Posts Tagged ‘QR Codes’

Use QR Codes to Serve Up Product Videos to Your Customers

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Do you own a retail store or have some sort of physical location that your customers can come to buy your products? If so, how are you engaging your customers when they are at your location? Customer engagement is an absolute must for all business owners. If your customers aren’t engaged in your business then they are going to leave your store as quickly as they entered. A great “non-salesy” way to get your customers to learn more about your products is to use QR codes as a way of encouraging customers to watch product videos while they visit your store.

How to Use QR Codes to Serve Up Product Videos

qr codes in store videoDo you have any products that customers always have questions about? Do you sell technical products? Do you have products in your store that customers absolutely love and always come back to tell you about? All products have a story. All products need to provide customers with value. Some products are intuitive enough whereby customers don’t need extra information. Other products need to be explained before customers are willing to buy them. If you’re looking for ways to engage your customers when they come to your store, then why not use QR codes and product videos to do it?

Here are a few of the major steps you need to take to execute this marketing tactic in your store:

  • Find 4-5 products that you think would benefit from a little more attention and explanation
  • Shoot quick 30 second to 1 minute videos for each. Pick a topic for each. They all don’t have to be “How-To” videos or “Customer Testimonials”. In fact, it would probably be better if they were a little different.
  • Upload them to your YouTube Channel
  • Find a QR code generator that can display URLs and create a QR code for each product video
  • Print each QR code on a sign that can be displayed on or near the appropriate product
  • Start promoting your new marketing tactic online and in your store – Let your customers know how they can get access to these great new videos. Most customers will have smart phones with the capability to scan QR codes and watch online video.
  • Train your employees on how they can help your customers interact with QR codes in your store

Benefits of Using QR Codes to Serve Up Product Videos In Your Store

Using QR codes to serve up product videos to customers who visit your store can offer a business a number of different benefits. Here are a few of the top benefits of using QR codes for video marketing:

  • Increases sales
  • Engages customers while they are in your store
  • Builds a deeper relationship between you and your customer
  • Increases the customers’ product knowledge
  • Keeps customers in your store

Increasingly we are seeing businesses use technology-enabled engagement tactics to educate and engage their customers. QR codes are fun. Videos are engaging and can be educational. Using QR codes as a way to get customers to access your product videos can be extremely impactful for those business owners who implement it properly.

5 Types of Videos to Serve Up Via QR Codes

So, are you thinking that this might be a fun tactic for you to try at your business? If so, here are a few ideas for different types of product videos that you can serve up to your customers through QR codes:

  1. Technical videos
  2. Customer testimonials
  3. Fun facts
  4. How it’s made – Talk about how the materials used in the product are sourced (ie. organic, fair-trade, etc.)
  5. Product benefits

These are just 5 different types of videos that you can create, but there are probably a lot more. What you want to do is think about your products and your customers. What type of videos would your customers find most valuable? Once you figure that out, the rest is easy! ;)

Has anyone ever used QR codes to serve up product videos to your customers? If so, please share your experiences with our readers by leaving a comment below. We appreciate it!

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Posted in Video Marketing | 6 Comments »

Use QR Codes to Give Away Free Music with Your Wine

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

One of our clients is a national Smooth Jazz band. They have a new album coming out soon and we are working on ways to get their music into the ears of more people. We are working through the planning phase of our process whereby we set our goals and determine what marketing strategies and tactics will work best to accomplish those goals. With the goal of building more awareness for our client’s music we are thinking that a great strategy for accomplishing this would be to giveaway some of the tunes that aren’t going make the album. Many times bands create much more music than what gets released. A lot of the music that goes unreleased is still good music. Bands need to take advantage of this as we have seen musicians from many genres use this same strategy successfully. We actually wrote about Lil’ Wayne’s meteoric rise to superstardom through the use of this strategy. Lil’ Wayne used the mixtape circuit to grow his fanbase. So, now that our goals are set and our strategy is in place it’s time to develop our marketing tactics.

Jazz Band Partners with Local Winery to Serve Customers Smooth Jazz Music with their Wine

In order to get the free music into the ears of our client’s target audience we came up with the idea of partnering with a winery and using QR codes as a way for wine customers to download our client’s music. Drinking wine and some smooth jazz go great together. It doesn’t matter if you’re 65 or 25, if you’re buying wine then chances are you will enjoy a great smooth jazz tune. The band can find a local or national winery to partner with and then setup the QR code campaign.

