QR Codes for Print Media: Achieve Better Engagement

You probably own or run a business. It could be a brick-and-mortar shop or an online store. And you use traditional print media for promotions. This could be through channels such as newspapers, magazine advertisements, or outdoor advertising.

While digital marketing is effective, these traditional marketing practices still attract a lot of traction. That’s because print media, as a marketing tool, has a longer attention span than digital media.

But there’s a problem—print media is neither actionable nor trackable. That means once your audience sees your ad, they can’t take an action as easily as with digital media. In addition, you can’t track your campaign performance with print media alone. Well, not anymore.

You can now make print media both actionable and trackable. How? Using QR Codes.

For the uninitiated, QR Codes are 2D barcodes that store alphanumeric information. You probably have seen them being used for payments or inventory tracking. And the best part is that you just need is a smartphone to scan them.

With QR Codes, you can make your print media promotions actionable in no time.

In this article, we’ll see what a QR Code on print media can help you achieve.

A. How QR Codes for print media are useful

Here are eight ways how QR codes can help you make most of your print media campaigns:

1. Drive web traffic or social media followers

Say you are planning to run print media promotions. And the aim behind the campaign is to drive people to your website. It could be to get your audience to watch a video, enquire about your business, check out your product range, or even make a purchase.

Here, a Website URL QR Code can help you do that. With it, no need for your audience to manually type the web link to visit it. All they need to do is a simple scan. Isn’t this easy and convenient?

And the easier the process, the better is the engagement rate.

Similarly, a Social Media QR Code can help you gain more followers. This QR Code, when scanned, takes your audience to a landing page with buttons linking to all your social media accounts. They can then select their favorite one to follow you online.

2. Offering coupons and discounts

As a business, you probably run offers with discounts and deals. After all, they are an excellent way to generate better sales. Moreover, they help attract new customers to your business while retaining the existing ones.

And a Coupon QR Code helps you do just that in a much simpler way. How? It makes the overall user experience better.

When scanned, it allows your target audience to easily access the encoded coupon code and redeem it. No need for anyone to remember the coupon code or carry the coupon around all the time.

This ensures a hassle-free user experience and results in increased conversions.

3. Giving complete product information

Today customers are more concerned about the product they purchase than ever. Hence, you need to be transparent about your offerings.

To do it, a Product QR Code can help you out. Just add it to your print media creatives.

Wondering why you need one? Well, due to space constraints, print media doesn’t allow you to add as many product details as you may want. In addition, they also limit you to predominantly textual information with little scope for images and no scope for videos, audio guides, infographics, etc.

However, a Product QR Code has got you covered.

It encodes all your product details such as images, descriptions, website links, and even social media sharing buttons. When end-users scan it, they see a mobile landing page with all the encoded details.

4. Increase your mobile app downloads

Say you have a mobile app for your business. Then you know how important it is that your audience downloads it. And to ensure that, you need to do promotions.

Here, a QR Code can help boost your conversions. You can simply add an App Store QR Code to your promotional creatives such as billboards or flyers. As your audience scans it, it will redirect the end-users to your app on the relevant app store depending on their phone’s operating system.

Moreover, if you’d like them to visit a particular page in your app, you can go for an App Deep Link QR Code.

Related : How To Make QR Code For App Links: Everything You Need To Know

5. Generate leads

It’s common in business to generate sales via lead generation. And to collect leads, you need to use lead generation forms.

However, it comes with a problem—when you add the form link to print media creatives, people have to manually type the form link on browsers to open the form and finally fill it.

Now, this is a long and tedious process. While some people may follow it, others won’t bother.

However, QR Codes can help you take care of this challenge. How? Via lead generation feature.

When end-users scan the lead-generation-enabled QR Code, they will be prompted to fill out the lead generation form. After doing it, they will see the desired content. It could be anything such as text saying ‘Thank You‘, a coupon code, or even a document (lead magnet).

Here’s how this works:

• You create the desired QR Code and enable lead generation with the information you’d like to collect
• You add this QR Code to your promotional material
• Your audience sees the QR Code and scans it
• They see a form with the fields you specified
• Once they fill out the form, they submit it to see the content encoded in the QR Code

You can access these leads anytime you want via your QR Code service provider. Easy, right?

