Skip to main content

Message QR Codes Better to Improve Market Penetration

A new study out suggests that people with smart phones and tablets would scan more QR codes, if only they knew that their mobile device could do it.

QR codes help companies and cause span the physical and online. I recommend to many of my cause clients that they use a QR code to help add urgency and emotion to their appeals.

The study released in February 2012, by JiWire found that 18 percent of those surveyed in the fourth quarter of 2011 had scanned a QR code in the prior 90 days. The more interesting number is that 53 percent of those who knew that their smart phone could scan QR codes had done so in the previous 90 days.

Basically all smart phones and tablets with a camera can scan QR codes if they have the right app, which is usually free and oftentimes already on the mobile device.

What this tells me is that any QR code needs two messages surrounding it. The first is that smart phones can read it and the second message explains why someone would want to point their mobile device at it in the first place.

Too often, marketers rely on the relative novelty of QR codes to help drive usage. This study demonstrates that messaging around the QR code has to be more plainspoken.

For causes in particular, QR codes are better directed at something besides the front-page of your website. If that’s all you’re going to do, why bother with a QR code in the first place when you could just publish your URL?

One of the first rules of journalism applies here. As you’re considering where to direct QR traffic ask, “Who will care? And why will they care?”

Companies will frequently use QR codes to send customers to special offers or coupons.

Charities should think hard about what is most appealing about their cause and direct QR traffic to a microsite, a video, contests, games, or their own special offer. Charities that sell stuff could also do coupons.

Give people a real reason to scan that QR code and you can effectively span the physical and online world in a way that benefits your cause.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cause Marketing: The All Packaging Edition

One way to activate a cause marketing campaign when the sponsor sells a physical product is on the packaging. I started my career in cause marketing on the charity side and I can tell you that back in the day we were thrilled to get a logo on pack of a consumer packaged good (CPG) or even just a mention. Since then, there’s been a welcome evolution of what sponsors are willing and able to do with their packaging in order to activate their cause sponsorships. That said, even today some sponsors don’t seem to have gotten the memo that when it comes to explaining your cause campaign, more really is more, even on something as small as a can or bottle. The savviest sponsors realize that their only guaranteed means of reaching actual customers with a cause marketing message is by putting it on packaging. And the reach and frequency of the media on packaging for certain high-volume CPG items is almost certainly greater than radio, print or outdoor advertising, and, in many cases, TV. More to

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor