What are QR codes and how can they help your business? 

Quick Response codes (QR codes) are expected to achieve wide­spread use this year – and for good rea­son. Con­sumers want imme­di­ate access to what’s rel­e­vant and QR codes are being used to make that possible.

QR Codes 101

If you’re not yet famil­iar with QR codes, they’re sim­i­lar to the bar­codes used by retail­ers to track inven­tory and price prod­ucts at the point of sale. The key dif­fer­ence between the two is the amount of data they can hold or share.

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Bar codes are lin­ear one-dimensional codes and can only hold up to 20 numer­i­cal dig­its, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) matrix bar­codes that can hold thou­sands of alphanu­meric char­ac­ters of infor­ma­tion. Their abil­ity to hold more infor­ma­tion and their ease of use makes them prac­ti­cal for small businesses.

When you scan or read a QR code with your iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smart­phone, you can link to dig­i­tal con­tent on the web; acti­vate a num­ber of phone func­tions includ­ing email, IM and SMS; and con­nect the mobile device to a web browser.

Any of these desired func­tions are eas­ily achieved by prop­erly cre­at­ing your QR code.  It’s a sim­ple process of enter­ing the appro­pri­ate data into the QR code gen­er­a­tor, described below, and it all takes just a few minutes.

The abil­ity of QR codes to con­nect peo­ple with each other and to mul­ti­me­dia dig­i­tal con­tent is very use­ful for busi­nesses and con­sumers alike.

The Ori­gins of QR Codes

While QR codes are still con­sid­ered a nov­elty here in the United States, they’ve been actively used for over a decade in Japan where they were invented.  QR is a reg­is­tered trade­mark of Denso Wave, a sub­sidiary of Toy­ota.  Denso Wave has elected not to exer­cise their patent rights of QR codes and that has encour­aged their wide­spread use.

How QR Codes Work

QR code Gen­er­a­tors – There are a num­ber of sites for gen­er­at­ing QR codes and they’re all free.  An Inter­net search for QR code gen­er­a­tor will offer many choices.

One that has worked well for me is Kaywa, a site cre­ated by Data­ma­trix, which is another pio­neer of 2D codes.  You can use it to cre­ate QR codes that link to a web page, text, phone num­bers, or SMS.  Another with even greater capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing cus­tomiz­ing the color and for­mat of your codes is Kerem Erkan.

QR code Read­ers – The QR code reader app that works well on my iPhone is i-nigma, which claims to be the most widely used reader in the world.  It accom­mo­dates vir­tu­ally any type of cam­era phone. For the android, you can also try Bar­code Scan­ner. If you already own the pop­u­lar price-checking app Red Laser, they’ve recently adapted their tech­nol­ogy to accom­mo­date QR code reading.

Appli­ca­tions for QR Codes

Shar­ing – There’s no limit to how, or even how much, you can share with QR codes.  While a video or land­ing page is eas­ily shared, you could go fur­ther and share an entire eBook and even mul­ti­ple pieces of con­tent that share a com­mon link.

QR code Like but­ton to the author’s Face­book page.

Com­mu­nity – Shar­ing is how you build com­mu­nity, and one of the favorite are­nas for doing this is Face­book.  You can use Lik­ify to cre­ate a QR code that links your mobile device to a fully func­tion­ing LIKE but­ton for your Face­book page.

This greatly sim­pli­fies the process of merg­ing your other com­mu­ni­ties with your Face­book page – and it is all accom­plished in one click.

Addi­tion­ally, the accom­pa­ny­ing sig­na­ture “thumbs-up” clearly sug­gests the pur­pose of the code.

Calls to Action – After build­ing a com­mu­nity, the next log­i­cal step is to mobi­lize them to take action.   What are you try­ing to accom­plish?  You can alter­nate spe­cial offers by sim­ply link­ing your QR codes to new land­ing pages, and you can com­bine then with email opt-ins to build your list.

The QR code above takes vis­i­tors to a Face­book page wel­come tab where the calls to action are Lik­ing the page and a list opt-in.

SEO and SMO – Ear­lier this month I wrote an arti­cle on social graphs where I dis­cuss how web objects such as images, music clips, and videos add valu­able con­tent to your social graph.  QR codes enhance both your search engine and social media opti­miza­tion.  Now you can increase traf­fic to those search­able objects to fur­ther opti­mize them by encour­ag­ing more sharing.

Social Proof – To help build a com­mu­nity offline, it can be help­ful to use your vibrant online com­mu­ni­ties as social proof of your influ­ence and exper­tise.  As one exam­ple, you can use QR codes to link to spe­cific blog posts that have earned an abun­dance of activity.