Step 1: Partner with a Winery

We have to find the right partner for our client. You want to find a winery or wine brand that targets the same audience as your band. The winery will benefit from increased marketing exposure and they are able to offer their customers added value with their purchase for no added costs. Once you find a great partner and pitch them on the idea, the next step is to setup the QR code campaign.

QR Code Wine

Image Courtesy of Cellar Key

Step 2: Setup the QR code

Setup the QR code so that when a customer scans the QR code with their smart phone that they are either able to download the music file OR input their email address so that the file can be sent to them. The way you set it up really depends on what technologies you want to use. Each way has pros and cons, but the goal of getting the band’s music into the ears of new listeners is accomplished. You also have to determine how the QR codes will be printed and adhered to the wine bottle. A great way to do it is through creating a tag around the bottle neck. See the image to the right for a visual representation. You will incur some costs here, but they can be as small or large as you want (depending on how you want to adhere the QR code and how many bottles you’ll be putting it on).

Step 3: Promote the QR Code Campaign

The only thing left to do is promote the campaign. Use all of your social media channels and definitely take pictures and shoot video. Ask the winery to do some promotion as well. The campaign might even be newsworthy with the local news if you’re partnering with a local winery. Be sure to track how many QR codes were scanned so that you can track results.

We’ll see if our client goes for it. What are your thoughts? If you were the client, would you move forward with partnering with a local winery and use QR codes to allow new listeners to download your music for free? Leave your comments below.

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Posted in Inbound Marketing | 2 Comments »

Generate Facebook-Likes Using a QR Code

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Are you looking for a more effective way to generate Facebook “Likes” for your small business? Aren’t we all?! :) Well, now there’s a way to generate more Facebook “Likes” through the use of QR codes. Likify is a new online service that allows users to create QR codes linked to your Facebook Business Page. Businesses can then print the QR code on anything that you want. When your QR code is scanned the customer gets pointed to a mobile landing page, which contains your official Facebook Like button. Pretty cool, huh? As we have discussed before, QR codes are in their infancy as a marketing tool, but their usage is growing. By next year we think using QR codes to promote your business will be mainstream.

Likify QR code Facebook LikeLikify has made creating a QR code for your Facebook Business Page very simple. Follow the steps below to create a Likify QR code:

  • Setup a Likify account
  • Enter your Facebook Business Page in the form where it says, “Webpage about actual item to like”
  • Personalize the landing page that your customers see once they scan your QR code
    • Add a title for the landing page
    • Add an image, perhaps your company logo or a Facebook logo
    • If you want, you can add another link to give customers more information about your small business (perhaps your company website)
    • Add a coupon if you want to entice customers to “Like” your small business Facebook page
  • Click ‘Generate Code’
  • Start printing your QR code wherever you want it and promote it to your customers and prospects

Once you have your Likify QR code you can then begin to print it on your marketing materials. Hopefully you have created a plan for where you want to place your QR code. This will make the promotion process much more effective. Perhaps you want to place your QR code on your marketing fliers, on an in-store poster, on your website, or you can even print QR codes on your business card to generate more Facebook “Likes” for your Facebook Business Page.

Soon Likify will be providing reporting for users of their service. This means business owners will be able to understand how effective their Facebook “Like” QR code campaign is. If you’re looking for creative ways to generate more Facebook “Likes” for your small business, definitely consider using Likify to create a QR code for your small business Facebook page.

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Posted in Facebook Marketing | 3 Comments »

Add a QR Code to Your Business Card

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Just the other day I was in a meeting with a client, an app developer, and we got on the subject of attending conventions. My client looked at me and made the comment, “do you know that even at a ‘geeky tech event’ like a Developer’s convention, EVERYONE still hands out business cards…” He was in awe and after I thought about it more, I too was in awe. You would think tech dudes would use the Bump app to exchange contact information. It seems so much easier. Unfortunately, or fortunately (if you have thousands of business cards already printed out), people still use business cards to exchange information. A few years ago we wrote an article about adding social media links to your business cards as a way to drive more people to join your online community. Now, through QR codes, business owners can further optimize their business cards by putting a custom QR code on your cards.

