Boost Traffic, Generate Leads with QR Codes
When was the last time you scanned a QR code? It could be very recently, especially if you use your mobile device regularly for online shopping and searching the web.
Some people, even sophisticated users, see QR codes as a fairly new innovation. Many are surprised to learn that innovative Japanese automotive industry players started using the humble QR code for commercial tracking of car parts as far back as 1994.
Finally, three decades later, the QR code has evolved into a must-have in the marketing arsenal of brands across a diverse array of industries–retail, food service, hospitality, healthcare, banking, and more, appearing almost anywhere mobile phone users can see them from posters, billboards, and print and TV ads to restaurant menus and concrete walls.
As audiences become accustomed to scanning QR codes, the barrier to entry decreases, making it easier for marketers to take capitalize on the technology to capture online traffic, educate and inform, promote new products and ideas, and very importantly generate qualified leads.
In this blog, we explore how brands can incorporate these pixelated squares across marketing campaigns and media and offer use cases demonstrating how Marketing Star makes that easier and more effective than ever.
Why QR Marketing?
Drive Traffic with Effortless Scanning
QR codes drive traffic and customer acquisition by providing a quick and convenient way for users to access websites and online information. When a user scans a QR code, they’re instantly directed to a specific landing page or purchasing/payment site, expediting the customer journey and driving traffic immediately to the most critical areas of the brand’s website.
This seamless process eliminates the need for users to manually enter a URL, perform a search, or scramble for their wallets, creating a frictionless shopping and purchasing experience.
Bridge Offline to Online Acquisition Seamlessly
QR codes easily bridge the physical and online worlds when placed on offline marketing materials including product packaging, flyers, business cards, event signage,billboards, and much more. This ubiquitous placement enables brands to reach a larger audiences and drive traffic more directly to their online platforms.
QR codes also offer audiences a seamless user experience. Scanning a QR code is quick and hassle-free, which can increase the chances of users visiting the brand’s website and engaging with its content or making a purchase.
Gather Valuable Data for Personalized Engagement
QR codes can generate valuable analytics by tracking the number of scans and monitoring user behavior on a website. Collecting first-party data will become increasingly important as marketing giants like Google move away from third-party tracking cookies.
By enabling the know-your-customer (KYC) option, you can gain insights into campaign effectiveness and user engagement for more informed decision-making, optimizing marketing strategies, and tailoring interactions and offers.
As technology advances, QR codes are also poised for even greater integration into marketing process. For example, augmented reality (AR) and machine learning algorithms can enhance QR code interactions, enabling dynamic content delivery and personalized experiences.
Drive Audiences to Critical Content
To maximize the effectiveness of QR codes, it's essential to create engaging and compelling landing pages that offer value to the user—exclusive promotions, discounts, or valuable content that incentivizes users to scan the QR code. For example, at Whole Foods, Amazon Prime members can scan a QR code at checkout and get a 10% discount on purchases.
Also essential is ensuring that the landing pages linked to the QR codes are mobile-friendly. It’s highly likely that most people will access this QR code through a smaller device, so it’s important to optimize the landing pages to fit smaller screens to improve the UX.
Marketing Star Use Case: From Scans to Leads
Crossing the offline-online gap remains a major problem for businesses in many sectors, whether in terms of acquisition or attribution. While prospects do cross over into digital channels, bands often must purchase multiple tools for both sides of the divide to scale the engagement, increasing the cost burdens of data gathering.
Marketing Star’s support for QR codes opens up a viable path to addressing that issue for smaller businesses, freeing them from having to seek out yet another system for this channel.
The brand can easily generate the QR code and map out a multichannel acquisition flow where visitors scanning the code will be taken to the landing page, complete the requested action (e.g., enter a contest, apply for a credit card), which is one metric of success.
Conclusion
QR codes are a powerful tool that can drive website traffic and increase customer acquisition. While it’s taken years for them to capture brands’ attention in many industries, they have become a marketing staple.
The good news is that you can start unlocking the potential of QR codes and seeing the results in record time.