Do you spend your evenings and weekend sifting through the newspaper and magazing, scissors in hand, ready to cut out coupons or discount vouchers? Well if you do, you are one of a dying breed. Nowadays it seems that companies are no longer wasting time designing a pretty paper coupon for potential customers to cut out, but instead print a barcode that people can scan directly with their smartphone camera. The offer or coupon is then inside the person's phone. No more tatty pieces of paper to carry around in your wallet. Some people are even skipping the paper part of the process and scanning these barcodes directly from their computer screen.
The most popular form of barcode nowadays is the QR code. QR stands for Quick Response and it does just that. It allows the smartphone camera to quickly take an image of the 2 dimensional barcode and uncover the content of the barcode. These can contain an assortment of information, allows for consumers to easily retrieve whatever information is in it.
Mobile barcodes have become prevalent in society, with QR codes being one that is most widely used. It can be looked as somewhat of a phenomenon: using your device to scan the mysterious code and seeing just what message, deal, or information is contained in it. It's a great marketing tool but in the eyes of consumers, they want something out of scanning the QR code.
As the number of smartphone users continue to grow, many consumers would at least try to scan the QR code once. However, if they don't find the information useful or relevant, the chances of them scanning the codes again is slim. In order to have constant consumer interaction with QR codes, consumers want discounts or deals. These incentives will drive users to putting the effort to scan these barcodes.
There is a contrast to the goals of consumers and marketers for QR codes. Consumers want discounts and promotions while businesses want to market their product or enhance their brand, so QR codes usually would contain information about their company. If a person scans the QR code for the first time and finds that the information is not useful to them, it may discourage them from scanning future barcodes.
It is the user experience that is the most important in this form of mobile marketing. Companies cannot simply expect users to continually scan these codes without giving them what they want. So the goal for marketers would be to not only provide content or information about the company, but also to adhere to consumer expectations every so often. In this case, consumers want discounts or deals. Otherwise, mobile barcode marketing will be essentially useless.
Paul Tomes invites you to use PassKit for free. Using PassKit's Pass Creator you can easily create and distribute Passbook Passes. As well as an intuitive web interface for complete control of your Passbook Passes, the 2D Barcodes are automatically generated for you; and you can store whatever you want in the Barcode.
If you don't have iOS6 and the Passbook app on your iPhone yet, then you can simply try the Passbook Barcode Generator. You'll be able to quickly get your business ready for Passbook integration.
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