During its short time of marketing popularity, I was always a QR code naysayer. In fact, as recently as just a year or two ago I would have been the first one to say (in fact, I probably did say it a few times) that QR codes were useless. If you were caught using one, or even trying to use one, on a piece of marketing material or *gasp* a print ad, you would have been laughed right out of the conference room. Remember fumbling around with your phone and trying to open that third-party QR scanner app to get the perfect, in-focus scan only for it to freeze, glitch, shut down, or in some cases not even scan at all? Well, I do. And that enormous usability barrier contributed in large part to its terrible adoption rates… Until QR codes as a marketing/advertising tool all but dried up into pixelated tumbleweeds in a vast digital desert.
But fast forward to 2021, and thanks to a perfect cocktail of need, venue & technology, QR codes are back. With a vengeance.
That’s right. I said it. QR codes are back, and if you’re not incorporating them in some form or fashion into your marketing/promotional efforts then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grab consumers’ attention, efficiently activate landing pages, grow your customer database, and generate more user activity on your brand’s digital properties.