Keep Your Fashion Marketing Strategy On Trend With QR Codes

If you think beautiful clothes and eye-catching jewelry are enough to attract and retain customers in the fashion industry, you may want to think again. No matter how amazing your fashion brand’s apparel is, if your marketing strategy isn’t on point, you probably won’t build a loyal customer base. 

That’s because today’s consumers crave interactions with their favorite brands. They don’t want to be marketed at; they want to build a two-way relationship with you. 

Enter the Quick Response (QR) Code: a simple symbol that can deliver powerful, game-changing fashion marketing experiences.  

Where QR Codes fit in fashion marketing

The beauty of QR Codes lies in their versatility. Think of these neat little symbols as buttons your customers press to open a portal to your online ecosystem—be it your social media channels, app, e-commerce website, or even a dedicated page for an upcoming event.

QR Codes are small and data-driven. However, the major difference between traditional 1D Barcodes and QR Codes lies in their functionality. While 1D Barcodes help you keep track of inventory and sales, QR Codes help your customers better understand and engage with your brand. 

Plus, you can place them anywhere and everywhere. Here are some examples:

• TV ads and billboards: You can position a QR Code in a TV commercial or on a billboard to entice viewers to visit your website—perhaps for a flash sale, new product launch, or event sign-up. 
  
  
• Around the store: Adding a QR Code to table tents at the checkout counter, near the dressing rooms, or next to product displays creates several opportunities for customers and prospects to connect with your brand’s online presence.  
  
  
• Packaging: By putting QR Codes on your packaging or in-store shopping bags, you can encourage customers to follow you on social media, share their feedback, or leave a product review.  
  
  
• Clothing tags: As consumers become conscious about shopping, QR Codes on clothing tags can help them make more ethical fashion choices. With QR Code labels, you can provide your customers with an overview of how your pieces were designed, sourced, and made. 
  
  
• Event marketing: Brand events and runway shows are fixtures in any fashionista’s calendar. Whether your brand is sponsoring a show or unveiling its latest collection at a show, event marketing QR Codes on print materials like invitations enable your guests to simply scan to find out all they need to know and register. 

(Want to learn more about Barcodes vs. QR Codes? Check out our quick and simple guide.)

5 benefits of using QR Codes in your fashion marketing strategy

If you haven’t yet begun to weave QR Codes into your marketing initiative, now is the time to do it. Far beyond a nice-to-have, QR Codes are essential tools that can help marketers level up their strategies. 

Here’s a closer look at the main benefits. 

1. Maintain a consistent brand identity

According to research from Deloitte, 84% of consumers say it’s very important for brands to provide consistent, positive interactions across touchpoints. 

It’s easy to see why. Consistency and trust go hand in hand. For example, if your brand’s e-commerce site is wildly different from your social media channels or the in-store experience, consumers simply won’t be able to build an affinity for your company. 

Assuming you’ve got these aspects covered and all is cohesive, adding QR Codes to the mix is a small but mighty way to supercharge brand consistency and increase brand awareness.

That’s because, on the backend, you can match your QR Code to your branding: implementing your brand colors, logo, tone, and style for a cohesive customer experience. 

 2. Streamline the shopping experience

Despite online retail becoming a first stop for buying new clothes, fashion marketing—and luxury brands—still rely heavily on print ad spending. QR Codes are the perfect way to take print campaigns to the next level.

First off, adding QR Codes to print ads is a clever way to derive data-driven insights about how and when customers react to your print ads. Without these metrics, it’s impossible to understand who your ad resonated with and how well it performed.  

Secondly, PwC research shows that today’s consumers rank speed and convenience as two of the most important facets of the customer experience. 

By placing a QR Code in your print ad campaigns, your target audience can simply scan and shop—and take an instant leap from the ad they see on a billboard to your online store. Talk about convenience! 

3. Collect data and glean insights from your marketing efforts

QR Codes might be small, but the number of insights they deliver is almost infinite. 

When you take a data-led approach to QR Code marketing, you unlock the opportunity to gather critical insights about your target audience, such as:

• Location: You can review where people have scanned your code by country or city, highlighting where your QR Codes are performing well—and where they aren’t. 
  
  
• Unique scans: This shows you how many different devices scanned your QR Code, giving you an overall indication of customer engagement for the campaign. 
  
  
• Timing: You can view scans by month, day, and even hour, which is valuable for analyzing campaign performance over time. 

