1. Find inspiration on youtube. The internet was pretty much invented so we can watch funny cat videos and banned beer commercials from Germany. You can use this as a tool to think of great marketing ideas. “Great artists steal” – Steve Jobs. Look under the “Most watched” tab to see what people like to watch. You’ll have to watch 20-50 videos to get ideas but when you find a theme you like, form it into your OWN idea and run with it.

2. The internet is teeming with pop-culture knowledge. If you are redesigning a website or doing a print ad, this is a great resource to see whats “in style” or current with celebs. The more you know about what Hollywood is selling, the better you can sell whatever you have. Take tips on color from what celebs are wearing. Style and Trends are ephemeral, and it’s important to keep your eye on them. You won’t want to copy or exploit a trend, but understanding them can help you position your material and can inspire a great campaign.

3. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Get out of the office. I can not stress this enough! To sell your product, you have to see how people interact with products when they are shopping. Go to Victoria’s Secret and (don’t be creepy guys!) listen to the choices girls make when buying their unmentionables (oops, I just mentioned them). You need to understand your target market, where do they go, what do they do? What can you learn from other people catering to the same market?

These are all free things you can do to get ideas for new marketing campaigns. When you see how everything around your product comes together, you can understand much better how it can be sold.

Step 1: Identify a target.
Mobile marketing is just like any other type of marketing, at least at the start. Spend time identifying who you want to scan your QR Codes. Where possible, segment your customers (or potential customers), and figure out which segment you’d like to reach.

Step 2: Identify a location.
Once you’ve identified who you want to target, decide how you’d like to target them. QR Codes can be placed on mailings, advertisements, product tags, billboards, signs or just about anywhere else your customers go. Get creative with it, but make sure to put them in a place that can easily be scanned. Follow common sense guidelines (or don’t), but make sure they can be scanned (the minimum size of qr codes should be at least 1” x 1”).

Step 3: Create a mobile page.
Once you’ve decided who you’d like to target your QR Code advertisement to, and brainstormed ideas of where to put the codes, it’s time to get started creating content for the QR Code. QR Codes, when used most effectively, link to mobile friendly websites. Whichever method you chose, make sure to provide relevant information or promotions that are tailored to your specific audience.

This step doesn’t need to be difficult, and doesn’t require a lot of programming expertise. What it does require is that you come up with something creative. This is your chance to shine and stand out to your customer. You should spend the vast majority of your time on this step. It’s important to get it right. Add videos or other high quality information to bring your sales literature to life. Your goal should be to make it an awesome experience for the people scanning the codes. Don’t shortcut this step. Take your time and get it right.

Step 4: Generate your QR Code.
There are many ways to generate QR codes. There are plenty of free generator out there (a google search will return hundreds of quality generators), but they all come with some limitations. Paid alternatives generally give you the ability to change where your QR Code points to as well as allowing you to easily edit the mobile page. Free alternatives will require that you have your own mobile-friendly site, and won’t allow you to change where the code points to. Many of the paid alternatives also let you track analytics (it’s great to be able to see how many people are scanning your codes, what time of day they’re scanning, etc. Don’t overlook analytics when using QR Codes).

It’s important to note that not all QR Codes are created equally. Make sure to use a url shortening service before creating a QR Code, or better yet, look for a QR Code generator that has url shortening built in. This is going to give you cleaner looking and easier to scan code.

Once you’ve generated your QR Code, save the file and incorporate it in your marketing materials. Go back to step two and check to see how you’re planning on using the code. Make sure to keep the code at least a one inch square, and make sure you don’t cover the white space on the outside of the code. Making your code smaller than one inch makes the code difficult (or impossible) to scan.

Step 5: Track success.
Tracking analytics is always important with mobile marketing, but it’s especially so for your first QR Code campaign. You want to see how your customers are interacting with your codes. Having analytics setup allows you to see how many scans your codes get. This can provide a baseline to test new campaigns against. Measuring success, lets you know when future changes are helpful or when you should look for new ideas. A poor performing first campaign shouldn’t signal failure; but if it’s properly measured, you can have a better chance of hitting a home run with your next campaign. If the campaign is an overwhelming success, you’ll have the information you need to help you recreate it next time.

Step 6: Repeat.
Use what you’ve learned from your first campaign to create follow up campaigns. Use the data you’ve gained to improve and test to see how your changes are performing. Whatever you do, always remember to delight the customer with the QR Code campaign.

Best Practices:
Keep all codes at least one inch squared.
Provide engaging content.
Give a reason for customers to give you contact information (you’ll email them a coupon, tell them about specials, etc).
Have fun with it.

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section below. If you’ve used QR Codes, please feel free to share your experience with us (and everyone else) below in the comments.

The QR Codes are a bit hidden, but once you find and scan them, they’re a great example of what to do right with the website side of QR Codes. Scanning the code takes you to a special mobile site that has 4 links; a video of their Vineyard 518, a link to food and wine pairings, a section on their commitment to the environment and a link for happy hour specials. The site is very easy to navigate on a mobile device and provides several valuable options.

The experience isn’t mind blowing by any stretch of the imagination. The beauty is in the simplicity. It’s not just showing the normal PF Changs site. They’ve created a simple but effective mobile page specifically for the QR Code. They included a link (button) to a youtube video rather than embedding (mobile embedding is still tricky and doesn’t work consistently across all browsers, links to youtube work much better currently).

The only downside to the campaign is that they failed to shorten the url (http://www.pfchangs.com/barcode/index.html). This makes for a bigger code that’s more difficult to scan. It’s probably nitpicking, but shortening the url is fairly trivial and could have been easily included. Doing so would have made it even easier to scan the code, especially if food is spilled on it, it gets wet, etc. These drink coasters aren’t impervious to the elements generally found in a restaurant setting. Making them even easier to scan is the one missing element. That said, they are easy enough to scan, and I had no trouble scanning a photo of one (see the image below, curtesy of @howardplum).

What do you think of the PF Changs campaign? Do you see this trend increasing in other restaurants? How can other businesses take this model and improve on it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.