It has come to my attention that despite the article published in last month’s magazine, some advertisers are falling prey to some unscrupoulous companies that are charging some silly money to provide QR bar codes which are available GRATIS – TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE to anyone.
Again here is another example of businesses being taken advantage of by co-nationals. I can understand providing a service for clients who have no time to do it themselves for a nominal small fee (although this is not an issue as it takes a few minutes), what I do not condone is blinding a client with science in order to make an inexcusable charge.
Smart phones have unleashed another way to further internet marketing. Anyone with a ‘smart’ phone can now take a picture of this type of barcode to make immediate contact with the website within it and download other information also embedded within.
No need to jot down contact details, no need to take and give business cards. Just scan the QR code with your smart phone camera and all the information within the bar code can be stored on your phone, and you can go to the website instantly. This is not entirely new, it started being used in the USA a while back but smart phones have increased its popularity.
These are black & white square barcodes, usually the size of a postage stamp. They are starting to appear on adverts, leaflets, even items of clothing like ‘T’ shirts. I would say they are probably more popular with the younger generations for obvious reasons, while conventional methods still prevail until further developments in this field take place.
There are several programs available that can be downloaded “Free” of charge on to the smart phone for the purpose of scanning the codes. All you need to do is point your phone/camera at the code to collect the information.
While some companies are trying to exploit this new concept and sell the bar codes and even items of clothing with QR Codes printed on them, the truth is that anyone can create his or her own QR Code FRE of charge. All you need is to connect to a website with a QR Code generator and simply make as many of your own to keep and use as you will.
While we intend to adopt these Bar Codes for our own marketing purposes, we would like to inform our advertisers that we intend to gradually introduce them free of charge to our paying advertisers who ask for them to be shown.
