Recently, QR (Quick Response) Codes have been gaining ground in the business digital marketing landscape. They are now commonly being used in websites, posters, TV Ads, and magazines. Successful companies are incorporating the use of QR code labels in their packaging to directly engage with consumers while at the same time promote their brands. What exactly are QR codes and why is there such an interest in them?
What Are QR Codes?
QR codes are barcode images that resemble a square like maze which are encoded. QR codes are designed in 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional UPC codes. A 1-dimensional barcode is usually incorporated in product packaging and is used to price products and track stock. A 2-dimensional barcode can easily be scanned from any direction and most often used to store data. The 2D barcode is mostly used to create promotional labels for marketing purposes since it can store more than 7,000 numbers. There is an additional storage capacity which enables the storage of a variety of data other than numbers.
QR codes are found in places such as buildings and billboards. They are most commonly found in product labels especially for retail products. QR codes can be read using smartphones and tablets and often feature URLs that direct users to companies’ websites where consumers can learn more about a product. This is what is known as mobile marketing.
Reasons Why You Should Use QR codes In Your Digital Marketing Strategy
- Can be easily shared and distributed
- Can be combined or scaled with different label designs to create interesting 2D images
- Can easily be tracked to gather accurate statistics from a marketing campaign
- Can be used to track the performance of products in different markets
How You Can use QR Codes To Market Your Brand
Before using QR codes in your marketing campaign, you need to think clearly what the purpose of your code will be. You need to ask yourself some of these questions before coming up with a QR code label design.
- Are you looking to use loyalty rewards and coupons to create mobile purchasing behaviour?
- Is your purpose to provide contact information, a catalogue of products, instructions video or product suggestions?
- Do have a goal of engaging your customers through social media, collect email addresses or phone numbers?
- Do you just intend to provide more information about your brand and products?
To make your QR code engagement more effective and useful, you need to keep the message as simple as possible. The most important metric of a QR campaign should be to engage your customers as long as you can rather than focus on the number of scans you get on a daily basis. A marketing campaign proves to be successful when customers spend two to three minutes on a link. The true power of QR codes lies in transforming the user experience to a “deep dive” from a “quick glance”. This shows that you have created something captivating that consumers are willing to spend some time on your site.
Bottom Line
To stay ahead of competition, you need to adapt to the latest trends in digital marketing to promote your brand and products. You need to work with a reputable label printing company which uses the latest digital printing technology to create high quality QR code labels for your products.
