QR Tags: New Ways to Market Your Tradeshow

If you have not already seen these square barcodes, known as QR Tags, on products,  print ads, billboards and elsewhere, you will soon.  And smart tradeshow marketers and exhibit managers will begin using them in large numbers in graphics and other marketing materials to meet their tradeshow goals.

What they are:

Invented in Japan, where they are everywhere, QR tags (short for Quick Response) are two dimensional codes place on - or integrated into -print ads, outdoor signs, store windows and even business cards.  For the trade show exhibitor, they might be printed into your display graphics, integrated into pre-show mailings and even post-show follow-ups.

A smart phone, such as an Android or iphone, scans the codes and delivers to the mobile screen any number of data rich information: web sites, product demo videos, coupons and landing pages to collect additional information.  The Hacker Group, a direct/digital marketing agency in Seattle, has rightly called this technology “a seamless link between the physical world and the online world.” Wow!

How they work:

QR tags can be generated and printed by anyone using readily available software.  Your printer or tradeshow graphics designer can generate a tag as part of your display graphics.  The can be produced and added to existing graphics or incorporated into new graphic designs. These tags are coded with the data and information information directed to your prospects. Tags are then scanned by smart phones or camera phones and in a matter of seconds, your banked information is transferred to the mobile smart phone. Tons of information can be transferred in seconds.

Benefits for the tradeshow exhibitor and exhibit manager:

Smart phones are everywhere, especially at trade shows.  With QR Tags, you can become an early adopter, differentiate yourself from the competition and connect with your target audience. This new technology tool allows for great creativity in putting together your marketing campaigns.  Here are just a few ideas to get you started.

Pre-Show Mailers - the QR tag might contain this data:

-  Company web site, or better yet, a show specific page.  Scanning a tag is much easier and faster than typing a long URL address.
- Map of your booth location, with hours for any special presentations, seminars, demos or in-booth promotions.  Make it easy to find you, especially a large shows.
-  Special invitation to an after-show party or hospitality suite.  Many times, its where the real business gets done.
-  Offer for a special giveaway

Trade show graphics - the QR tag might contain this data:

-  Product demonstration video
-  Landing page to request more information (including need, budget and time frame pre-qualification)
-  Video of customer testimonials
-  Coupon or show special pricing
-  Special giveaway - such as the i-pad promotion shown above

Post-show followup - the QR tag might contain this data:

-  Business card information on the thank you note
-  Video demonstration of product prospect was interested in
-  Customer testimonials

NOTE: For hot prospects, you may want to use those old reliable technologies: the telephone, paper and pen.

Moore's Law revisited

I'm not much of a techno-geek, but even I have heard many times of Moore's Law.  In 1965, Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, published a paper describing a trend in which the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years.  The law has shown its usefulness many times in our recent digital age especially in relation to computer memory, storage, processing speeds, even manufacturing costs.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that Moore's Law probably does not apply to raw information.  I'm referring to messages - useful or not - generated in our world today through the traditional means of marketing and advertising such as print ads, TV, radio and billboards and new media made possible by the internet, such as this blog you are reading, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, You Tube and on and on.   Some of you may remember that Google used to show you the number of pages it was searching to provide you with the results page(s) of your search phrase. In 2005, Eric E. Schmidt, president of Google decided to take off the feature on the Google home page giving the number of indexed pages.  The last day stated "Searching 8,168,684,336 Web pages." In 2008, the number of unique pages indexed by Google had reached 1 trillion!  That's a big increase in just three years.

There's a mind-boggling amount of information out there and its both challenging and fun to find the information that's useful right now.  Challenging as to not get too distracted ...  fun because the possibilities seem endless.  Bill Gates states in the introduction of his book "Business @ the Speed of Thought" that "business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the past 50."  The book was written in 1999, and this statement sounds about right.  He also writes that the "computer industry is about as far in development as cars were in 1910 and planes were in 1930."  Amazing.

I hope you'll continue to read Integra Display (the blog) and perhaps find useful information here. We have indexed this blog on Technorati - AJ4A36M9B9S7 - to make it easier for those interested in effective trade show and event marketing to find. (We'll also discuss interesting people like Gordon E. Moore, Eric E. Schmidt and Bill Gates...)

References:  The New York Times, Wikipedia and Bill Gates' book referenced above.