With QR Codes, you can generate valuable exposure and create an amplified word-of-mouth campaign on your stickers and labels.

These are not the online stickers you have grown accustomed to on Instagram or Snapchat. These are the make-a-statement on your laptop, notebook, desk area or that lamppost that’s looking a bit too gray over there stickers. John Fischer, the CEO of StickerGiant, said in a Mashable article about their world record-breaking sticker ball: “Stickers are fun because they allow people to take any normal thing and make it theirs.”

A well-thought-out, eye-catching label and sticker designs open the possibility for a good word-of-mouth marketing campaign, powered by your own loyal and potential customers. But that’s not enough. A QR Code on stickers and labels bridges the gap between the physical and online experience. It allows you to take advantage of offline spaces in order to connect your audience with your online content, such as your website or social media, or enhance their engagement with your business and product.

1. Tap into participatory culture

QR Codes are the brand ambassador on your custom stickers you never knew you needed until now. As mentioned above, stickers have this serendipitous quality to them. When people see others use them on their personal belongings or even in public spaces, it resonates on a subconscious level: this is a brand worth not just talking about but identifying with. It is brand loyalty that you can use in your favor with a QR Code that either links to a better product experience with a Video QR Code, or to create excitement for an upcoming event with our Event QR Code or, even better, have consumers join in on your brand’s network with our Social Media QR Code. Your customers can advertise for you with custom stickers and QR Codes can speak for your brand identity in your stead.

2. Brand trust and brand loyalty

Marketing labels don’t just help consumers identify your product among others, they also offer ingredients, provenance or usage information. QR Codes give you more flexibility in terms of connecting with your consumers and earning their trust as a brand by linking them directly to your online sources and communities. How a customer experiences your product nowadays depends largely on how much they know about your brand and its impact on society. Technology can help re-earn consumer trust and QR Codes are the solution. They can help your custom labels interact dynamically with your consumers by connecting them to more in-depth information about the quality of your ingredients, your values as a company, your supply chains and so much more with just a quick scan.

3. Smart marketing

Our Dynamic QR Codes can help you organize, develop and manage your marketing campaign in an in-depth, cost-effective way. Whenever a Dynamic Code is scanned, our system recognizes when, where and with what device it took place. This detailed information will help you measure your advertising success, so you can optimize your ongoing campaign. Visit our QR Code Marketing Library to inspire the design of your marketing and advertising campaigns.

  1. Go to QR Code Generator and select the type of QR Code you’d like on your sticker or label. We recommend using the URL QR Code to start with.*
  2. Enter your website address.
  3. Your QR Code will be generated automatically.
  4. Now, customize the design of your QR Code by adding a frame and a “Scan Me” logo.*
  5. Select colors to match your style or company brand identity.
  6. Select ‘Download’ to receive your QR Code file in .jpg format.
  7. Integrate your newly-created QR Code to either your sticker or your label design.

*Sign up to choose more QR Codes such as Event, Video, and Coupon, where you have the option of adding more information, more visuals, and edit or replace all the information without reprinting a new QR Code. You can also choose from a variety of frames and upload your own logo.

The QR Code’s displayed image no longer abides by a monochromatic constraint, which means you no longer have to give it a dull prescriptive approach. You can now design it to fit your brand or your very own identity with a variety of creative tools. Here is a guide to some of the features at your disposal.

1. Add instructions

One big mistake QR Code users have made in the past is printing them without a short written explanation of what the consumer would gain or learn from scanning one. Make sure to incentivize your consumers to scan your Code, or else all your marketing efforts will be for naught.

2. Frame it

With our customizable frames, you can make your QR Code match your custom sticker and label design, or your company’s brand identity. When you start designing your QR Code, you will be offered a wide variety of ready-made frames with different CTA messages and color options from which to select. If you want to add personalized details, you have the option of customizing even more by selecting a different shape, a different icon, and even adding your own text.

3. Add a logo inside your QR Code

Once you have selected a frame option and customized your Code’s shape and color, you can choose to incorporate a logo at the center of your QR Code. Though there are a few ready-made options to select from, you can also upload your own logo or your own CTA like “Scan me,” “Join us” or “Discover.” Our system automatically detects the best and largest size for uploaded logos to make sure QR Codes remain scannable, so you do not have to worry about making adjustments.

