Personally, I haven’t found anything useful about foursquare other than to compete for the Mayorship of a local health club with my friend Anand Rajaram over at Office Drop. With that said, I do think businesses that exclusively operate locally can creatively leverage this type of location-based marketing service to “monitor and market” in real time.
Click to view interactive online marketing ecosystem.
If a business embraces a service like foursquare, they instantly connect with their customer base in a way that promotes customer loyalty and offers a compelling reason to come back. (along with bragging rights)
If there are people already visiting your establishment who use a smart phone, then all you have to do is notify them that you are offering specials via foursquare. As stated on their website, “foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying newplaces and revisiting old favorites”.
In a difficult economy, a free cup of coffee or free appetizers at your favorite establishment means as much as the new lawn chairs my parents acquired from collecting S&H Green Stamps when I was a kid. (I know, I’m dating myself)
The ability for your customers to send out their location (your establishment) via social networks such at Twitter and Facebook creates a “viral invite” that can boost foot traffic exponentially. There are also some fairly simple tools available to track your best customers, deliver special offers when someone checks in, and keep your best customers engaged and involved.
All you local business owners should at least give this a try and see if you can increase business by developing a marketing strategy around foursquare. Trust me, you’ll still be way ahead of the curve if you do it now and you’ll have your system perfected by the time foursquare explodes.