6. Help people know your business’ exact location

If your business operates via brick-and-mortar stores, then you would want customers to visit it. And to inform your audience about the same, you will have to add the address to the print media creatives.

Here, a Google Maps QR Code can help ease the process. When scanned, it takes the end-users to see the encoded location on their phone’s maps application. Thus, there is no need for them to put manual effort into locating your business or asking for directions.

7. Easily share your contact details

In any business, it’s quite common to share your contact details with your potential customers and investors. It allows them to easily contact you whenever they need your services.

And a VCard QR Code helps make it easier for you. How? Just place it on your print media creatives. When people scan the QR code to see all your contact details. This includes your name, contact number, email, address, website, and even your social media handles. Along with these, they also see the option—Save as Contact.

Thus, they can save you as a contact with a single click. That’s it. Convenient, right?

8. Create a mobile landing page

Say you don’t have a website for your business but still need to take the end-users to a landing page?

Well, a Rich Text QR Code has got you covered. When scanned, it displays a customized landing page with descriptions, images, and buttons. In short, you have your own landing page (just like a website) without the need for any software developer. Convenient, right?

B. Benefits of QR Codes for print media

A QR Code offers various benefits while optimizing your customer’s experience. Here are some of them:

1. Editable content

Say you created a QR Code to provide product details. And after some time, you’ve made some changes in your product and need to put this information out. Here, dynamic QR Codes can help you do it. That’s because they are editable. This means you can edit the encoded content anytime you want without the need to create a new QR Code each time.

2. Scan tracking

As a businessman, you’d want to gauge the performance of your marketing campaign. And QR Codes can help you do it. They allow you to monitor their scanning activity. This means you can track details such as:

• How many people have scanned the QR Code
• Where did they scan it
• When did they scan it
• Which device did they use to scan it

All this data can help you better optimize your print promotions.

3. Event Tracking

You’d want to know how your customers are interacting with the content after scanning the QR Code. This could be anything such as hitting the sign-up or register button. Event tracking can help you monitor this data easily.

4. Custom design

Since you are planning to use QR Codes for promotions, consider adding design to them. You can do it by adding a logo and colors or a background image to it.

Moreover, it is a known fact that custom QR Codes attract 50%-200% more scans than basic black-and-white ones.

5. Error Correction

Error correction is a unique feature of QR Codes. It ensures that QR Codes remain scannable irrespective of damage, dirt, or distortion.

C. How to create a QR Code for print media

Now you know why it makes sense to use QR Codes for print media. Next question is—how to create one?

1. Decide on a QR Code category

Depending on what content you want your end-users to see, you’ll need to select a relevant QR Code category.

For example, if you want to provide coupons and discounts, you’d need a Coupon QR Code. On the other hand, if you want to provide product details, you’d create a Product QR Code.

Once decided, go to a suitable QR Code generator. In case, you don’t have one, here is a detailed comparison chart of the best QR Code generator available online. You can go through this to find the best one for your use case.

2. Create a QR Code

Using Scanova for demo purposes, here’s how you can create a QR Code for print media:

a. Go to Scanova

b. Select the relevant QR Code category

c. Enter the content you want to encode and click Continue

d. On the page that loads, name the QR Code and click Create QR Code

e. Now, you’ll see the preview of the QR Code along with the Edit Design option

f. If you click on the Edit Design option, you’ll see two design options to choose from—Custom Logo Design and Custom Background Design

Custom Logo Design: It allows you to add a logo in the center and colors to the QR Code. The logo can be an image or text.

Custom Background Design: It helps you place your QR Code on an image.

g. Once you’ve decided on the design, Update it and 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

Note that no credit card information is required to sign-up.

8. Now you’ll be asked to specify the QR Code image’s size and dimensions. Once you submit the details, click Export

That’s it. Your QR Code will be downloaded and ready for use. It is always advisable to test scan the QR Code before putting it out for your customers.

That is all you need to know about how QR Codes can make print media better. You can now go-ahead to create a QR Code and boost your print media marketing effort.

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