How QR Codes Increase Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is essential for businesses to establish their first connections with customers and understand their brand’s value. However, promoting awareness can be challenging, especially if you don’t have the right tools. 

Fortunately, you can create QR Codes to support your branding efforts.

Why should you use QR Codes to increase brand awareness? When used as part of your strategy, QR Codes form a streamlined package: You can use them to track campaigns, customize them to match your brand’s visual aesthetic, and bridge the digital divide between you and your customer base. Of course, there are many different types of QR Codes, each with a unique purpose and benefits.

What is brand awareness, and why does it matter?

Brand awareness refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. The more people who know of a brand and associate it with a particular product or service, the more popular it becomes—and popularity means more revenue in the long run. 

Quantifying brand awareness with numerical metrics is quite tough because it’s a vague yet far-reaching concept in business. 

Despite this, it still has extremely high value because of this “popularity effect.” Some products sell well entirely because of their high level of brand awareness. For example, Tesla sold roughly 485,000 electric vehicles in the first three quarters of 2023, thanks to the brand’s popularity. People love the Tesla brand because of the reputation and values that come with it. 

Let’s look at a few reasons why brand awareness is so vital in business:

Establishes trust

First-time buyers or users might take some convincing to get on board with your product or service. By building brand awareness, consumers learn the value of your brand. This can promote trust in your products or services, leading to sales, customer loyalty, and a bolstered reputation in your industry or market.

Creates association

When you think of the internet, you might think of Google. When you think of computers, you might think of Apple. Good brand awareness means that customers connect your brand with a certain product or service, whether they use it or not. Brand names can even become a part of daily speech, as in “I Googled it.” As a result, we internalize the brand so well that it begins to market itself.

Builds brand equity

Brand equity refers to the brand’s total value from a financial standpoint. This may be the most quantifiable part of brand awareness. When a company has good brand equity, it experiences benefits like:

• Increased prices for products and services
  
  
• Better stock prices
  
  
• Easier to expand product or service lines
  
  
• Higher levels of influence and societal impact

The opposite is also true if you have negative brand equity. For many brands, particularly when they get larger, there is a combination of both positive and negative aspects of brand equity.

How to measure brand awareness

Brand awareness is not an exact science. There’s no quantifiable way to put a figure on the perception of your brand and how this brand awareness equates to sales or turnover. 

For example, it’s complicated to analyze precisely how much revenue huge names like McDonald’s or Samsung generate based on their brand awareness alone. There are too many factors at play. Nonetheless, there are a few metrics you can analyze to gain an understanding of how your brand awareness is developing.

Qualitative measurements

There are three methods you can use to gauge brand awareness on a qualitative level:

• Google Alerts: This handy Google app allows you to set notifications and receive alerts whenever your brand is mentioned online.
  
  
• Social listening: Monitor your engagement levels across social media, not directly from your pages, but from external sources.
  
  
• Brand awareness surveys: Directly ask your customers for feedback about your brand.

Quantitative measurements

If you’re looking for really specific numbers, take a look at these three metrics to analyze the quantitative value of brand awareness:

• Direct traffic: The number of people who directly searched for your website
  
  
• Site traffic numbers: The total amount of people visiting your website from all channels
  
  
• Social engagement: How well people engage directly with your social media channels (i.e., analyzing your insights metrics)

While these measures are “quantitative,” it’s still tricky to say exactly how much revenue they generate in the end. But if they are increasing, it’s a good indicator that your brand awareness is also improving.

The role of QR Code marketing in building brand awareness

Modern-day entrepreneurs shouldn’t underestimate the power of QR Codes. QR Code marketing campaigns allow easy access to information, meaning potential customers don’t need to do much to learn more about you and your offerings. This not only facilitates seamless customer engagement but also boosts client experiences. 

You can link QR Codes to your website, landing pages with information about your business, or even business social media pages to create awareness—it’s only by learning about you first that customers can recognize or recall your brand. 

QR Codes are also effective in promoting brand awareness because they’re customizable. Businesses no longer have to settle for the standard black-and-white boxes anymore, as they can incorporate their brand colors into their QR Code designs and, best of all, add their logos. This makes it easy for customers to recognize and differentiate your brand from the competition. 

How to use QR Codes for digital marketing strategy and brand awareness

If you want to ensure that your brand awareness keeps going up, multi-channel marketing with synchronized brand styling is a tactful method. 

What can you do to make this happen? Consider adding QR Codes to your vault of brand awareness tools. 

With QR Codes, you can track marketing campaigns, customize QR Codes for different marketing materials, and edit and update them for any medium needed.

Here’s a guide on how to leverage QR Codes to build brand awareness:

Create compelling content that provides value

Sure, a QR Code will get your target audience where you want them. But your content will determine whether they stay and engage with you or not. Create high-quality content that aligns with your overall strategy and offers something appealing to your target market. 

For example, if you want to link your QR Code to a landing page, ensure it highlights your unique value proposition and how your business can benefit the reader. This way, it becomes easier for them to create an association between their needs and your brand. 

Design visually appealing QR Codes

Did you know you only have 10 seconds to capture a person’s attention? With audience attention at such a high premium, you can’t afford to do what everybody else is doing—creating typical black-and-white codes—especially if you want to stand out. 

Create QR Codes with visual appeal by incorporating your unique touch into the process. With QR Code Generator PRO, you can easily create head-turning QR Codes by using attention-grabbing colors, choosing unique QR Code frames, and adding captivating CTA (call to action) text. 

