QR Codes Are The Perfect Mesh Of Online & Traditional Marketing
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Thu, Aug 18, 2011
QR codes are rapidly gaining popularity in both the social commerce and marketing fields, but we especially love they way they blend perfectly with traditional marketing and advertising, and drive users to online social mediums.
What Are QR Codes Anyway?
Not sure what QR codes actually are? Well, they are very similar to traditional barcodes used by retailers to scan and track products – there is probably a barcode on everything you buy at the supermarket. There are a couple of differences though, for example, the amount of data they can hold. Since barcodes are linear codes, they can hold only up to 20 digits, but QR codes, due to their design, can hold thousands of characters of information. So how to they work? Well, when you scan a QR code with your smartphone or a QR code scanner, you can use the device to pull information from it, which can link to web content, activate different phone functions like messaging, and connect to different websites. The ability to simply connect a user to content in this way opens a very useful window for businesses to market through.
It’s easy to create a QR code yourself using a QR code generator like Kaywa (http://qrcode.kaywa.com/).
What Can We Use QR Codes For?
So how can QR codes be applied in effective campaigns? Well, take New York City’s campaign for Internet Week in 2010. The city outfitted Times Square with giant QR codes, which citizens could scan with their smartphones and pull up instant information about New York agencies featured in Internet week. These included the 311, NYC Transportation Department, and the City of New York Parks & Recreation. Some of the QR codes retrieved more information, but some gave access to free ringtones and free event tickets.
The use of QR codes to link in to online campaigns by displaying them in print advertising and on billboards is a great merging of the online and traditional marketing worlds- a concept that some firms can’t quite grasp, but that we feel is a highly effective way to make campaigns work off of each other. Even for small firms who do not participate in print advertising, using QR codes on leaflets for competitions – or even on business cards to get more information is an innovative way to make use of the technology.
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