Any company worth its salt knows how important trade fairs are for business. They’re not only a great place to showcase your company’s products and services but also some of the best networking opportunities you could ask for.
A considerable part of this networking is done through pamphlets and contact sharing, which has been done on paper for years. But we are now in the year 2022, so why not leverage technology to save time and improve efficiency?
A good vCard QR can immensely help the workflow and simplify the process of compiling all the new contacts. In this article, we’ll explore exactly why that is.
What Is A vCard QR Code?
QR Codes are ubiquitous these days, and chances are you’ve seen quite a few dotted around. But QR codes can do more than just marketing and payments. One great use case for them is sharing your contact info.
A vCard QR code is a QR code that contains the contact information for a person or company in a “.vcf” format that is universally recognized by the vast majority of mobile phones.
When the technology was nascent, the QR code would contain contact information as static data. But since the advent of Dynamic QR codes, there are many options for customizing the look of the vCard data.
Some enterprise-ready solutions like Unitag’s vCard+ can even have the person scanning the code give their contact info in return, save them in your company’s CRM for future reference, and even allow multiple employees to pool contacts.
QR code analytics can also play an important role in gauging the engagement that the vCards receive and can be used as an indicator of the success of any campaign they are used in.
vCard QRs at Trade Fairs? Really?
Yes! vCard QRs are an excellent way to reduce the paper dependency of giving out information through pamphlets and receiving contacts through contact sheets. This improved ease of communication can significantly improve your company’s benefits from attending the trade fair.
Here are a few ways vCards are advantageous in the trade show environment:
Ease Of Sharing
Let’s face it; not everyone keeps the plethora of visiting cards they get handed at trade fairs. Chances are, your representatives’ paper cards will end up lost and cost you valuable sales leads.
Couple that with the fact that not many attendees will have time to read through every pamphlet, and the problem that vCard QR codes solve becomes clear – your company needs to stand out.
Your company can use dynamic QR to present the key points of your marketing message in a format that engages its audience while allowing you to share contact information and receive their contact details in return. It’s simpler, easier, and different, so it’ll help you engage the audience better.
Eco-Friendliness
We live in an increasingly climate-conscious world. Climate change is a present and persistent threat, and wasting paper and ink to conform to the “good old” ways of doing things at trade fairs cannot justify the environmental costs it incurs.
I’m not fond of the climate change narrative, servers have a lot more responsibilities in global warming. Let’s focus on paper waste, saying thing as ‘no need to print new business cards when a colleague leaves or joins the cie’
Technology has come a long way since trade fairs were first instituted, and this technology can be leveraged to make them less wasteful and more fruitful. Replacing pen-and-paper contact sheets with a solution like vCard+ will allow your company to accrue the same number of contacts or more without adding to the trash you generate.
Pen and paper aren’t used anymore, contacts are taken on tablets. Emphasize the possibilities to share more than just contacts via the vcard, but also demo video, calendar, brochures, etc, that people won’t have to carry around.
Customizability
While paper pamphlets can be designed to suit your company’s brand image, the format in which the information is presented is pretty much standardized. Not much flair is left in the conventional marketing material presented at trade shows.
vCard QR codes like Unitag’s vCard+ can be customized in every way. From the color scheme to adding images and text to the vCard to make it more engaging, the customizability offered allows you to weave your company’s marketing message into your representative’s contact information.
Not only this, but your team in the field can also customize the dynamic QR codes on the spot and change the information. You can flexibly change and tweak the contents based on what is or isn’t working.
Cost Effectiveness
Most marketing material used for any trade show is single-use. This means that the leftovers are useless once the trade fair is done since the next fair will have its own branding that needs to be on the marketing material produced.
Contrary to this, vCard QR codes can be used by your colleagues in their day-to-day meetings to share their contact information and can be edited when they visit a trade show to fit the event at hand.
The fact that they can be edited at will and used as effectively in routine as in a trade show setting means QR codes aren’t a sunk cost like most of the trade show marketing material is. The monetary investment in getting your staff a good vCard solution like Unitag’s vCard+ is much more intelligent in terms of versatility and usability.
Wrapping Up
So as you can see, vCard QR codes offer several distinct advantages for your representatives operating your company’s display at trade shows. They are flexible, can be tailored to fit the event’s requirements, and can even be changed on the fly to make adjustments if needed.
Not only this, but getting an enterprise-ready solution like vCard+ also allows you to design a cohesive look for your entire team’s vCard QR, giving them the ability to receive and stockpile contacts. It also allows your customer-relations to find the data later with the built-in CRM integration quickly.
Including vCard QR in your marketing mix can help your company save costs, lessen environmental damage, improve effectiveness, and tailor your message. All this can supercharge your presence at any trade fair you attend.
If you’re ready to explore vCard QR and all the options it offers, how about giving Unitag’s vCard+ a look? It’s got all the tools a small to medium-sized business needs to present, receive, manage, and track contact information.