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Why QR Codes Are Essential For Small Business Branding
By Rodney Laws | Branding
Small business branding is vital for spreading the word about your business in a manner that highlights your uniqueness. With today’s highly competitive and saturated markets, branding is what sets you apart from your competitors. When you combine branding with QR Codes, that’s the perfect way to convey your brand and boost your results.
No branding is the same as trying to promote your business with a blank piece of paper. You don’t need to be a branding expert to recognize how that would bring in literally zero results. Branding is what gives your business a personality and highlights your uniqueness, which is especially crucial for small businesses.
Around 627,000 new businesses are created each year, and that number is expanding as new technology and ideas are developed at an increasingly rapid pace. So if you want to grow permanent roots in your industry as a small business, that all begins with branding.
One of the best ways to activate and implement small business branding is to use QR Codes. They are customizable for your brand identity, boost both print and digital marketing campaigns, and even scale with your business. Let’s take a look at how this works.
All branding begins with a few core design elements such as colours, your logo, and a consistent graphic design style across marketing mediums like business cards, print ads, product packaging, email campaigns, and social media. Keeping these elements uniform enables your audience to connect a particular type of content with your brand.
Fortunately, there is no limit to the brand customization on your QR Codes. Style them with brand colours, your logo in the middle, and a relevant CTA (call to action) in a custom frame. You’ve also got the option to download them into four different image file formats (JPG, PNG, SVG, EPS), giving you full control over how they’re used in your total graphic designs later.
The primary reason why QR Codes have become so popular is that they close the gap between print and digital. Consider this: You design a traditional billboard ad, pedestrians view it, and want to make a purchase, they try to search for the link and can’t find it, so they give up.
This is why your print ads need QR Codes! Instead of making customers guess, you can instantly access your digital content and drive purchases on print mediums with a fully trackable process based on QR Code scan data. As a result, small businesses can harness the power of QR Codes by using them on items as simple as a shop window or display signage and then get a complete sight of how much revenue they generate.
By the way, QR Codes work just as well for digital marketing campaigns, especially if your goal is to direct traffic to mobile platforms and apps. Each QR Code you create comes with a short URL; a cleaned up and faster version of longer links. You can then add this short URL in places like emails and social media copies, so the graphic designs are neat, and users can view the same content via desktop, tablet, and mobile.
When it comes to small business branding, one of the most cost-effective methods is to build up followers on social media. Creating and posting your content on social media costs nothing but your time.
Another reason to choose QR Codes for small business branding is that when you choose QR Codes that are Dynamic (as opposed to Static), they can be edited later. So if you decide that you need to update a link or even change your type of QR Code, you can do so at any point without having to design a new QR Code. No more reprints due to updates!
In the case that you do end up needing multiple QR Codes as your business grows, you have two options. One, you can use QR Code API to create a large amount of Static QR Codes, and two, you can create a new QR Code for each campaign by creating an account at QR Code Generator PRO.
No matter what industry your small business is focused on, the type of content you’d like to share, or what you’d like to use QR Codes on, there are limitless possibilities. QR Codes are common among many industries, including retailers, restaurants, tourism, business, and much more. You can also use them on all sorts of mediums to share content such as videos, social media profiles, PDFs, events, etc. In a nutshell, QR Codes cover the entire scope of small business branding.
To put the full flexibility of QR Codes into context, here are a few examples that are sure to pique your interest.
Great brand strategies begin with business cards because networking is the first way to spread the word about your small business. When you combine print business cards with a vCard Plus QR Code, it creates a digital business card that makes networking a lot more manageable. You no longer need to print out tons of business cards, and when you want to share your contact info, the other person can scan your QR Code and automatically view, download, and even share it.
If your business sells particular products, the design of your product packaging ties directly into your branding strategy. To make product packaging more interactive, you can use a Rating QR Code to get feedback from your customers about which products they like the best. For small businesses, this is particularly helpful because you can use it to refine your products and improve customer satisfaction
If your business is in the retail industry and you have a physical shop, a pop-up party is a perfect way to launch your brand. You can use an Event QR Code on print event invitations. These QR Codes enable readers to view all the event info via mobile, automatically register, and even add the event to their digital calendars. Because you can keep track of registrations via the QR Code, you can also plan your event based on the number of people coming.
If you’re in the wellness industry, you can use a QR Code on a poster ad to give customers automatic access to your social media profiles. If your focus is on Facebook, in particular, you can use a Facebook QR Code that readers can scan and like your page without even having to visit it directly. You might use such a poster within the spa itself, in public spaces nearby, and on your spa window. Alternatively, if your goal is to grow followers for multiple social profiles, you can use a Social Media QR Code instead.
Many restaurants have begun using QR Codes for things like menus and coupons because they’re so much easier to share and don’t require printing out paper. If your restaurant is new, you might try incentivizing customers to try your food with a Coupon QR Code on your Facebook or Instagram pages. On Facebook, a Coupon QR Code is a perfect addition to your banner image, while on Instagram, you can use a QR Code directly on your post image. QR Codes are particularly useful for Instagram because you can’t post clickable links to give users direct access via your QR Code instead of needing to visit your bio.
Author:
Adriana Stein is a freelance content writer for QR-Code-Generator.com by Egoditor. Originally from Oregon, USA, she is now based in Hamburg, Germany, where she specializes in creating and managing SEO and content marketing strategies for businesses across a variety of industries. Care to follow her on LinkedIn?
