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QR Codes – How To Use Them To Promote Your Business

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QR codes are the Rubik’s cube of marketing. Many people understand they can be a great solution to promote their business, yet they only get part way to the solution by simply using a QR code to direct clients to their web site.

It just requires a little more creativity and strategy to get to the point of solving the riddle and coming up with a viable use for these crazy little codes.

The easy out is directing people directly to your site, but why not think out of the box, or in this case out of the cube?

You need to put yourself in a client’s shoes and ask what they want from you and your business. One of my favourite examples is restaurants.

What does your client want? Food!!!!! Will a link to your website solve this? What if instead you had your savvy web site designer create a custom mobile web page for your smart phone visitors that took them directly to an embedded video showing off your most popular dishes and a link to your menus? Would this ramp up client interest better than a static web page full of content?

What can you do for your industry that is out of the box? If you would like to get some ideas to help promote your business, use the contact form below to see what we can come up with for you!

 

QR Codes – Part 2 on the News

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Global TV wrapped up their story about QR codes on the news tonight, here’s the video.

If you are interested in creating some of your own QR codes, here is a link to a site where you can create your own QR codes.

How to Create your own QR Code

If you would like ideas about how you could incorporate QR codes into your business contact us at 403-870-4663 and we can arrange a consultation.

How Can My Business Use QR Codes to Stand Out?

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Using QR Codes In Your Business

I had previously written an article walking you through what QR codes are and what they do, but I seemed to leave an important part out. The part that helps your business to stand out from the crowd!

QR codes seem to have a million and one applications, so I took some time to brainstorm and came up with a few different ideas for several different types and styles of businesses. Before I launch off into these ideas, if you are looking for specific ideas for your business or industry, contact me and we can have a quick consulting meeting to see how we can help you use QR codes to grow your business.

QR Code Uses (or Ways to Engage Your Clients with QR Codes!)

Over the last decade, I have been quite involved in the world of Real Estate and I can easily see a multitude of ideas and marketing concepts for various industries in this sector. Let’s start with Realtors!

Have you ever driven by a Realtor’s lawn sign and had a few questions about a potential property? What if the lawn sign had a QR code located on the corner that you could scan from your smart phone, potentially from the comfort of your vehicle in front of he property?

This QR code could link directly to the feature sheet and quickly answer questions about size, bedrooms and various other easy questions. Or how about a video walk through? Perhaps even a link to book a showing?

This is just the tip of the iceberg, they could be used on feature sheets within the property, now the potential buyers have the information in a format far less likely to get lost or misplaced than a piece of paper. Or in newspaper ads or mail outs to help reduce costs and to take clients to the most current featured properties.

Still in the world of property, what about renovation companies? Rather than being limited to your costly full page colour advertisement in a magazine, a QR code could take interested parties directly to before and after pictures, client testimonials, post renovation examples and even videos explaining the process and why you are perfect for the client?

If you’ve ever assembled a BBQ or completed any home repairs, could you have used a video to walk you through the process by your side? Manuals these days have become so complex and so confusing, you often wonder what language the instructions started in. What if they also included a QR code to a video showing you each of the steps to properly assembling your project or completing your repair? Are you listening IKEA?

The World of Retail and Marketing With QR Codes

Have you shown up at a retail outlet and forgot the coupon you had intended to use at home? Now you have to grab the flyer at the store (if they have any left), find it, rip it out and then toss the rest of the paper. What if they also had a QR code that linked you to the electronic version of the coupon? Or what if the QR code was posted beside the product with the coupon?

Another option, what if the item you were looking for was sold out, but it was in stock at a different location you had never visited before? If the store had QR codes taking you to maps of their locations you could use the handy GPS on most smart phones to drive directly there.

Product demonstrations, instead of having a large booth taking up valuable store floor space, why not use QR codes taking interested consumers to demonstration videos? Or provide links to guides the consumers can sign up with their email address for that provides additional uses for the product. Now the company also has a way to follow up with the client and potentially market to them later.

Vehicle and RV dealerships and QR Codes

Auto manufacturers spend millions on commercials already, why not leverage these ads and include QR codes directly linking to them either in print advertising or right on the stickers on the vehicle on the lot? For limited quantity offers, why not include a link via QR codes to a countdown of vehicles available? Or to additional features that didn’t make the final ad cut?

RV dealerships, how often do clients have questions about whether their current vehicle can safely haul the latest greatest 31’ toy hauler? Why not include a QR code breaking down the specifications required to safely haul the trailer, or have the QR code point to links to partner service companies that can provide upgrades like electronic trailer brakes, or hitches? Why not cross promote with a truck dealership to provide a specific vehicle they have on sale all explained through a QR code link to a video or web page explaining how these two items match up so well?

QR Codes For Small Businesses, Sales People and Organizations

Growing your business requires people knowing about you; use a QR code to direct friends, clients and associates to your Facebook Fanpage, to your website, to helpful information about your products and services. Create engaging content that people will want to share and perhaps you even go viral!

You can put the codes on your marketing material, your business cards or even your storefront window. Don’t wait, start thinking now about what you want clients to see, QR codes are in their early stages here, but it won’t last long, so be a front runner as it is incredibly easy and cost effective to get started.

