Drive Consumers to Your Social Media With QR Codes

If you've put most of your marketing efforts in digital media but ignored direct mail, you're skipping a method of gaining exposure for your business that's still effective. Postcards have a 2.47 percent household response rate, compared to emails' .12 percent, the Direct Marketing Association reports. You don't need to keep your direct mailing efforts separate from your digital marketing efforts, either—QR codes provide the means to merge your online and offline marketing, particularly if you tie the QR code in with your social media accounts. Postcards provide a quick, succinct marketing message for customers, and they don't cost as much as a complete direct mailing package.

Postcard Advantages

One of the biggest advantages of a postcard is that it doesn't have to be opened. Not only does the recipient see your marketing message but so will everybody whose hands touch the postcard. They enable you to build brand recognition in the household.

Another advantage of postcards is that they are relatively inexpensive to produce compared to other direct mail marketing pieces. When you look at the cost of a brochure, catalog or informational mailer, the postcard represents a low cost-upfront way to dip your toes into the direct marketing world.

Using a Social Media Tie-In

The QR code (short for quick response code) is that funny-looking square barcode on the backs of product packages or on marketing materials. It has a Web address and other information encoded in it, so when users scan it with their smartphones, they can pull up your business' pertinent information (if, of course, they've installed a QR code-scanner app).

So instead of including a long URL and basic profile names on your postcard, business owners can include everything in the QR code. This makes it easy for users to access your information and drives them to your website and social media accounts. QR codes are popular in many forms of marketing today, so most consumers know what to do with them. You can send them to your main social media profiles, a specific section of a social media profile for tracking or to targeted offers and sales.

Get Started

While applications exist to design postcards with QR codes, go through a professional printing company. This reduces the hands-on time you invest on design and ensures they're done right. You also don't have to worry about finding out whether your business printers are capable of printing on the heavy paper stock that a postcard requires.

According to Printing for Less, postcard sizes range from 4.25 by 5.5 inches to 6 by 11 inches, so talk with the printing company about the best size for your message. Even the biggest postcard gives you fairly limited space for your marketing message, so be succinct about a specific event, sale or product you want to promote.

via

QR codes – don’t believe the hype

Growing up it was Pokemon cards, in my early teens it was the constant use of MySpace and now, the latest trend to be hyped into oblivion, is QR codes.

QR codes or quick response codes are the square barcodes that can be read by QR code scanners and smart phone cameras. They have been plastered on everything from billboards and magazines to business cards and t-shirts.

On the tube you can often see confused tech nerds 

hovering their smartphones over them for ages while elder businessman barge past scratching their heads. These ugly black and white codes are a thing of the past and here are five reasons why.

No one understands them

The majority of consumers simply don't know what a QR code is; they aren't even sure what app they need to be able to read one. Even if you do search for 'QR code scanner' in the app store, you're greeted by a never-ending list of options, there's no clear app to use and all this just confuses people more.

They are too much effort

QR codes require engagement from a potential customer. If they see a QR code on a product or an advert, they have to download and install an app, take a picture of the code then scroll through the website to find out more. In today's world people want speed and clever technologies to save them the most valuable commodity, time. Unfortunately, QR codes leave you standing still waiting for a screen to load for too long.

No one wants to read loads of information on

a tiny screen

QR codes are meant to help you find more information about a product or service. However, if you want to delve deeper into something before purchasing it - if you really want to know the details - then you're more likely to research at home, on you computer. Not when you're out an about and having to thumb around on your smartphone.

QR codes rely on a good Wi-Fi or 3G connection

For a QR code to take you from the maze of black and white squares to a website promoting a product, it needs a good internet connection. This is a problem because there are times when the mobile internet is really slow, doesn't work or makes a website look bad if it isn't mobile friendly. There's also the problem of QR codes being displayed in places where there's no internet - I refer back to the confused people wondering why their QR code scanner isn't working on the tube.

One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch

In the marketing rush to have a QR code promoting products there were a lot of poor codes slapped around. Some of them didn't scan properly and of the ones that did, some took the customer through to a bad website or linked to something they weren't interested in. These bad experiences have put people off and left the QR code redundant.

via