QR codes are quickly catching on with businesses looking to take advantage of new technology to further their marketing effectiveness. Creating a marketing campaign with QR codes can be extremely beneficial when implemented correctly. QR Codes allow you to provide a customer or prospect with a quick marketing message, display educational information, or even link them to your website or social media profiles. So, how do you get a QR code in front of your target audience? Well…

QR Code Business CardPrint the QR code on your business card… One thing to remember when planning to add a QR code to your business card is that if you print out a lot of them, you probably won’t go through them right away. This means your message must be a long-term message. If you are trying to promote an upcoming event, you may want to use a different marketing tactic. Whereby if you simply want to drive your new network to your website or blog, a QR code on your business card will work well. When implementing any new marketing campaign it’s critical to think through all of these little details ahead of time. Some business owners, strapped for time, simply read about the latest marketing idea and jump to implement it. It’s especially important to think through marketing campaigns that have costs involved like printing new business cards. Once you know what you want to accomplish by adding a QR code to your business card you can then go ahead and have them printed so that you can begin passing them out.

Adding a QR code to your business card can be an extremely worthwhile marketing initiative for your small business. One of the benefits to adding a QR code to your business card is that more people will remember you because of the uniqueness of your business card, which may lead to a higher percentage of those folks who actually take action to call you or scan your QR code to participate in your marketing campaign. A negative at this time is that not everyone knows what QR codes are and even fewer folks have a QR code scanner app on their phone. QR code usage is still in its infancy, but the trend is firmly in place and in a year or so we will be talking about QR codes the same way we now talk about Twitter, another online tool that not everyone was convinced about at first.

The next time you’re ready to print new business cards, be sure to consider adding a QR code to them.

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Posted in Inbound Marketing | 2 Comments »

Should You Implement a QR Code Campaign for Your Small Business?

Monday, April 25th, 2011

I’ll be honest, when I first heard about the QR Code phenomenon in Japan that recently reached the shores of the U.S., I was skeptical.  First of all, who would want a barcode looking eyesore displayed throughout their business’s store or website?  Secondly, would customers really take the time to download a QR Code Reader app for their smart phone and consistently utilize it in stores for decoding displayed codes?  I later learned the answer to the first question is yes, stores don’t seem to mind having these black and white images displayed, and for good reasons which are discussed below.   The answer to question #2 has yet to be entirely seen, although we do know that consumer usage of QR Code Reading apps is on the rise.

For small business owners who are unfamiliar with QR Codes, they are basically new age barcodes that store much more data than the original.  The acronym QR stands for Quick Response, derived from their ability to quickly relay information to a mobile device.  The process of creating a code to decoding it on a cell phone is quite simple and can be completed from start to finish in a matter of minutes.

Before creating a code, a business will need to decide what it wants to convey to a customer.  The neat thing about QR Codes is that they can contain numerous types of information, such as a catchy phrase, website URL, Facebook ID, coupons, event details, product details, and so on.  The variety of information storable within a code allows a business to become very creative, which helps to differentiate them from other businesses using codes for promotion.

qr codes small businessAfter settling on what information will be stored in the QR Code, any individual can generate their code for free through a number of internet websites, such as Kawaya.com.  The next decision a business must make is deciding on which medium to print the QR Code on.  In-store flyers, websites, business cards, and even billboards are all fair game.

At this point, a business’s work is done.  If a QR Code is placed in a highly visible area, curious customers will use their smart phones to decode your message as quick as they can.  Other customers may be unaware of what a QR Code is, allowing the business an opportunity to explain and appear tech-savvy.  Customers can be directed to a number of free QR Code Reader phone apps available for download across all smart phone platforms.

There appear to be a number of advantages for businesses to use QR Codes.  This is evidenced by the fact that more and more codes are showing up around town and even on television.  When a business uses a QR Code, it conveys to consumers that it’s creative and on top of new technology.  QR Codes create excitement for a customer, as what’s stored within a code is a mystery waiting to be solved.   They are also a very effective way to quickly and accurately communicate information.  For example, it would take a customer much less time to scan a QR Code that would connect the customer directly to your business’s website than it would for that same customer to manually type in a long URL address.

At this time, the majority of consumers are not decoding QR Codes with their cell phones.  However, the percentage of the population using smart phones continues to steadily increase.  Given this trend as well as the fact that consumers seem to be quite interested in newer, technology-based marketing tactics, Catalyst feels it’s worth exploring the use of QR Codes for your business.

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Posted in Small Business | 2 Comments »