Here are ten more quick ideas for QR codes:

  1. Restaurant = QR code to an online Take Out menu
  2. Manufacturer’s = QR code linking to online manuals instead of easily misplaced paper manuals
  3. Events = QR codes to add calendar events for Sales, launches, or events
  4. Directions = a QR code with a Google map showing where your business is
  5. Artists = QR codes that explain how, why or where a CD or art piece was created
  6. Twitter = a QR code that links to your Twitter profile
  7. Donations = use a QR code linking to PayPal for donations for a cause
  8. Customer Reviews = links to review websites to get people talking about your company
  9. Recipes = grocery stores can include easy to scan codes for recipes, including grocery lists
  10. Museums = audio explanations of museum pieces

I can’t stop!

  1. Conferences = QR codes to list who is speaking where, when and about what
  2. Advertising in Elevators = Fast quick ads full of content with only teaser headlines
  3. Bar Bathrooms = see above!

Remember these codes can go anywhere and be on anything that has a reasonably flat surface, so you can reproduce these codes on signage, windows, T-shirts, business cards, tattoos (temporary ones recommended!), bags, ball caps, vehicles, online avatars, coasters, napkins, the list just goes on and on, so be creative! What ideas have you come up with, leave us a comment to share your innovative and creative thoughts!

To find out how you can utilize QR codes to help grow your business contact me via the comment form below, or call me at 403-870-4663. Let us help you stand out from the crowd!

QR Codes- Everything You Need to Know About QR Codes

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QR Codes- Why We Need Them

Have you ever seen an ad somewhere for a product or a service you absolutely needed. Then hours later, when you finally have some time at your computer to look it up, you discover your mind has generated this huge vacuum where absolutely no hint of what you positively had to have can ever reappear?

It happens to the best of us and it appears to becoming much more common as we get lambasted with more and more non-stop advertising. This continual barrage of ads, information, and general branding messages eventually causes us to try and forget more than we remember. Or at the very least numbs us to the majority of it. I would like to think this is what led to the creation of QR codes. It was all just to help the overwhelmed out there who are just like me.

So what exactly are QR codes and more importantly how can they help people remember those ads? Let me start by explaining what QR code stands for. It is an acronym for Quick Response code and is an extension of the bar codes found most often in retail establishments. This extension involves turning the straight bar code into a 2D code and I have an example below.

QR Codes – It Takes More Than Just The Code

Now the QR code is only part of the puzzle, or in this case the solution. The second part is a device that can read these 2D bar codes. We aren’t talking about anything as clumsy as one of those large hand scanners you find at Wal-Mart either. We are talking about that iPhone in your pocket, or that Blackberry you carry everywhere with you. The device more and more people cannot live without and carry with them everywhere.

By installing one of the many free QR code readers onto your smart phone, you are ready to scan away. This brings us to the next question which is, So What? What is the point of being able to read these codes?

This is where the people who get this, can really see the value, So pay close attention. Consider you are in the market for a new vehicle and just happen to be out for coffee and reading the newspaper. Suddenly you notice an ad for the vehicle you’ve been looking for. As you look closely, you notice the QR code in the corner of the ad. You quickly grab your smart phone, fire up the QR reader and take a picture of the QR code.

Within a few seconds, your browser on your phone opens and takes you directly to a link on the dealer’s website where you simply enter your name, phone number and you can book a test drive later that day. Right from where you are sitting. No need to call in, no need to write all the details down to as you can simply bookmark the page on your phone. All with minimal fuss and no vacuum affect where you forgot about it by the time you arrived home.

This is just one example. Other ideas may be a restaurant putting their QR code on their window. Instead of going inside to determine what the special is, you can scan it and have access to the entire menu, or even just determine today’s specials. Or maybe they put the QR code on their takeout menu. Now you can scan the takeout menu and the link there takes you to their online menu. Suddenly you can flip to your bookmark while you are riding home on the train and order your food ahead so it is waiting for you on your way home.

QR Codes Make It Simpler

Sure, you could easily have just typed the longer web address in your phone for either of these examples, but this is so much simpler. It is just so much cleaner and easier. But it doesn’t end there. You see QR codes don’t have to just direct people to a web page.

You can put QR codes on billboards, so someone can scan it from the street. You can put them on business cards, vehicle signage, almost anywhere. Even more interesting is understanding that it doesn’t just end with web addresses.

You can use the QR code to load a GoogleMap to help someone locate your business. You can use it to grab an email address or a phone number. You can use it on your business card to send your VCard information. Or even to direct someone to a YouTube video. The possibilities are endless!

QR Codes Uses

This is what is so exciting, especially to small business owners who can react to this and incorporate the possibilities into their business. Think about this from your business’s perspective. How could you use this to help your company do any of the following?

  • Solve client problems
  • Promote special deals
  • Streamline providing clients with information

How is this for some quick answers? If you provide a product that has an FAQ to answer common questions, you could put a sticker with the QR code directing clients to the FAQ. If you business has monthly promotions you could include a QR code directing people to that month’s or weeks special. If you have just released a new product and want your clients to see it, create a YouTube video walking the product through its paces, then create a QR code you distribute out in your advertising that directs clients to the video.

I’m barely touching the surface here. Currently transit systems in Asia and Norway use QR codes to help people with bus routes. Some Realtors in the US are including QR codes on their listings signage to direct people to the properties info sheet online. People are using QR codes to direct clients or friends to their Facebook FanPages.  The more you think about the potential, the more ideas you can come up with to market with QR codes.

I’ve included a couple QR codes in this article for examples, so if you have a smart phone, go load a QR code reader up and scan them in. Experience for yourself what can be done and how easy it can be.

The next challenge for you after you have thought about this is to leave me a comment and tell me a potential use for QR codes you can see happening. Or tell me how you are already using QR codes in your business and what your impression of the technology is so far. Our creativity is the only thing holding us back, so be creative!