Beauty industry includes both beauty products and services. This includes cosmetics, perfumes, and products for skincare and health care. While the service sector includes beauty salons and spas.
Both the sectors do rigorous promotions through print media creatives about their products/services.
Many-a-time, you mention your website on promotional material. But not many people type the web address in their mobile browser and look up for your website. This leads to low traffic.
Similarly you face the same issue when you mention any link on your print media creatives. This could be a registration link, your app link, social media accounts, amongst others.
Furthermore, in the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing is the norm. Hence, people will be apprehensive of touching a foreign object including paper money. Moreover, it is also impossible to sanitize cash.
So, what to do to resolve all these challenges? The good news is that there is a solution—QR Code technology.
QR Codes are 2D barcodes and can easily be scanned via a smartphone. They are increasingly becoming popular, given high speed internet, smartphone penetration, and contactless exposure.
In this article, we will detail on how QR Codes in beauty industry can help you in diverse ways.
Keep reading.
A. QR Codes: A brief
QR Codes are 2D barcodes. They can easily be scanned via smartphone. Thus, they eliminate the scope of any physical contact, and are the safest solution to use in a lockdown.
You can link unlimited information to a QR Code. This includes both text-based and multimedia content. Given this, you can link a PDF, audio file, video clip, or an image to a QR Code.
Plus, you can also track who scanned your QR Code. This is possible by creating a Dynamic QR Code. Dynamic QR Codes can be edited anytime. Plus, you can track their scanning activity and get useful analytical data. With this data, you can know the district, city, device, and browser from which a QR Code was scanned.
Furthermore, QR Codes just don’t come only in black-and-white colors. You can also design your QR Code. That is, you can add a logo, a background image, or a background color. This way, you can make it completely branded.
Now, let’s move on to show some of the use cases of QR Codes in the beauty industry.
B. QR Code Use Cases
From functional use cases such as payments to promotional use cases such as advertising—you can use QR Codes everywhere. Here are a few examples:
Both the product and service sector can use QR Codes in beauty industry to optimize their business.
1. Get more traffic on your website
Generally, you give your website link on the promotional material. But typing the link in the mobile browser and then visiting your website is a tedious task.
Very few people do it which results in low traffic. But with QR Codes, you can easily resolve this issue.
All you need to do is link your website to a QR Code. And then print the QR Code and place it as a poster on different locations. End users just need to scan the QR Code and they will be redirected to your website.
Visiting and scrolling through your website now becomes much easier. Hence, this will drive more traffic to your website.
For example, L’Oréal Paris, one of the top most cosmetics companies, uses QR Codes for this purpose on its print advertisements. It links to the company’s landing site called ‘Youth Code- Skin Care to Prevent Signs of Aging’. Upon scanning, the users land to this page and can scroll through the variety of products, get their detailed information, and save/purchase an item.
2. Give detailed information on product packaging
It is very important to keep your customers fully enlightened about your product. But giving detailed information on the product packaging is near to impossible. This is because you only have limited space.
With QR Codes, you can easily resolve this issue. You can link the QR Code to unlimited information. This includes detailed product information such as ingredients used, how to use the product, amongst others.
For example, Natrue, the international natural and organic cosmetics Company based in Brussels has introduced QR Codes on its certified cosmetic products. The QR Code is linked to a webpage. Here, detailed information about every product is mentioned.
3. Get more downloads on your app
As a beauty product or service company, you have your own app. To promote your app, you use print media creatives. But again not many people type the app link to download your app.
You can simply link your app with a QR Code. Upon scanning, the end users will directly land on your app.
This way, the manual part of typing will totally eliminate. Since now downloading your app becomes an effortless process, you will see a hike in the number of downloads.
4. Get more followers on your social media accounts
You surely want your customers to follow you on social media accounts. But how to expand your reach?
In print advertisements, you specify your social media accounts. But it takes a lot of effort to type a username or the whole link. Only a few people do it, hence your following increases slowly.
To make this task easier, you can create a Social Media QR Code. Here, you can link your social media accounts. Upon scanning, end users will directly be able to follow and like your accounts.
5. Make payments easily with QR Codes
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people all over the world want to go as contactless as possible. One major drawback of paper money is that it exchanges many hands and cannot be sanitized.
QR Code payments are safe, quick, and reliable. You must have also scanned a QR Code to make a payment. It is contactless and very easy.
For the uninitiated, QR Code-based payment is one of the most popular areas. And at a time, when the whole world is promoting social distancing, this payment method is ideal.
C. How to create QR Codes
To create a QR Code in beauty industry, you would need a professional QR Code generator tool such as Scanova.
For use cases 1-4, you can use the Scanova QR Code Generator tool. Here, you can Sign Up for a 14-day free trial. And then select from a range of 26 categories, according to the content you want to link.
For the fifth use case, that deals with payments, you can use a professional tool such as Scanova API.
You can then generate QR Codes in bulk by using Scanova’s API. You can integrate Scanova’s Static QR Code Generation API with your own payment system or mobile app and generate a QR Code anytime.
This way you can generate QR Codes programmatically. You just need to send a trigger request with data (QR Code design, size, format and the data to be saved in it) to Scanova’s API. The API will then respond with the QR Code image
On the other hand you can use Scanova’s SDK to add it to your own server. Here, you can make API calls locally, allowing you to generate custom-designed QR Codes at a must faster rate.
Furthermore, in order to create QR Codes flawlessly, you should keep the following points in mind:
1. Design your QR Code. A Custom-designed QR Code attracts 50-200% more scans than A black-and-white QR Code.
2. Always write a short help note to guide your fans. A simple line such as ‘Scan to register’ will help. This will act as a CTA element and direct end users of what needs to be done.
3. Export QR Code images in vector formats. These are high-resolution images, which do not pixelate when scaled. So say you want to print a QR Code on a billboard advertisement. For this, always download QR Code in Vector image for clarity and proper scannability.
So, this is all you need to know about QR Codes in beauty industry. Create QR Codes now and promote your products and services effectively.