Something we talk a lot about at Vi3 is building brand trust (and maintaining it!). Each of your marketing efforts should be focused around this end goal. In our latest article, we talked about how QR Codes have made a comeback and why they are a marketing tool you should be utilizing. Not only are they relatively easy to produce, QR code reading capabilities are built into most smartphones nowadays, making them extremely accessible to consumers.

From disseminating product information in a simple way, to increasing traffic to a particular website page, here are five goals you can achieve with QR Code marketing efforts.

Educate consumers on product information

Oftentimes, when you’re in the throes of your day to day work, you can forget that your customers don’t have all the context around product features that you have internalized by working for a company. That’s why nailing down clear product features and usage instructions and delivering them in an easily accessible way is paramount. Maybe your running shoes incorporate a never-before-used material that helps prevent running injury, or maybe you offer personalized beauty products. Ensuring customers have all the relevant information about a product they’ve purchased will make them better-informed when talking to other people about your brand, and increase the chances they’ll support your brand again. 

Further supply chain transparency

Supply chain transparency is a topic we love to write about (you can read more here), and for good reason. In today’s ethical consumer economy, people care now more than ever about where their goods come from, ESPECIALLY if it’s within an industry that has been historically riddled with sourcing scandals. Take coffee beans for example. Including QR codes on coffee cups and coffee bean bags is a practice that’s grown in popularity. Coffee drinkers can scan them and see exactly where their cup of morning joe has traveled from. Many companies are already doing the work to make sure they’re sourcing from sustainable farms with ethical business practices (does your cotton  source pay much higher wages to workers than neighboring farms, for example?)—you want to make sure people know about these efforts. Including a QR code that links to your product’s life story, so to speak, is a great way to do so. 

Tell your brand origin story

Narrative based marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to pull consumers in. By telling why your company was founded, by whom, and which daily struggles you’re aiming to help solve, you’ll reach a lot more people than simply plastering a lone product image in front of people. Someone is much more likely to support a company when they can see, and resonate with, the human beings behind it. 

Cross promote another product

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t love cross-promotion when it doesn’t feel personalized, but when they do I often click on to buy. So what’s the difference? Thoughtful selection. Say you have a customer who has bought two short-sleeve shirts of the same material, and you just came out with the long-sleeve version of that fabric. They’d be a great person to cross-promote via a QR code on the product tag. Any complementary products (i.e. those socks that are just PERFECT for a certain low-rise shoe) work well in this space. Plus, you’ll get an even better sense of what this consumer is interested in by what they do (and don’t) click on.

Link to sign-up page

We’ve seen them in airports and doctor’s offices—these are the QR codes that direct you to fill out forms so we don’t have to fish around online for the link or sit there typing in a URL on our phones one alphanumerical figure at a time. For brands who may have active newsletters or care about keeping their customers regularly informed around a specific initiative, utilizing a QR code to direct consumers to a sign up flow might be a great fit! Try pairing it with a snappy message like, “We’re set to be operating at carbon neutral by 2023, follow along with our journey here”. Because of the low cost of producing QR Codes and the ease of scanning them, they’re a great way to lower the overall cost of customer acquisition—making them a win for both consumers and your bottom line.