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Hi. I'm Linda Ruth from Publishing Dojo and today I want to talk to you about QR codes.
I did a print blog about them recently and the response was so enormous with people asking
questions or wanting to discuss it that I wanted to talk to you directly today in my
first vlog of the new year, and by the way happy new year. QR codes are something beloved
by marketers in publishing and practically every field, and considerably less popular
among the people we are marketing to. So are QR codes still important? And why are they
not really taking on that much with the consumers? The answer to the second question is that
most people just... about 40% of people have Smartphones for starters, 40% of the people
who own cell phones, and of that the percentage who have taken the time to learn about QR
codes is considerably smaller. Only about 5% of all cell phone users have even scanned
a QR code as of today and the reason tends to be for a couple of reasons. One is that
they haven't bothered to download the application or learn how to use it. Two is that the payoff
is small, and three is that we as marketers are doing some things wrong. When I say the
payoff is small, it takes as much trouble to scan in a QR code at this time as it does
pretty much to type in a keyword by text. I mean, texting a keyword to a number, it
really doesn't take that much and it can deliver the exact same results. Using a QR code takes
a little bit more and it's, if there isn't a good payoff for it, people just are not
going to be interested. Marketers use QR codes to connect people to their websites, to give
them their contact information, all of that just isn't worth it to the consumer who can
get that information in other ways. Now, if you as a marketer were to set up a program
that would make it really worth it, something that the consumer could only get through the
use of QR codes, an esoteric bit of information, contact with a person they normally wouldn't
be able to contact, somebody high up in the company corporate ranks, a secret, a special
coupon just for QR code users, then you're likely to get a bigger response. Also, in
your marketing piece you need to teach them how to use the QR codes to say, "to cash in
this offer go to such and such an application, download the app and scan the code." Give
them the steps to take and they're more likely to take it. And treat them as part of an in
group. You as the inner circle are going to be able to do this. Why would you want to
do that when it's just as easy to promote through text messaging? The reason is dual.
One is that, using QR codes you're expanding the envelope of marketing, and we as marketers
want to keep on doing that to find out where it will lead us. It's like theoretical science
and applied science. If you stop doing theoretical science pretty soon the applied science catches
up and you've got nowhere to grow, and the same is true in marketing. If you stop doing
the experimental stuff in marketing, pretty soon you've done everything and when somebody
asks you to think outside the box there is really no box there to think outside of and
that might not be a good thing. The other reason is that what we found in publishing,
magazine publishing, is that when a consumer connects with your product at retail level
and puts their name into a mailing list of yours they tend to stay on the mailing list
longer; they don't fall off it as quickly. Now this is a really important piece of information
that I'm going to talk about in a future vlog and explain a little bit more, but for now
I'm going to leave you with this thought: engage and audience member at the retail level
and that audience member is going to be with you longer. So that's it for today and I'll
talk to you soon more about marketing at the retail level using mobile.