A common misconception is that you can’t track your return on investment (ROI) very easily with print based campaigns. The fact is that there are many different ways to go about this, but some of the more popular methods include demographic promotional codes or regional telephone numbers. Recently however more and more companies are utilising QR codes.
A QR Code (otherwise known as quick response code) is a small square digital barcode that you will have seen appearing on all major print based advertisements over the last 5 years. They are basically a unique image identifier that’s associated to a specific web address and work in the same way as a ‘TINY’ url generator does. When a smart phone or tablet takes a picture of the QR code an app will scan the image and recognise its configuration and send the user to a designated web address.
QR codes are now widely used by services to display information they don’t want or can’t fit on an advertisement. Train time tables are a good example of this as the posters will promote the experience and prices while the QR code will take the user to the timetable that’s appropriate for them. Using an analytics program will allow the train operator to establish trends and popularity of specific posters and therefore target their future campaigns more effectively.
You can find free QR code generators easily online searching on Google. With most, all you have to do is copy and paste the web address you want the QR code to go to and hit generate.