Customize QR Codes to match your brand

Your brand is unique and should remain that way. QR Code Generator has taken QR Code technology much further than its simple black-and-white barcode counterpart, allowing your brand to shine through on every QR Code. With the platform, you can use your brand colors on QR Codes and add your logo or an image associated with your business in the middle to promote recognizability and increase your number of scans. 

Pro tip: If you need a bit of guidance on how to design a QR Code, take a look at our guide.

Choose strategic placements to increase scans

Your codes can only effectively promote brand awareness if they’re easily visible and scannable. Ideally, your QR Code size should be a minimum size of 2 x 2 cm to allow your target audience’s cameras to pick them up. It should also be on prominent materials like product packaging or marketing tools to ensure maximum audience reach. 

If you intend to embed QR Codes on marketing materials, pay attention to placement. While it may seem like any location is good enough, choosing the wrong one can affect visibility and limit your scans. Here are some placement tips to keep in mind:

• Place your QR Codes in locations frequented by your audience. 
  
  
• Position your codes at eye level.
  
  
• Choose locations with minimal or no visual clutter to ensure your audience’s attention remains on your code.
  
  
• Ensure your chosen area is well-lit. 
  
  
• If you print your codes, avoid areas directly exposed to the elements to enhance longevity. 

Edit, track, and adjust

When developing your strategy, you’ll come across two types of codes: Static and Dynamic QR Codes. Dynamic QR Codes are a favorite for marketers and business owners, as they’re editable and trackable. If you choose them, keep track of your scans and edit your content based on what you find resonates with your audience. For example, you can swap out written content for a video if QR Codes linked to video content perform better, all without printing a new code. 

With QR Code Generator PRO, you get scan data by city and country, time scanned, unique vs. total scans, and operating devices used, allowing you to determine your codes’ performance, the demographics they attract, and the most popular type of content and marketing channels. 

Based on this data, you can redirect your codes to new destinations to increase your scans and allocate marketing resources to the right demographics. For example, if the highest number of scans are in, say, New York City, you can invest more in marketing efforts there. 

Harmonize multi-channel marketing

Brand awareness works best when the styling and values conveyed through your marketing channels match across multiple platforms. You can size QR Codes to fit each type of platform and adjust their style for individual marketing campaigns or particular products so that customers recognize your brand no matter which channel they view.

There are QR Code solutions for nearly every purpose, meaning their size can be adjusted to fit both print and digital mediums. They can be small enough to fit on a tag like in the image below or even a billboard ad that is viewable and scannable from afar.

Examples of how QR Codes can increase brand awareness

You can obtain brand awareness in a wide variety of ways, but it’s the creative and engaging methods that tend to have the best success. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to use QR Codes in real marketing campaigns that increase brand awareness, we’ve outlined a few examples below.

Food and beverage: A Coupon QR Code

Food trucks rely on brand awareness to maintain repeat customers and get in touch with new ones regularly. To create initial brand trust, you can add a Coupon QR Code on the side of your food truck to give customers access to special offers and encourage them to try out your food. If they are satisfied, there’s a good chance they’ll return and spread the word, which is a fantastic way to increase brand awareness.

Retail: A Social Media QR Code

Social media is one of the top methods to increase brand awareness—it’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a rounded overview of your business and message. If you connect with your customers and get them interested in your content, they’ll likely convert and remain loyal over the long run. 

Say you run a fashion retail shop. You could place Social Media QR Codes on product packaging, tags, table cards at checkout, and in the dressing room to increase your followers. Social media metrics are one of the most tangible methods for quantifying brand awareness, so this would give you a good idea of how interested customers are in your brand.

Real estate: A Business Page QR Code

Real estate agencies often rely heavily on print ads and update their customers through magazines and brochures sent via mail to increase brand awareness and generate interest in specific properties. 

If you’re in the industry, you can ensure your readers easily understand your business by adding a Business QR Code to the materials you send. You can also use a Dynamic URL QR Code to direct potential buyers to new listings on your website, use an Image QR Code to show pictures of your properties, and give an interactive house tour through a Video QR Code.

Professional services: A vCard QR Code

Business owners need to network now more than ever in the increasingly competitive business landscape to maintain their customer base. A vCard QR Code is a perfect networking and brand awareness tool, as it allows you to share your contact details, including phone numbers, email addresses, and LinkedIn profiles, with just a QR scan.

To share your contact information seamlessly, embed the QR Code on business cards and marketing materials, like flyers, and distribute them in networking events, conferences, or client meetings. You can also add Dynamic QR Codes on your cards to provide access to downloadable resources like white papers, industry reports, and legal guides. 

Entertainment and events: An Event QR Code

A successful event can promote brand awareness by getting people to talk about you. QR Codes help by providing easy access to information and improving guest experiences, both of which can help your efforts. 

If you’re in the event industry, you can use Event QR Codes to provide detailed event information like venue, date, and speaker information. You can also use the codes to promote seamless event registration and allow guests to add your events to their digital calendars.  

In entertainment, you can use QR Codes for events to provide schedules, artist information, ticket-purchasing options for upcoming concerts or festivals, or whatever other information you need fans to access. 

Revolutionize brand awareness and visibility with QR Code Generator PRO

QR Codes are some of the best brand awareness allies. Their versatility and customizability allow you to share a wide range of business information and align your marketing materials with your brand identity, establishing trust and promoting recognizability. 

With QR Code Generator PRO, you can easily elevate your brand awareness strategy in the digital-centric world through high-quality, reliable QR Codes. Whether you’re in the entertainment industry or offer professional services like financial consulting, rest assured you’ve found the perfect tool to connect with your audience effectively and boost your brand’s visibility.

Register for QR Code Generator PRO today to create stunning custom QR Codes that give your customers easy access to information and reinforce your brand awareness efforts.