March 9, 2011 in Blog by VisualMob

QR codes are here to stay – Here’s why

You have probably been seeing the little black and white qr codes here and there while your out and about town. If you live in a large city you may have seen them way more often. Best Buy has them all over the place, Jimmy Fallon had one for one of his artists that he showed on his program and they linked to a song on iTunes. These QR codes are going to stay for a few main reasons.

1. QR codes bring your print advertising to life.

Not long ago print was kind of delegated to the backseat for many advertising options because the call to action was too far away. Some had called print officially dead though I never saw the obit. Think about it from the web age standard though. You had to look at an ad in paper or magazine and then remember the website they had so you could go back to your desktop and plunk it in four hours later. No longer. Add a small QR block to the bottom of your print ad that links to your specific product page or mobile website and you have the direct link between the curious shopper and more information on your product. The loop has been completed.

2. The price is right

QR codes are an open standard that costs essentially nothing to produce and are easily read by any free qr code readers out there for your smart phone. They can be used in print of nearly any size from billboard to business card and they are flexible in that you can use them for many types of information, not just urls. You can promote map locations, contact vcards, urls, phone numbers, sms, and calendar events.

3. They are simple.

Most things tech are admittedly kind of hard to adopt. Facebook managed to get around this by keeping their user interface simple and people responded with a “yes, thank you”. But, even Facebook has people wondering what are they going to change next? QR codes are just like the tools we already use nearly everyday, Bar codes. Except these barcodes are interactive and much cooler. Using QR codes is really very simple. Point your iPhone at it, bam!, information imported, website visited, event added etc. There isn’t any code to learn and the payoff can be instant. Which is exactly what people want. Instant gratification without all the hassle.