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By Eric Carlson

Before you place your next business card order or design your next brochure, make sure you become familiar with the growing trend of Quick Response codes, or QR codes for short, which can give a major boost to your marketing efforts.

QR codes are those black and white squares with the geometric patterns that are popping up all over. Take a picture of one with your smart phone and it will take you directly to a custom message or a special offer. These codes have been huge in Europe and Asia for years. And they are now coming on strong in the U.S. market.

QR codes will help you stand out from the competition and help your customers and prospects to remember you. It’s not hard to use them. Here is What Every New Business Should Know about QR codes:

1) Share your contact information. Put a code with all your contact information on the back of your business card. When it is scanned, it can go right into a prospects contact list with no data entry.

2) Promote products or services. We put QR codes on the business cards of Realtors, who give the cards to the homeowner to pass out. Scan the code and you end up at a web site with information about the property. Because we also do affordable short-run printing, it’s easy to provide a Realtor cards for all the properties they are listing.

3) Promote events. For an auction house that consulted with us, we developed a program so that each auction has its own QR code that takes them to a web page with a map, directions and other information about the auction. They added the code to 10,000 postcards they mailed out. They don’t have to use up limited space on the card with directions. The QR code also helps them track the response to the mailing.

4) Build loyalty. A restaurant I worked with was looking for a new idea and I suggested QR codes by the front door. The code will produce a list of the specials and take them right to the Facebook page where they can “Like” the restaurant and sign up for announcements about specials.

5) Make it part of your Unique Selling Proposition. We work with our clients to identify what makes them stand out from their competition and then we create pieces that reflect that, from business cards, to signage, postcards, letter head, etc. Each piece has the opportunity to carry a QR code that will deliver a unique message that will help them land more business.

qrcode.tonofbiz.com

To get a free smart phone app for reading QR Codes,
look for the Mobio app on your Iphone or Android.