I don’t know about you, but I’m over this whole QR Code “uprising” that businesses feel are useful to them in some way. There’s a few market direct approaches that I think really are influential. It makes sense if you’re handing out promotional pieces via fliers, business cards, ads in print material sections. However, what frustrates me has to deal with this code when it’s placed on an actual website and the execution of the promotion is absolutely lost in favor or purely pushing products.
I’m fine if it’s giving a promotional code for a discount or a product number that’s only visible if that code is used to unlock it while still staying at the site you’re on. What I’m not cool with however, is the direct result of companies insisting that it takes you to another landing page effectively taking me off of the computer I want to use, instead now making me deal with a basic HTML landing page for some promotion that is ineffective me.
When I see companies insisting to do what I just mentioned, it really does force me to decide to not want to continue any further dealing with what they have to offer. If your idea is to push a few products on me that forces me to use my phone in favor of the computer, you better have products that are going to be damn near free for me to continue the thought of giving your site a chance. Not to mention those said products better aim to what I was actually looking for.
It’s just the general idea about QR codes that bug me. Certainly there are some companies that get it, like Google for example, but then there are the general masses that completely miss and use it for things that it shouldn’t even be used for. The everyday consumer is much smarter than they perceive, not to mention becoming more aggressively tech savvy. So the general thought is to always bring your viewers to the site, not remove them from the site and make them use their phone. It just has the potential to cause all kinds of headaches.
Chantal Tode from the site mobilemarketer.com writes about the hits and misses of QR codes and provides a few exceptional examples of the good and bad that companies have done in their battle to make QR codes more useful.
The Good
QRBlaster provides a way for realtors to generate a QR code tied to a specific listing, which they can use in their print and other marketing collateral to instantly connect an interested consumer with the information they are looking for.
That example of how to create a strong QR code marketing campaign is what I was talking about above. It was well thought out that they’d want consumers to scan their promotional material in hopes that they’d be taken to the specific listing of the house they were interested in. A clear direct result of what the company wanted to achieve.
The Bad
Red Bull put a QR code on a campaign in subway stations where there was no phone signal to access the online content. “It sounds like QR 101 but it is amazing how many codes we see that just plain refuse to scan,” Mr. McGuinness said. “Much like an ashtray on a motorcycle, a non scannable code is just plain worthless.”
While Red Bull certainly tried to create the buzz of a smart QR campaign, the execution failed due to absolute poor planning. It’s admirable, but these are just two of the examples that Chantal has wrote about and given her ideas and thoughts on. To read more about what she had to say, head on over there by clicking here: QR Codes: The good, the bad and the unscannable.