If you’re a sales professional, you know that your work goes much beyond simply selling products and services. Today, sales is more about cultivating relationships with your customers.
When you nurture customer relationships, it simply translates to more leads, better conversions, and more sales.
And to do it, you take various measures. From providing the best possible customer service to continuously improving your offerings, you try to do it all.
You’re now willing to explore one of the most engaging and emerging technologies—QR Codes. These square-shaped barcodes have been around for quite some time. And as per the statistics, their usage has increased over the years.
The ease of use and better audience engagement rates have made various industries embrace QR Codes. From consultancy and HR to marketing, they’re being used for various use cases.
And in this article, we’ll discuss seven ways QR Code can be used to make sales better.
A. How QR Codes can be useful in sales
QR Code can not only help you gain more leads but also simplify various sales functions. Here are some of them:
1. Generate leads
Lead generation is the stepping stone for generating sales. And you know how important it is to generate targeted leads who have a high likelihood of converting into customers.
To generate leads, you might run various promotional campaigns. And as a part of these campaigns, many a time, you have to add a link to a lead generation form for your audience to fill.
But here’s the problem—people have to open their devices, click the browser, type tediously the form link to access it, and finally fill it.
Now, this is a long process and it requires effort. While some people may put in the effort, others won’t bother.
But QR Codes have got you covered. You can generate a lead-generation-enabled QR Code with the desired content that the end-users will see once they submit their details. It could be text saying ‘Thank You’, a coupon code, or even a document (lead magnet). Also, you can integrate the form with a sales CRM tool such as CRM Software or Copper CRM to manage your leads in an organized mode.
Here’s how this works:
- You create the desired QR Code and enable lead generation
- Your audience sees the QR Code to scan it
- They see a form with the fields specified by you
- They fill the form and submit the required details to see the content encoded in the QR Code
Wondering where will these leads go? Well, they will be stored in your account with the QR Code service provider. You can access them anytime you want.
2. Offer an easier mode to book appointments
Conversion of the leads into customers is a long and calculated process. A part of this journey involves setting up meetings with your potential customers or leads.
And you can get them to save a meeting with you as per your schedule. To do it, you can make use of a Calendar QR Code and add it to your print media creatives.
As the end-users scan it, they’ll see the meeting details with the option the save event on their calendars.
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START TODAY!3. Share your contact details
You know how important it is to share your contact details with your potential customers. It allows them to easily contact you if they’d like to get in touch.
And a VCard QR Code helps you to do it. How? Just place it on your name card or promotional materials. People can then scan the QR code to see all your contact details. It could be your name, contact number, email, address, website, and even your social media handles. Along with these, they also see the option—Save as Contact.
That means they can save you as a contact with a single click. That’s it. No need for them to manually type your details to add you as a contact (which seldom happens).
4. Share documents and presentations
As a part of your job, you need to share proposals, reports, presentations, and contracts with your customers. And often, they ask for digital copies of these documents.
And a Document QR Code helps you do it easily. How? Simply create one by adding all the files that you need. And add this QR Code to the last slide of your presentation or paper-based documents.
Clients just need to scan the QR Code to view and download the document on their phones. Easy, right?
You can also use Document QR Code to share guides and manuals with potential clients or leads.
5. Offer discounts and coupons
It is common to give away coupons and discounts to increase sales. They help attract customers and prompt them to make another purchase. In fact, they even keep them coming back.
And a Coupon QR Code helps you do just that. Customers can scan it to redeem it. And they no longer have to remember the code or type the random characters to avail the discount.
6. Gather customer feedback
You know how important customer feedback is. It helps determine your areas of strengths and weaknesses.
But getting customer feedback is not easy. Whenever you print the link to the feedback form inside your business premises, on invoices, etc., they need to follow a series of steps. It includes typing the form link in the browser to access the form and finally fill it.
And since it’s an effort-intensive process, many customers don’t bother doing it.
But a customer feedback QR Code can help you gather feedbacks easily. Just create one and put it up on appropriate creatives or products. Customers can simply scan it to access the feedback form on their phones right away.
7. Guide customers to your store
Say you have sparked the interest in your customers and now they want to visit your store. But they don’t know your store’s exact location.
Here, a Google Maps QR Code can enable you to help them visit your store. How? When they scan it, they’ll be able to see the exact map’s location to your store on their phones. No need for them to ask for directions.
B. Examples of companies using QR Codes for sales
1. Levi’s Ad Campaign
In 2016, Levi’s, a clothing company, launched a QR Code campaign in China. It was in a partnership with a media agency, OMD. Its aim was to incite interest among the youth. For this, Levi’s did not create any ads. In fact, this campaign ‘We Are Original’, encouraged people to create their own ads
They did this by allowing users to be the star of Levi’s print ad. People could strike a pose to show their originality. These poses were incorporated into posters which were encoded into QR Codes. People could scan the QR Code to share them with friends on WeChat.
This campaign increased Levi’s consumer engagement by 2.9 million in the form of likes, forwards, comments, and shares.
2. McDonald’s
McDonald’s India prints QR Codes on their bills to gather feedback from their customers. Consumers can scan the QR Code to access the feedback form and fill it in quickly.
3. Myntra
Myntra, an Indian fashion e-commerce company has used QR Codes on product delivery packages to push sales. When scanned, they redirect the customers to a coupon. These coupons act as an incentive for customers to get a discount by making a repeat purchase with Myntra.
C. How to create a QR Code for sale
Now you know how a QR Code in sales is useful. The next question—how to create one?
1. Decide on your QR Code category
Depending on what you’d want your end-users to see, you’d need to select the relevant QR Code category.
For example, if you want to share your contact details, you’d need to create a VCard QR Code. Or if you want to give them discount coupons, you can create a Coupon QR Code.
Once decided on the QR Code category, you can head on to your chosen QR Code generator. In case you haven’t chosen one, here is a detailed comparison chart on the best QR Code generator available online. You can go through it to make a sound decision.
2. Create a QR Code
Using Scanova QR Code generator for a demo, here is how you can create a QR Code for sales:
a. Go to Scanova
b. Select the most relevant QR Code category
c. On the page that loads, add the content you want to encode in the QR Code and click Continue
d. Name the QR Code and click Create QR Code
e. Now, you’ll see the preview of the QR Code on the right. Under it, you’ll see the Edit design button. If you click on it, you’ll see two design options—Custom Logo Design and Custom Background Design
Custom logo design allows you to add your business’s logo and colors to the QR Code. On the other hand, custom background design helps you place your QR Code on any image
f. Once you’ve decided on design or no design, click Download. A window will open, prompting you to sign-up for a 14-day free trial. Once you’ve signed up, proceed to download the QR Code
g. Now, you’ll be asked to specify the QR Code image’s format and size
h. Specify these details and click on Export
That’s it. Your QR Code will be downloaded. It is always advisable to test scan the QR Code before putting it out for the target audience.
That is all you need to know about how a QR Code can be used for sales. You can now create your own QR Code to boost your business and offer your customers a seamless experience.