Remember, too, that when you track QR Code scans alongside other data within third-party tools like Google Analytics, the entire customer journey becomes transparent and insightful. 

4. Minimize friction when priorities change

At this point, it’s crucial to emphasize that there are two types of QR Codes: Static and Dynamic. While the links in Static codes can’t be changed once they’re created, Dynamic QR Codes—as the name suggests—are flexible and editable. 

With Dynamic codes, you can easily shift your marketing focus without needing to reprint a scan. All you need to do is edit the back end: swap out links, update your display page, and change the content.

5. Win over conscious-minded customers with a commitment to sustainability

McKinsey research shows that young shoppers actively seek out fashion brands with strong sustainability credentials. 

While QR Codes might not initially make you think of environmental sustainability, they actually do wonders for eliminating paper waste. For example, instead of adding leaflets and marketing brochures to your e-commerce orders, you can create more sustainable QR Codes to insert on your packaging to cut back on waste.

Fashion houses leading the charge with QR Code-driven business practices

By now, we’re sure you’re ready and raring to start using QR Codes to boost your marketing efforts.

The next question, of course, is: how do you do it?

Here’s some inspiration from leading fashion brands that are already harnessing the power of QR Codes to elevate the customer experience across touchpoints. 

Note: These brands were found during our online research for this article.

Nike offers customers outfit-of-the-day inspiration

Have you ever seen an outfit you love on a mannequin in a store but then not been able to find the exact clothing items? That’s the kind of friction today’s consumer has no time for.

Luckily, you can remedy this issue with QR Codes. Just look at Nike. At its flagship store in New York City, it used QR Codes to create a “Shop the Look” feature, where customers could go up to any mannequin in the store, scan the QR Code, and then see all the items the mannequin is wearing on their phone.

Even better, Nike connected its QR Code to its store’s dressing room, allowing customers to select their size and send the clothing to a fitting room to try on. 

For customers, the whole experience felt futuristic, hyper-personalized and effortless, which is a winning combination. Plus, for Nike, it was super easy to put together by using a Dynamic QR Code.

Patagonia promotes sustainability by reducing paper waste

Remember what we said about sustainability and QR Codes? Patagonia is living proof of just how powerful these symbols can be for combating waste.

As you may know, Patagonia is a brand with sustainability deeply woven into its core values. In 2022, it took another great environmental step by digitizing its tags with QR Codes. 

According to the company’s director of global packaging and branding, Jennifer Patrick, the move diverted an estimated 174,000 pounds of paper waste from landfills. 

Not only are Patagonia’s actions positive for the environment, but they’re positive for the company’s brand reputation, too, highlighting to customers that the brand authentically lives out its promise of causing less harm to the environment.  

Diesel Denim protects its brand with authentication technology

Another innovative use case of QR Codes comes from Diesel Denim, which uses the tech to help customers avoid counterfeit online sellers. 

To do this, Diesel started printing QR Code clothing labels into the waistband of its denim jean products, which consumers could scan with their smartphone to confirm the denim’s authenticity. 

Not only did this move help Diesel protect against illegal selling, but it also showed customers that Diesel cares about giving them an authentic, safe shopping experience. 

How to weave QR Codes into the fabric of your marketing strategy

The best use of QR Codes is to think strategically. Look at the campaigns you have lined up for the months ahead and think about how you can use QR Codes to elevate the results. 

If you’re not sure where to start, one brilliant, easy way to implement QR Codes is with coupon marketing. Everyone appreciates a great deal, so a Coupon QR Code marketing campaign is a surefire way to kickstart your QR Code journey with lots of scans. 

Once you’ve finalized your idea, creating a QR Code is easy with platforms like QR Code Generator. In a few simple steps, you can create a QR Code with style that delivers your key marketing messages. 

One more tip! Before you launch, always make sure to try the QR Code for yourself to make sure it’s working as it should. 

Choose a fashion-friendly QR Code Generator with QR Code Generator PRO

QR Codes are invaluable tools for marketers. Not only do they provide you with tons of valuable insights about your customer behavior and preferences, but they also provide customers with a layer of convenience and sustainability that today’s consumers want.

Ready to elevate your customer relationships, gather key insights, and boost sales? We’re here to help. With QR Code Generator PRO’s intuitive QR Code software, it’s easy to create beautiful, branded QR Codes that elevate your fashion brand’s marketing success. 

Get started with QR Code Generator PRO today to see how we can elevate your fashion marketing strategies!