Facebook via the QR Reader. I haven’t tested this yet personally but I can definitely see the appeal of this tool for social media marketing.
What do you think are QR codes a good idea? Do you use them I would love to know your views. And just for scanning info here is the Scarletta QR code I made earlier!
Scan Me
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Great post. We use QR codes all the time. I would encourage you to read some of the articles here http://www.carolinaqrcodes.com
Thanks Dawn for sharing I will check out the articles
Good intro to QR Codes! Most of the suggested uses you listed would not have occurred to me and yet I can definitely see the benefit. Thanks for the eye-opener!
Delighted you found it useful Susan we’ll all be experimenting more this year I am sure.