by Paul Greeley
Source: marketshare.tvnewscheck.com, April 2022
The use of the QR codes in TV commercials is winning converts among local TV sales execs and their advertising clients. “We were expecting a wave and it’s almost like a tsunami,” says one local advertiser.
TV and a mobile phones are increasingly proving a winning combination for local TV sales staff and the area businesses that advertise there.
The use of the QR codes displayed within commercials, which viewers can scan with their phone, is winning converts in both camps.
As one sales account executive put it, QR codes in commercials are “making TV clickable.”
In Chicago, the owner of a local business in a niche category, a first-time TV advertiser, says he was skeptical about the QR code, but “we started seeing results almost immediately,” says Carlos Lopez, owner of RampNow, which builds in-home wheelchair ramps and elevators.
In Green Bay, a long-time local TV advertiser, Windows of Wisconsin, experimented with using QR codes in its spots on WBAY, Gray’s ABC affiliate.
“We tested it in November of 2021 and they had their biggest November ever,” says Kristoffer Engebretson, an account manager at WBAY. “As soon as it seemed to work, we incorporated it in everything we have done for this client in 2022.”
The advantage of using QR codes is that they take viewers to a landing page especially designed for them. Lopez says there’s no more clicking around a website to get where they want to go.
“It took them to a single landing page that is its own website,” Lopez says. “It had all the different areas of products that we provide, an area to just submit their information in a real easy way. There is an immediate connection to the commercial.”
And that connection is trackable.
“You can actually see people coming to the site,” Engebretson says. “Does TV still work? Yep, it does still work because they are interacting with it right now.”
According to Magid research that polled 1,000 consumers after the Super Bowl, 36% scanned a QR code seen in commercials during the game and 54% of those “did something of value,” says Bill Day, Magid’s SVP.
“And in initial qualitative testing, Flowcode QR codes were twice as effective as a regular QR code,” Day says.
Both Engebretson and Lopez used Flowcode, to design and set up their QR codes.
Lopez says initially there was some behind-the-scenes work to design the QR code and the landing page, but once that was done, “the Flowcode page took all the legwork out of the customer that we were trying to reach,” Lopez says. There’s no phone number or website to remember, he says.
It was the same for Engebretson’s client, Windows Of Wisconsin.
Engebretson says they used Flowcode’s “recommendations and their knowledge of what it should look like. They were a huge help to design and give me feedback on how to have everything ready for where the consumer is going to go to.”
Lopez describes Flowcode’s QR code system as “almost like an 11th member of our team.” He said immediately after incorporating the QR code into his commercials, monthly revenue jumped up.
“We were expecting a wave and it’s almost like a tsunami,” Lopez says. “It was a shock to the system at first, but we quickly adjusted and were able to manage it.”
At WBAY, Engebretson says he’s the first sales account exec to use QR codes in local commercials at the station, and as far as he can tell, it’s been little used at the others.
But his co-workers were very intrigued, and want to figure out “how do they do that for their own clients,” he says. “I am planning to spread the word.”
