Promoting your Business on Mobiles using QR barcodes

Building your online presence for your business can be a challenge.  There are well over a trillion public accessible webpages and this figure is growing exponentially, so getting your site seen can be a difficult challenge.

There are many ways to promote your website, these include search engine optimization, using Google Ad Words and using social media.  However, with the rise of referral organisations, such as BNI, more traditional methods of business promotion and word of mouth are still very much relevant.

The Question is?

How do you link your online presence together with the more traditional methods of business promotion?  Most businesses answer this question by printing their email and web addresses on their literature and business cards.  But this relies on people remembering your business when they are next at a PC, which is often long after the initial contact.

There is a way of introducing your online presence within the initial contact, simply and easily, yet few businesses are using it.

This is through the use of QR codes.  These are two dimensional bar codes which are often seen on airline tickets and some post office stamps.  They can be scanned by virtually all smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian) and can contain text, URLs or other data.

What can QR Codes do for you?

By putting a QR Code on your literature and business cards, you can introduce new contacts with their mobile online presence within their initial contact.  I have put the QR Code shown above on the back of my business cards (with a caption beneath informing people that they can scan it with their phone for more information).

How do you produce a QR Code?

QR Codes are not the sole domain of large corporates with buckets of cash to spend on producing these things.  Anyone can produce one easily and quickly.  There are many QR Code generators on the web.  All you have to do is provide a URL which you want to promote.

What to promote using a QR Code?

First of all, you need to bear in mind that whatever you promote will probably be seen on a mobile phone, so your main website might not be the best URL to promote.  The following items might be possibilities for content of a URL promoted via a QR Code:

• Summary of your business
• Contact details
• Downloadable vCard
• Picture optimised for mobile
• Links to relevant URLs (e.g. twitter, facebook, etc)
• Your RSS feed
• Embedded YouTube video of your product or Elevator pitch (optimised for playback on a mobile)
• Map of your location
• Directions to your location if the phone has GPS

Conclusion

QR Codes are a powerful way to drive more traffic to your online presence and help create a stronger first impression.  They can be created by almost anyone quickly, easily and for free!  The technology is there, but few businesses are making best use of it.  Remember that any URLs referred to within a QR Code will almost certainly be viewed on a mobile device, so optimise it accordingly.  I hope this information has been of help to you.

If you still feel at a loss, please contact myself Kirstie Birr and for a fee I can get you set up.