Mobile-tagging, or QR Codes, provide immediate response for return on marketing investment and simplify the marketing challenge of integrating social media with your ongoing community hospital marketing efforts. Best of all, it is practically FREE!
What is a QR Code?
QR Codes – or “Quick Response” Codes – are small, scannable, 2D barcodes that can link to a multitude of digital content. These little square modules may be read by any smartphone or mobile phone with a camera, and they instantly connect users to additional encoded content such as text, videos or specific web site URLs.
QR Codes may be placed in newspaper ads, magazines, billboards, posters, direct mailers, email messages, web sites, blogs and just about any other medium, offering consumers simple and convenient information retrieval.
Your healthcare audience will be able to quickly access additional content, while you will be able to immediately measure the effectiveness of your campaign (by tracking the QR Code interactions).
FREE QR Code How To’s
- Generating: Marketers can create free codes from one of the many QR Code generators such as delivr , myQR or Kaywa.
- Tracking: For additional services such as tracking or analytic dashboards, registration or premium versions of programs may be required. myQR offers free QR tracking.
- You can also use Google Analytics to track the code.
- Scanning: To scan QR Codes, users need a QR scanner application on their mobile devices. Check out this comprehensive list of QR Code readers.
- Click here for more information on QR Apps.
Healthcare Marketer Uses of QR Codes
Partner and Simmons Healthcare Blog makes a few suggestions for how QR codes may be used by healthcare marketers:
- Use a QR Code to link an ad to a video or product page, offering more detailed information about the advertised product or service
- Initiate a call with a doctor’s office or to a find-a-doctor tool
- Solicit opt-ins for your email newsletter
- Offer quick access to an event web site or live polling
- Collect contest registrations
- Provide event or health seminar information, maps and RSVP forms
On the “Manage My Practice” blog, Mary Pat Whaley’s article tells “22 Ways You Will use QR (Quick Response) Codes in Healthcare in the Future (If You’re Smart),” adding ideas such as using the codes in television ads for pharmaceuticals or using them on food and medication products.
Real-Life Examples
- One hospital, TriStar Health System in Nashville, recently announced that it will begin incorporating a QR Code in its Fast ER Wait Times campaign to link consumers to information about the average emergency room wait times at hospitals in Middle Tennessee. This puts real-time information in people’s fingertips when time matters most.
- Children’s Hospital Boston tried QR Codes for the first time in its Winter 2011 newsletter, Dream, and reported more than 125 scans within the first few days of its drop.
- Patient stories are the hero of the cardiac campaign for Memorial Health Care System in Tennessee. Every part of the multi-media effort (including QR Codes) leads to a custom microsite where the community can further engage in each story, conduct an online risk assessment and find out how to choose a cardiologist.
Check out our five important tips for using QR codes at your community hospital.
Related posts:
- Why Mobile Marketing Is A Must For Your Community Hospital
- How to Conduct Inexpensive Community Hospital Marketing Research
- Marketing Your Community Hospital to Women on Facebook
- Community Hospital Marketing: 4 Hospitals that Know How to Market their Physicians Well
- Smartphones Can Build Loyal Community Hospital Patients
