The QR Code - What It Is and Why You Need It for Your Small Business
A “Super” Big Scan
I recall watching Super Bowl LVI (56) last February with my parents in their living room. The game itself was an instant classic, with the Los Angeles Rams prevailing over the Cincinnati Bengals by a score of 23-20. However, when I went to bed that night, I wasn’t thinking about how competitive the game was, or how amazing the halftime show was. Instead, I was thinking about one of the most unique commercials (not to mention, Super Bowl commercial) that I had ever seen.
The ad, promoting Coinbase (where one can buy and sell Cyrpto, Bitcoin, etc. - that’s a blog post for another day), was unique in the sense that all it entailed was a QR code floating around on a black screen (similar to how DVD Players did in the early 2000s - I hope I’m not dating myself here), with some eery, faded arcade music in the background. This went on for 60 seconds. Puzzled, I looked over at my parents on the couch, who looked back at me in the same way, as if we were watching a horror film or someone attempting to hijack the national broadcast feed with this very jarring, bizarre visual. My dad exclaimed, “Well, see what it is!”
I quickly grabbed my phone and opened my QR code reader app. At that moment, I was scanning that very code, along with many others within the whopping 100 million viewers of the game and commercial. Coinbase reportedly paid $14 MILLION for that commercial. And what happened? Their app crashed because there were 20 million hits to their app in under a minute. Everyone was attempting to win a “crypto jackpot”, and evidently, it was quite popular. I’m not sure if anyone did win that lottery or if they had to shell out their own cash in order for a chance to win, but to quote my best friend’s dad, “money looks better in the bank!” Moving on…
Leveraging QR Codes for Your Small Business
I switch the focus now to you and your business. Though you might not pay eight figures for a Super Bowl commercial, your business can use QR codes to route potential customers to landing pages on your website, your social media pages, or literally anything else. A QR code is essentially a two-dimensional barcode hyperlink, which is scanned by a camera and then quickly routes the device that scanned it to the page where they were intended to visit. Though this technology originated in 1994, it has gained tremendous momentum throughout the past half decade.
In fact, a large number of restaurants, big and small, began leveraging this technology during the COVID-19 pandemic - in lieu of physical menus in restaurants that would promptly require disinfecting, most opted to have customers scan a QR code from their phone and view the menu online, usually via a landing page on the restaurant’s website. This still occurs - in fact, just a few weeks ago, I was in Chicago for a good friend’s bachelor party. One of the places we stopped to for an afternoon cocktail didn’t have physical menus whatsoever, just a big ol’ QR code plastered onto the table for all of us to scan.
How to Create a QR Code for Your Business
There are a plethora of QR code generators all around the web that you can use to make yours. Some I would personally recommend are QR Code Monkey and QR Code Generator. They both basically do the same thing, which is, of course, to create a QR code. All you need to tell the generators are where you want people to go after they scan it and BAM, you’re done.
Wrap-Up
Well, that was fun - I hope you enjoyed learning more about QR codes and how they can help your small business. They’re interesting little critters, aren’t they? If you want to learn even more about generating QR codes, or if you want some extra help in generating yours or have other general digital marketing questions, we’d love to hear from you! Drop us a line below. Thanks for reading!
