Over the past few years, QR Codes have become an essential marketing tool, and for good reason: they’re versatile, cost-effective, and interactive. Best of all, because they can link to any digital information, QR Codes stay innovative.
Marketers use QR Codes to upgrade their digital marketing strategies, increase consumer engagement, and learn more about their customers. Whether you want to share product information, collect sign-ups, or create augmented reality experiences, QR Codes can help you get it done.
Here, you’ll learn how QR Codes can improve your marketing strategy, how to create your own QR Code campaigns, and how to use QR Codes across different marketing materials and channels.
Why are QR Codes useful for marketing campaigns?
QR Codes have been steadily increasing in popularity across the globe. In the U.S. alone, nearly 95 million smartphone users scan a QR Code each year, and that number is predicted to rise to almost 100 million by 2025.
But when you get right down to it, QR Codes are just pixelated squares. They look like barcodes with a little extra flair. How have they become such an important part of the customer experience?
QR Codes were initially developed to speed up logistics—the “QR” stands for “quick response.” But marketers soon realized how versatile these 2D barcodes are and started leveraging them in marketing campaigns.
Here’s what makes QR Codes one of the most clever and powerful inventions in the marketing and business world today.
- Versatility: You can put QR Codes on pretty much anything, from billboards to print brochures, product packaging, and even products themselves.
- Ease of use: Unlike barcodes, you don’t need a special scanner to access QR Codes—all you need is a camera-equipped smartphone or tablet.
- Bridging physical and digital: QR Codes are a way to link print materials to the mobile user experience, synchronizing your marketing efforts.
- Tracking capabilities: With Dynamic QR Codes, you can track how users interact with marketing content—and even update your content in real time.
- Infinite content: You can use different types of QR Codes to share everything from videos and images to PDFs, app downloads, social media profiles, digital business cards, and more.
- Customization: You can create custom QR Codes with unique designs to match your branding or product packaging.
- Tolerance: QR Codes have a high error tolerance, which means they’ll still work even if there’s minor damage or loss of visibility on the code. They’ll even work if you’re scanning them from a distance.
- Contactless interactions: QR Codes are great for contactless mobile payments and other touchless interactions between brands and their customers.
How to use QR Codes to improve your marketing strategy
The list of QR Code benefits is extensive, but just like any other marketing tool, they’re only valuable if you know how to implement them. Let’s take a look at all the different ways QR Codes can support your marketing campaigns.
Track ROI
With QR Codes, you can calculate ROI for all types of marketing campaigns—whether you work in the digital world or prefer offline marketing and print.
If your marketing campaign uses a Dynamic QR Code, then you can use your QR Code Generator PRO account to see how users interact with it.
The QR Code tracking metrics are broken down into categories like time of scan, operating device used, scans by top cities and countries, and unique vs. total scans.
With these real-time analytics, you can continuously iterate your campaigns for better results and a higher ROI.
Multi-channel marketing
You can use QR Codes for marketing campaigns across different media platforms—print, social media, landing pages, e-commerce web pages, and even in-store marketing initiatives.
In fact, you can reach your audience on desktop, mobile, tablet, and print—all with the same QR Code. You can even track different sources in your QR Code analytics to figure out which media gets the most customer engagement.
To make things easier on yourself and streamline your campaigns, you can use QR Codes for marketing automation.
A/B testing
With QR Code Generator PRO, you can easily create all the QR Codes you need, making it easy to run A/B tests and refine your marketing assets. With A/B testing, you release two versions of the same marketing asset with just one or two aspects changed.
You might change up the:
- Call to action (CTA)
- Graphic design elements
- QR Code type
- QR Code design
- QR Code placement
You’ll need to create a different QR Code for each asset and compare the results. In your QR Code Generator PRO account, you can see all the QR Codes you’ve created and click on “Details” to see the tracking data for each code.
Optimize and update
After you implement a few A/B tests, you’ll have enough data to optimize and refine your marketing campaigns. You might continue using the QR Code design that worked the best but update its content or call to action.
As long as you’ve used a Dynamic QR Code, you can keep optimizing it without having to create new QR Codes. This functionality saves marketers a lot of time and reduces the risk of confusing consumers.
