QR Codes are brilliant IF used properly!
The QR Code is the bridge between the real world and the digital world.
QR Codes are a fantastic way to give the user an easy transit to a page of your choice, influencing them to do what you want them to do while they are on that landing page. Whether you use them to promote a new product/service, send them to your website, or to a page on your website that would benefit them, they need to be used properly.
However, people are using these Codes as an add-on to their marketing efforts without thinking about the user. A few examples below…
Ways to not use a QR Code:
On the end of an email - If you open an email on your phone you cannot scan the code as your camera is on the back of the phone.
On a subway - You have no signal.
On a plane magazine - The user has no signal and cannot connect to the internet. Very few if any will take the plane magazine with them when leaving their flight.
On a billboard on the side of the road - You are driving past, unless you stop to scan it, there is no point in having it there.
By using a QR Code you are giving someone in the real world an opportunity to relate directly with the digital world. In order for them to physically scan the code they need to get their phone out, get close enough to the Code to scan it. It therefore means the user needs to publically associate with it. In order for them to want to do this, you NEED to give them a very good reason to do so. You need to give them something for the time/trouble of them actually scanning the QR Code in the first place.
Before you use a QR Code in your next marketing efforts, STOP and think; will the user be able to scan the code, does it offer them something that will equate to the time and effort it takes them to scan the code? Because the user will be thinking,
What’s in it for me?
Written by Kristie Blackford-Mills