QR Codes for Branding: Your Guide to Getting Started

Branding is an important concept for every business. It’s not only about how you want your customers to perceive your business but goes way beyond that.

It helps your customers differentiate between you and your competitors by telling them what to expect from your services. How? With the help of your logo, color scheme, tagline, values, and vision.

In fact, brand building is a continuous process and needs to be taken care of always. That means all your operations and promotions should have constant branding effort.

You want to do that too! And you’re looking forward to exploring the use of QR Codes for the same. In this article, we will discuss how you can make QR Codes look branded to your business.

Further, we’ll also discuss how to use these QR Codes for branded business promotion. Let’s get started.

A. How can QR Codes be branded

Branded QR Codes are a common sight now. Many companies have started customizing them as per their own business colors and theme. And why not? QR Codes allow you to customize many of their elements. These include:

1. Eyes (location markers)

Eyes are the square-shaped large structures that you see at the three corners of the QR Code. These are also known as location markers. Why? Because they help scanners identify the QR Code.

Each eye has two parts: inner and outer eye. And you can change the color of both of them. In addition, you can also change the pattern of the QR Code’s eyes.

2. Data matrix

Data matrix refers to the tiny squares that are spread throughout the QR Code. This is where the data that you add is actually stored. Just like the eyes, you can change the color and pattern of data modules too.

3. Background color

The color of the QR Code’s background is customizable too. You can change it as per your liking or even make it transparent.

But there’s one thing that you must take care of. The color of the background should have high contrast with the QR Code. That means if the QR Code is dark, the background should be light-colored.

4. Logo in the centre

You’d have seen many QR Codes having an abstract or a text logo in the center. It could be an image (company’s logo) or even text. Wondering what this text could be?

It could be CTA such as Scan Here or Scan Now.

5. Background image

This is yet another interesting element. You can actually use an image as the background of the QR Code. Isn’t that great?

B. QR Code customization options

Now that you know all the customizable elements, you can move ahead. There are two ways in which you can customize the QR Code. These include:

1. Custom logo design

It allows you to design the following elements:

a. Color and pattern of eyes
b. Color and pattern of data modules
c. Background color
d. Add logo

A QR Code designed via custom logo design looks like this:

2. Custom background design

This alternative helps you do the following:

a. Add an image to the background
b. Change the pattern of eyes
c. Change the pattern of data modules

However, you can’t change the color of the eyes or data modules here. It’s done to maintain the scannability of the QR Code.

Now, if you want to directly learn how to create branded QR Codes, you can go to section D.

Next, we’ll see how QR Codes can be used for branding and promotions.

C. How to use QR Codes for branding and marketing

1. Coupons, vouchers, and discount offers

This is one of the most common ways for businesses to attract new customers. And not just that, it also makes sure that the existing customers keep coming back. Who doesn’t love saving a little money after all?

To offer these discounts, many businesses have now started using QR Codes. These are called Coupon QR Codes. They help customers see all the offer-related details and a button to redeem the offer.

That means a good customer experience. How? Because they no longer need to carry the coupon with them all the time. A simple scan will make the job easier for them.

2. Take the audience to desired web content

You’d have often seen QR Codes on promotional flyers, posters, banners, and brochures. These QR Codes help redirect the audience to web content. For example:

a. Business website to help people check out their product range, learn about the services, make a purchase, etc.

b. Get the audience to visit social media profiles and follow the business online

c. Show them a video, movie, or trailer online

The use cases could be endless. But the good news is that your audience doesn’t need to type any weblink to access this content. They just need to point their phone’s camera in front of the QR Code. That’s it.

This makes the user-journey simple and effective. When that happens, your engagement rate increases.

3. Get people to fill out a form

Plan on running a survey, getting registrations, or collecting customer feedback? QR Codes have got your back!

Many businesses use them to make it easy for them to get customers to fill out a form. In fact giants such as McDonald’s do that too.

4. Share multimedia files

Sharing multimedia via print media has been very tough and non-actionable. With QR Codes, you can share:

• Images, GIFs, and infographics
• Videos
• Audio files such as songs, voiceovers, and podcasts

These are not all the use cases. There are more than 20 types of QR Codes that can be used in multiple ways by businesses.

Now that you’ve seen how branding can work for QR Codes, let’s see how you can customize them:

D. How to create branded QR Codes

You will first need a QR Code generator that helps you create customized QR Codes. To help you out, here’s a detailed comparison of the top players available online.

Using Scanova for a demo, here’s how you can create branded QR Codes:

1. Go to Scanova and select the relevant QR Code category

2. Now add the content to be encoded in the QR Code and proceed ahead

3. On the next page you can enter a name for the QR Code and click on Create

4. Next, you’ll see QR Code details on the screen. On the right, you’ll also see the QR Code image with the Edit Design option

Adding design to the QR Code

5. Click on Edit Design. You’ll then see two options: Custom Logo and Custom Background

Depending on which alternative you choose, here’s how you can proceed:

Custom Logo design

You’ll see many tabs to design various elements such as logo, eyes, data pattern, and background. All these elements can be designed as discussed earlier in the article.

You’ll also see the Template tab using which you can use a readymade design. You can even save your own design as a template for later use.

Custom Background design

Here you can upload an image that you’d like to use as the background for the QR Code. In addition, you can also customize the pattern of eyes and data modules here.

6. After you’re done designing the QR Code, click Done Editing. Next, you can proceed to download the QR Code

7. Next, you’ll see a prompt to sign-up for a free trial. After you do it, you can specify the size and format of the QR Code image and then download it

That’s it. You now know everything about how QR Codes can be used for branding and promotions.

Just make sure that you test the QR Code before putting it on your promotional creatives.