Ana­lyt­ics - QR codes most com­monly link to urls, which is why link short­en­ing ser­vices bit.ly and goo.gl now auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ate a QR code for shar­ing your short­ened links.  Using goo.gl as an exam­ple, you sim­ply click on the “more” link after you cre­ate your short­ened link, where you are taken to a page that not only gives you the QR code, but use­ful analytics.

MyQR.co is another site that pro­vides ana­lyt­ics and the abil­ity to cus­tomize the color of your QR codes

This screen­shot shows how bit.ly serves up ana­lyt­ics and a QR code for a short­ened link. Scan it to go to a list of rec­om­mended QR code readers.

Prac­ti­cal Uses of QR Codes

Here are some ways for using QR codes that are mostly in prac­tice now, as well as a few that I believe we will be see­ing in the very near future.

Where

QR Codes could be used:

• The back (or front and back) of your busi­ness card.
• Your brochures and other mar­ket­ing materials.
• The sides of trucks and trailers.
• Prod­uct tags and packaging
• Con­ven­tion and event nametags
• Restau­rant menus
• Event ticket stubs
• Point-of-sale receipts

QR Code at the Naperville, IL Pub­lic Library assists vis­i­tors with help­ful advice.

What

QR Codes could link to:

• Instal­la­tion instructions
• Sources for replace­ment parts and service
• Direc­tions to your business
• The process for hir­ing your pro­fes­sional services
• Valu­able coupons and spe­cial offers
• Rec­om­men­da­tions for com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts and services
• Free mp3 downloads
• Cus­tomer feed­back forms

A QR code on a café in Seat­tle, WA links to Google Places and reviews on Yelp and around the web.

How you can you max­i­mize your effec­tive­ness with QR codes:

• Pro­vide expla­na­tions about their use and benefits
• Encour­age actions that sup­port your mar­ket­ing plan
• Assuage the fears of the tech­ni­cally challenged
• Give rea­sons to come back
• Exper­i­ment with the size, loca­tion, and color of your QR codes
• Study your analytics
• Make the process fun, such as a QR code scav­enger hunt
• Exper­i­ment

Prac­ti­cal Examples

United Air­lines – Many of the major air­lines are now using 2D codes as dig­i­tal board­ing passes.  I recently learned that by the end of 2011 all car­ri­ers will be required to pro­vide this ser­vice for inter­na­tional flights.

United Air­lines 2D code board­ing pass.

I tried this myself and it works like a charm.  My only sug­ges­tion is to not rely on the link, but rather to save a copy of the image on your phone.   You don’t want to risk not being able to find a good sig­nal when you need it most!

Google Places – When you reg­is­ter your local busi­ness withGoogle Places, you’ll receive a decal for your place of busi­ness that includes a QR code to your com­pany web­site. Be sure that QR code links to the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion that poten­tial cus­tomers are inter­ested in – such as hours of oper­a­tion and cur­rent spe­cials and offers.

The Cure Starts Now Foun­da­tion – This non-profit foun­da­tion is cre­atively using QR codes in part­ner­ship with a local small busi­ness, and the results have been favor­able for both organizations.

The Cure Starts Now Foun­da­tion was started in 2007 by Keith Desserich and his wife Brooke, in honor of their six-year old daugh­ter Elena, who died of brain can­cer.  They part­nered with Graeter’s Ice Cream, based in Cincin­nati, OH, who cre­ated a spe­cial fla­vor of ice cream for the cause – Elena Blue­berry Pie.

The mar­ket­ing cam­paign used a QR code link­ing to the Cones for a Cure land­ing page, where your con­tact infor­ma­tion is exchanged for a coupon for a free scoop of Elena Blue­berry Pie ice cream.

Cones for a Cure bill­board with QR code.

The cam­paign not only sur­passed the fund-raising goals, but it also helped to increase rev­enue and dis­tri­b­u­tion for Graeter’s – who actively par­tic­i­pated in the fund-raising on a per scoop basis.  The cam­paign will be rolled out again next year in twice as many cities.

The Future of QR Codes and Tags

The poten­tial for QR Codes is lim­it­less.  What’s most excit­ing is how they take what social media is doing well now, bring­ing peo­ple together with tech­nol­ogy, and extend­ing it to enhance the experience.

The next gen­er­a­tion of bar­codes will hold even more infor­ma­tion – so much that an Inter­net con­nec­tion will not even be nec­es­sary.  The con­tent will be effec­tively embed­ded in the code.  Imag­ine scan­ning a dig­i­tal code to man­i­fest phys­i­cal reality?

It’s amaz­ing to con­sider where this can go.

How about you?  How can you use QR codes to take advan­tage of this phenomenon?