While your own Web business may not have the resources of a Best Buy, Target or Home Depot, there is a highly accessible marketing tool that all three heavyweights and countless other retailers are currently relying upon to expand their audiences and increase customer engagement. It is called QR code marketing, and here’s what you need to know to get started.

What are QR codes?
If you haven’t yet utilized one as a marketer or used one as a consumer, you have surely seen one of these two-dimensional black and white barcodes inside a magazine, on a menu or a business card, or on any number of physical goods ranging from cans of dog food to cereal boxes. Short for Quick Response, QR codes were originally popularized in Japan by a local subsidiary of Toyota as a tracking device for the automobile manufacturing industry. The ability for business owners to allow customers instant access to online coupons and other marketing content through the use of scanning applications on their mobile devices has led to the widespread adoption of QR codes in many parts of the world, but the trend has been slower to gain traction in the U.S.

What are all these squares?

• Symbol: other name for QR Code, used from graphic context perspective
• Quiet zone or margin: is used to isolate the code from other packaging information. This zone is four modules wide
• Position detection patterns: located in three of the four corners. This allows 360 degree (omni-directional) high-speed reading of the code
• Data area: is an array of rows and columns. Each cell is stored as a binary number (1 and 0). Error correction codes are inserted into this area as well
• Alignment pattern: they can appear In more complex QR Codes and they will be located in the lower right hand corner. This pattern allows the QR reader to correct for distortion when the code is bent or curved.The number of alignment patterns used depends upon how much information is being encoded and appear on Version 2 and higher
• Timing pattern: helps to detect the position of each cell in the QR Code
• Version info: Span from Version 1 (21 x 21 modules) to Version 40 (177 x 177 modules)
• Format info: It contains the error correction rate and mask pattern of QR Code. The format information is read first when the code is decoded
• Error-correction (Reed-Solomon code): is applied to restore the data when a part of QR Code is missing. The restoration rate varies on 4 different error correcting levels. For example, if a damaged area is up to 15% of the entire code size, its data can be restored by level M error correcting

Rokit Designs practices

• The less modules the QR Code has the less it is prone to errors
• Always try to use the short links service when coding long URL links to get more optimization and a more durable QR Code
• Add Extra description after /slash in url link. This way the QR Code is more readable for users when scanned. http://goo.by/name-of-my-company
• Use level Q or H error correction level for QR Codes used in factories or dirty places. For offices or clean environments the largest amount of data may be selected - level L. Level M is still most frequently selected and it is used by default.

What’s the value for marketers?
Right now, the potential is unlimited, which is why top retailers such as the three mentioned above are taking full advantage of this opportunity to instantly connect with their millions of mobile customers. Whether the QR code is placed on a print advertisement, a physical product or distributed through various forms of digital media such as email, social media and blogs, the code ensures real-time access for mobile users to the marketing message of a business owner’s choice. These messages can include the notification of a time-sensitive offer, the announcement of a new Facebook contest or a YouTube video, an alert for a highly anticipated product just received or an update to a store’s revised holiday hours of operation. You can encode either a link to a website, a message to a friend, or your contact details. Then turn the information into a mobile barcode, one that can be printed on stationery, advertising or packaging, a t-shirt, or even built into a website or a Facebook page.

Basic QR Codes

There are hundreds of QR Code Generators on the internet that are free, but if you feel its too confusing to do or your time is limited then Rokit Designs can create a Basic QR Code for you for $7 a code.

Custom QR Codes

With customized QR Codes your marketing can become more interesting and colorful. QR Codes come, by default, in black and white pixels and sometimes it is hard to include such codes in the color scheme of a marketing campaign without some design sacrifices. All these colorful pixels can be more interesting to scan and can reflect and enhance the brand, product or service at first glance.

Custom QR Code art is trying to solve this problem with uniquely designed QR Codes while still retaining its scanability. Another important aspect is that users can easily identity the brand or company behind the custom code and this delivers a bigger impact with proof of authenticity that this code is safe to scan.

Rokit Designs can design a custom QR code for $20. A custom QR code can have your logo, picture, or even a certain color to match with your color scheme.

QR campaigns

Today QR Codes are appearing in marketing and advertising campaigns on posters, digital screens, products, estate agent boards, business cards, promotions, etc. They have already been used by the big mainstream media companies and brands - they’re all starting to use QRs!

An additional monthly charge os $14.99 is needed in order to track QR Codes 25 QR codes. Anything above 25 is $1.00 a link a month.

QR Codes are catching on

In first months of 2011 statistics shows explosive growth of QR Codes and also huge growth has been reported by Microsoft tag.

Worldwide usage grew 61.9% over Q4 2010. The US experienced 181.1% growth in Q1 2011 over Q4 2010 and comparing Q1 2010 and Q1 2011, US growth was 630%.

Top 5 growing countries for Q1/2011

1. United States (181.1% )
2. United Kingdom (166.5%)
3. Netherlands (146.3%)
4. Spain (94.4%)
5. Canada (94.4%)