4. Save your designs

Let’s say you want to promote the release of another product from the same series, or you have expanded your departments to include more services for your clients and want to remain consistent with your design. Well, no worries, you no longer have to fret about recreating an old QR Code design manually. QR Code Generator allows you to save all your designs as templates, so you can reuse them for any of your marketing campaigns to come.

5. Test before printing

Once you are done designing the QR Code for your custom stickers and labels, make sure to always test it on various scanning apps before moving on to printing. The minimum size of a QR Code on small-sized merchandise such as stickers or labels should be 2 x 2 cm (about 0.8 x 0.8 in). From there you can always make it a bit bigger, but we do not recommend going less than that as it would render your Code unscannable or even unnoticeable. You can also practice scanning with your ideal print size and go from there.

For more information on getting started with QR Codes, visit our Help Center page. And visit our How to Get Creative with QR Code Design page to learn more about the dos and don’ts of QR Code design for optimal results on your custom stickers or labels.

The possibilities of putting QR Codes on custom stickers and labels are, honestly, pretty endless. But, we wanted to offer you a bit more inspiration so here’s an array of fictitious companies in real-life situations putting our QR Codes to excellent use.

Cities and Culture

Fictional Springfield City had already put our PDF QR Code to work for them by showcase their city’s best-ofs on their welcome sign with a list of city sights and points of interest. But they really wanted to enhance their visitors’ and tourists’ experience, so they custom-designed stickers for every city landmark with an MP3 QR Code that linked to different audio guides recorded for each location. They also customized a button on the mobile-friendly QR Code MP3 page to link to iTunes, Google Play Music, Amazon Music, and more, so visitors and tourists could download the entire playlist and listen to the audio later or even repeat whenever.

Nonprofits

Protect the Bees Foundation was facing a decline in recurring donations. Their solution? Build an online information hub and community so their contributors would feel more connected and informed about the organization and their impact.

Bees Foundation included monthly complimentary honey products, so they decided to print a Video QR Code, linking to an informational visual journey, on all their labels. They added a thank you message, instructing their supporters to scan the code to see how their donations impacted the organization’s work.

Consumer Packaged Goods

After a successful hashtag campaign on their social media pages, Betty Baker gathered a good amount of customer testimonials and different ways their loyal consumers used their baking products. To inspire potential new regulars, they added a Gallery QR Code to their beautiful labels so people could get an idea of how to use their products and get creative in their baking. Betty Baker added captions to each image, as well as links to specific landing pages for recipes or more product information. And, if in the future they run another hashtag campaign, all they need to do is upload new images without reprinting the code.

Personal Use

Alan and June were working together with their neighborhood theatre to host an amateur film festival to encourage aspiring filmmakers in their town. They didn’t just want people to attend, they wanted their campaign to be memorable enough to ensure this unofficial film festival becomes an annual thing. By creating rad stickers, which they distributed among friends, acquaintances and stuck to polls and benches around town, they created excitement and anticipation. But by boosting their Guerilla Marketing with the help of our Event QR Code and a witty call to action, which they printed on each custom sticker, they were able to both use it as an invitation card and a local artistic movement which caught on to social media platforms.

Musicians and Artists

The Three Sparrows, a fictional band, were notorious for their cool stickers. But they wanted to get more people to follow them on social media channels, so they added a Social Media QR Code to their popular stickers, effectively grabbing fans’ attention and offering them a quick and easy way to follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and many more with just a single scan.

FAQ

Definitely! Avery’s labels come in different sizes and shapes that can accommodate your customized QR Code. To find out more about how you can print our QR Codes onto any labels or stickers, check out our Help Center pages on printing.

Easy. First, you go to our QR Code Generator and select the type of QR Code you’d like on either your stickers or labels. Add the details you would like to put on display, then click on Generate QR Code. Once you are done designing your QR Code according to your personal taste or brand identity, select ‘Download’ to receive your QR Code file in .jpg format. And voila! You can now integrate your newly-created QR Code to either your stickers or your labels design. Go into more detail on our Designing QR Codes page.

TThere are many things to keep in mind when printing a QR Code, size being one of them. When printing on small to medium-sized merchandise (ex: stickers or labels), Codes should be at least 2 x 2 cm (around 0.8 x 0.8 in). If you go any smaller, you run the risk of rendering your Code unscannable or unnoticeable. How To: Get Creative with QR Codes and Top 10 Tips for Printing QR Codes has all the information you need to create a successful marketing campaign using QR Codes.

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