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Location-Based Marketing: How Small Businesses are Leveraging Foursquare

Maybe you’ve noticed a trend lately on Facebook or Twitter where certain people “check in” at wherever they may be at the time—perhaps the local Starbucks, their neighborhood bookstore or even the post office. At first glance you may have seen some of your friends and followers doing this and thought, “who cares where you are?”

If you are a small business owner yourself, however, you might want to take a closer look at what’s going on.

In most cases, these location-based “shout-outs” are being done via an application called Foursquare. While there are other similar apps out there (such as Gowalla), Foursquare has emerged as the most buzzed-about geo-location tool, and the application you’re most likely to see pop up in your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream.

What Is Foursquare?

As the official website explains, “Foursquare on your phone gives you and your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points and unlock badges for discovering new things.”

While you will often see it integrated with social networks like Facebook or Twitter, Foursquare is not used in the same way as these sites. Whereas you might sign into Facebook or pull up Twitter to see what your friends are talking about, people use Foursquare, primarily via mobile phone, to make a “game” out of letting others know where they are at any given time.

For example, say you’re out and about downtown. You would take out your phone (be it an iPhone, a Droid or a BlackBerry), click on the Foursquare app, and via GPS, you would see a list of all the nearby locations. You would then click on the business where you happen to be and then “check-in,” adding a custom message and posting it to Facebook and/or Twitter if you’d like.

As you check in at new places, stop at multiple places or make repeat visits, you earn points and unlock “badges” in the game. Check in to one place regularly enough, and you get a chance to be named “mayor” of that location.

Sound silly? While on the surface Foursquare may seem easy to dismiss, many small businesses are already embracing it to engage with customers and build loyalty. Foursquare recently passed the milestone of 100 million check-ins, and it even made Entrepreneur Magazine’s annual List of 100 Brilliant Ideas.

How Local Businesses Are Using it

Geo-location is huge in social media, and will continue to boom in the coming years. In fact, at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference it was announced that spending on global location-based services is on track to exceed $7 billion over the next three years.

Realizing this, savvy local businesses are taking advantage of Foursquare by using it to offer specials, discounts and rewards programs to pull in new customers.

To illustrate, here are just a few examples of current offerings by businesses near me:

* Sports Authority in Cherry Hill, NJ: Get a $10 Cash Card towards a purchase as a thank you for being Mayor

* Exit Skateboard Supply in Philadelphia, PA: Get a free T-shirt for your first check in on Foursquare

* Whole Foods Market in Marlton NJ: Free small coffee for the Mayor anytime; plus a free reusable bag on your 10th check-in

* Tortilla Press Cantina in Pennsauken, NJ: Free appetizer on your first visit; Mayor at end of month gets a $20 gift card

Another bonus for business owners using Foursquare? Access to venue analytics tools that will let you explore some pretty cool stats. For example: who the most frequent visitors are, the total number of unique visitors, what times of day people check in, who the most recent visitors are, and more.

What About Online Businesses?

While virtual businesses may not benefit the same as brick and mortar ones, online business owners can still use Foursquare to make connections—the same way they do via other social networking sites.

One example of a virtual biz owner using Foursquare successfully is a Facebook connection of mine, Rebecca Thompson of CLR Virtual Connection. Someone she “ousted” as mayor of a location ended up hiring her after becoming aware of what she did for a living in the process. In another instance, a Twitter follower engaged her after noticing that they often both checked into the same places. That conversation led to a request for Rebecca’s services.

It just goes to show—you never know where your next client or customer is going to come from. And while cutting-edge applications like Foursquare might not yet be as widely used as a social media behemoth like Facebook, with the exploding popularity of smartphones and location-based social networks, business owners would be wise to take a second look.

Resources

Join Foursquare
Find out more about Foursquare for business (and claim yours)
Foursquare support

Debunking 3 Social Media Myths

I get the question “will social media work for my business?” a lot. For the purposes of this post, I should clarify that the term “social media” doesn’t just refer to the big sites like Facebook or Twitter. It applies to anything interactive that takes place online—including blogs, message boards, video and more. Not every business will benefit from the same exact sites and tools.

That being said, it seems there is still a lot of S.M.S. disease going around. Social Media Skepticism, that is. The most insidious form of this disease just happens to be Myth #1:

“My clients/customers/people who pay my mortgage every month aren’t using social media.”

(Or the even more aggressive form, “My prospects aren’t online.” Really?!)

Maybe your clients and customers aren’t on Twitter or aren’t reading blogs regularly. You’ll need to explore exactly where YOUR market is spending their time. But I guarantee that they’re using the web to search for products and services, or book speakers for conferences, or to look for referrals, or….you get the idea.

What I teach my students and clients is how to build a web presence, create a fan base and get their business (no matter what kind of business it is) in front of their target audience. After all, they are already there just looking for business owners like you. Yes, really! (When’s the last time you cracked open a phonebook? They do make pretty good doorstops…)

Myth #2 is one that kind of makes me giggle:

“But it takes too much time to build relationships…”

That sounds kind of silly, don’t you think? We all know and accept that building relationships offline takes time and effort. However, when small business owners decide not to bother with social media because they see it as being too time-consuming, then that is exactly what they are saying. (And I don’t know about you, but some days I’m more than thrilled to stay in my yoga pants and bunny slippers and virtually “press the flesh” rather than have to hit the road.)

The truth is, social media does take time, just like traditional networking does. The key is to select which sites you’ll actively participate in and make it a part of your weekly or even daily habit. Just as with other forms of marketing, consistency is what leads to results.

To use myself as an example, I have bookmarked in my web browser all the links to the social networking sites I use. Every day, I pull them up and accept friend requests, answer questions, start conversations, etc. on each one. This takes less than 15 minutes and has become a part of my regular marketing routine.

As your list of friends, followers and contacts grows, you might find it difficult to keep up with all of the updates, links and information coming your way. However, don’t despair—you are certainly not expected to take in and process every single bit of information that enters your radar. (Phew!)

Finally, with so much focus on the online world, it’s easy for people with very locally focused or storefront businesses to believe that social media can’t help them. Which brings me to Myth #3:

“Social media doesn’t work for local businesses.”

Ah, my favorite.

If you are already using and benefiting from social media in your biz, then you know there are some really good search capabilities available on most of the bigger social media sites that can allow you to access local users. (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube all give you the ability to search locally.) Think about it—would it be helpful to find a couple hundred social media users who are living and working right in your town or zip code? Also, sites like Facebook and LinkedIn each have Groups, some of which revolve around local topics. Can’t find one for your town? Why not create one?

In addition, gatherings of local Twitter users (called “tweetups”) are becoming more and more popular—and you can use a site like Meetup or Twtvite to find or create tweetups near you. (Think of it as local networking for the social media age.)

There are even sites that allow you to search for local bloggers—Placeblogger and outside.in being two. Bloggers you find there are good social media contacts to have—you never know when they might be looking to highlight local businesses, and this could be a great way to get some exposure.

In addition, your business can benefit by being listed on several social review and Internet “yellow pages” type-sites. Check out MerchantCircle and Google Local to start, and don’t be shy about asking former and current customers to write up reviews there if they’ve been happy with your services.

So there you have it. Now, am I naïve enough to think that every single business out there can get fantastic results with social media? No, but if you happen to be one of those who still has some of these doubts, I encourage you to at least give it a try. You never know where those “social” relationships may end up leading, right?