Flyers, business cards, posters, product packaging — if you're doing any offline marketing, you're probably including a URL somewhere. And if that URL is just a raw domain name typed in small print at the bottom of the page, you're losing most of the people who might have visited.
QR codes fix this problem. But there's a way to use them that also gives you data, and most people skip that part.
Why a basic QR code isn't enough
A standard QR code just encodes a URL into a scannable image. Someone scans it, they go to your site, and that's it. You have no idea how many people scanned it, which version of the flyer they saw, or whether the traffic from that event was any good.
The fix: don't point your QR code directly at your website. Point it at a tracked short link instead.
When someone scans the QR code, the request hits your tracking server before they land on the page. You get the scan count, the location, and the device — just like you would from any other link click. And if you're running QR codes at multiple events or on different materials, you create a unique tracked link for each one. Now you can compare them.
How to actually generate one
- Take your destination URL and add UTM parameters to it. For a conference flyer, that might be
utm_source=flyer&utm_medium=offline&utm_campaign=nyc_conf_2024. - Paste that tagged URL into a shortener and give it a clean alias (like
yourbrand.co/nyc24). - Take that short link and paste it into a QR code generator. Download the high-resolution PNG.
- Put the QR code on your materials.
Now every scan is a tracked click with a clear source label.
A few things that trip people up
Test it before you print anything. Scan the downloaded QR code from both an iPhone and an Android before you send anything to the printer. A QR code that doesn't scan is worse than no QR code.
Make it big enough. Anything under about an inch square is hard to scan reliably in bad lighting. If it's going on a billboard or a backdrop, scale it up dramatically.
Tell people what they're scanning for. Naked QR codes get ignored. Put a line of text next to it: "Scan for 20% off your first order" or "Scan to download the full guide." Give them a reason.
Use our Free QR Code Generator to create a tracked, high-resolution QR code in about 30 seconds.