Using QR Codes in your School’s Marketing Strategy

It’s amazing how web-based technology is changing the way we do things. It is also significantly changing how we are marketing our private schools.

While I have written a lot about web-based marketing strategies, I haven’t discussed QR codes.

Until now.

QR stands for Quick Response. It’s a code that you might see on your airline ticket, on a print ad, or direct mail postcard. It looks like a square bar code. This allows a smartphone user to scan the QR code into their phone and then a webpage is launched. It helps the viewer get to the webpage faster than typing in the URL. And keep in mind that is it smartphone driven—and smartphones will be used by 50% of cell phone users by the end of this year.

Now think about some applications in your school’s marketing effort.

For starters, you could include a QR code in every print ad and direct mail campaign. The interested reader can scan the code and go directly to a web landing page that might include text, pictures, a short video or an inquiry form.

In the past you might never have known who was actually responding to your ads. Now, you can know how many hits your ad is yielding and how many people are responding directly. It can give you instant feedback and results for your marketing effort.

That’s only the beginning of the ideas.

You could use a QR code on your business card so that your contact information could be uploaded by anyone who scans the code—your prospective parents, current parents, donors, and anyone else.  It could even take them to a webpage with a short video greeting from you.

You could post QR codes throughout your campus to provide prospective parents and students with information and video testimonials of what goes on in the classrooms, labs and on the athletic fields.

You could even post a QR code at the main points of entry on your campus directing your parents or visitors to “like” your school’s Facebook page or to access your most recent newsletter.

The possibilities are endless.

What about you and your school? How are you using QR codes to market your school?