You’ve decided to use a QR code in your marketing campaign. Great! Are you new to the Splitter QR code article series? Make sure to read through some of the recent blog posts in the series: how to build a perfect mobile optimized landing page, how to quickly generate a QR code and more. Today, I am focusing on some of the aspects of the advertising material itself. How to structure your QR code ad? What are they key elements for success? Let’s dive right in!

1. Your Qr Code is Not a Call-to-Action!

Just because you placed a QR code on your ad, it doesn’t mean that people will scan it like there is no tomorrow. You have to present them with an incentive – a promising Call-to-Action. Think about your QR code as a normal link: a link needs to have some accompanying text, an incentive that get people to click on it. So what is the reward for your customer after scanning the ad? Is she going to “unlock” a piece of exclusive content, maybe a chance to win something, participate at a secret event or download a free app?

Call-to-Action Examples – let’s look at some of the successful Call-to-Actions that you can reuse as a template for your QR code ad:

• “Scan now to win this car!”
• “Be among the first to take a look at this listing – scan and get in line now!”
• “Scan now and get a behind a scenes peek into the production of the album”
• “Scan now and download this app for free!”
• “Discount inside – Scan now and see how much you can save!”

2. Don’t Forget to Educate Your Users

Current estimates from comScore show that, on average, a little bit more than 15% of smartphone users are actively scanning QR codes. As the technology and markets mature, QR codes will essentially become more and more ubiquitous. But we are not there yet: that’s why, it is still very important to educate your customers about which QR code scanner app to download.

My tip: you can use a Splitter short URL and seamlessly provide a different app URL for each mobile platform. That way, when a user clicks on the URL she is automagically redirected to the right app in the App Store, Google’s Play Store or any other app store out there. Resulting in less clicks and better conversion rates. CNN has set up their app distribution like this – check their case story here.

3. Always Print Your QR Code Big Enough

You’ve decided to put a QR code in your marketing material? So don’t be stingy with your ad real estate: making your QR code too small is much worse than not putting it there in the first place. Make sure that people can actually scan it by making it big enough. The appropriate size of course depends on what marketing collateral you are producing – smaller for a brochure and bigger for a poster. A good rule of thumb that I’ve come across is to never make your QR code smaller than 1 square inch.

If you’ve been following this series from the beginning, you are now well equipped to start working on your next QR code marketing campaign. But I haven’t finished yet! I really want to make sure you don’t make any mistake, especially because those can be very costly and embarrassing in the offline marketing campaigns. That’s why I’ll conclude this series next time with a post on what you should test before shipping your QR code ad to the printer.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and get all our future marketing blog posts straight into your inbox!

Originally posted 2013-06-11 12:01:31.