Archive for the ‘location marketing’ Category

Foursquare 3.0 Aims to Improve Discovery, Encouragement, & Loyalty

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Foursquare 3.0, a new software release of the location-based mobile game, hit iPhone and Android markets on March 8th, with updates for Blackberry users also coming in the near future. This release includes multiple new features that will help to further engage users and provide small businesses with powerful new tools. As many of you already know, we at Catalyst have been a big proponent of foursquare since its initial release only 2 years ago. Since then, we’ve published a foursquare book and wrote numerous articles on the advantages for small  business owners using foursquare.  With the user base skyrocketing to 7.5 million, it may be time for your small business to seriously start considering utilizing foursquare if you haven’t already.

The foursquare team breaks down the objective of the 3.0 versions’ new features into 3 main categories; to promote user discovery with a new “Explore” tab, to add encouragement with a new Leaderboard system, and to increase consumer loyalty with the addition of 6 new “Specials” options. As we will explain further below, co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, when speaking about foursquare 3.0, emphasizes the ultimate goal of “every check-in counts.” According to Jennifer Van Grove’s of Mashable, “The new release turns on the power of every foursquare check-in accumulated over the course of its two-year history and transforms that data into recommendations.” Pretty powerful stuff!

New Foursquare Special Options

New foursquare SpecialsThe foursquare upgrade that will most directly affect small business owners’ ability to increase consumer loyalty and sales will be the 6 new “Specials” options. These new foursquare Specials can be geared towards foursquare swarms, groups of friends, new comers, regulars, Mayors, or everyone in general. To showcase these rewards to a foursquare user, the “Places” screen of the foursquare mobile application will now show all foursquare Specials within the user’s proximity. This feature enhances foursquare’s ability to be used as an effective marketing tool to draw new and regular customers to your small business. Also, with the new variety of Specials merchants can now offer, they will be able to be much more creative in designing a foursquare strategy to entice consumers to visit their business. From the user standpoint, there will be many more scenarios where they now qualify for a Special, further motivation to visit a participating small business.

New foursquare “Explore” Tab For Users To Discover New Small Businesses

foursquare Explore TabAnother key new feature of foursquare 3.0 is the addition of an “Explore” tab which recommends places for the user to visit based on a number of factors. Foursquare’s blog sums up the Explore tab with the following:

“tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find something nearby. The suggestions are based on a little bit of everything – the places you’ve been, the places your friends have visited, your loyalty to your favorite places, the categories and types of places you gravitate towards, what’s popular with other users, the day of the week, places with great tips, the time of day, and so on.”

A separate “Me” tab compliments the Explore tab by letting the user get ideas of places to visit based on where their friends visit and recommend. In a way, the Me tab is similar to when you ask a friend for advice of where to eat dinner. Your friend will tell you where he eats dinner and why he likes it, basically providing you with a recommendation. The Explore and Me tabs can now help you with those decisions, just in case a friend isn’t around. ;) A consumer will now be more likely to visit a business that fits their taste, increasing the chance of sales at participating small businesses.

New and Improved foursquare Leaderboard

foursquare LeaderboardTo encourage users to check-in more often, the Leaderboard has been revamped to a 7-day sliding barometer which displays check-ins of both the user and his/her friends. Also, one simple check-in will now have the potential to earn numerous points for dozens of different reasons. Examples of these actions include trying new restaurants, visiting new places, meeting up with old friends, etc. These new gaming mechanics will really encourage users to step outside of their norm and try new things. If a small business joins foursquare, their opportunity to attract new customers will surely increase with the updated Leaderboard feature.

We said we were excited about foursquare for small business before, but now we are ecstatic. The new features added to the 3.0 release will further engage current customers as well as encourage users to explore new places in their town (possibly yours). Additionally, it will help match consumers with small businesses that make the most sense for them based on their preferences. Although Facebook now has a “Places” feature built into its app, its capabilities and potential to increase a business’s consumer base are still light years behind foursquare.

Is your small business on foursquare? Perhaps you should be. Let us know how your foursquare experience has been. What’s been bugging you? What do you love? Please use the comments section below to share your thoughts with other small business owners who might be thinking about adding foursquare to their marketing mix.

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Foursquare Helps a Local Coffee Shop Obtain, Engage, & Retain Customers

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Coffee Klatch, a small coffee chain on a never ending quest around the world in search of the finest coffee, has used foursquare to create unique experiences for their customers. Coffee Klatch didn’t have success because they claimed their venue on foursquare or because they ran a foursquare Special, though they did do these things, what allowed Coffee Klatch to obtain, engage, and retain customers was their dedication to learning about the foursquare culture and infusing it into the Coffee Klatch culture. Coffee Klatch made sure employees were aware of their new marketing tool and even encouraged them to incorporate foursquare into their daily routines.

Obtain Engage Retain Customers“Mexican Mocha for the Mayor”, said a Coffee Klatch employee one day to my friend Matthew. Matthew Gallizzi is the founder of NotixTech, a mobile website developer, and was the foursquare Mayor of Coffee Klatch at the time (and still is). He went to Coffee Klatch for his daily Mocha and was actually recognized and greeted as the Mayor. Upon ordering his coffee, those beautiful words came from behind the register. Those 5 simple words should tell you all that you need to know about the commitment Coffee Klatch made to using foursquare.

How did it happen for Coffee Klatch? Although we don’t know if this is true, it’s probably safe to say that they started by learning about foursquare, once they knew what it was and what it could do, they created a Plan for how they were going to use foursquare to promote their business, then they went to work executing their Plan, part of which was making sure that all staff was trained on how to handle the everyday management of customers using foursquare at Coffee Klatch, and finally they stayed committed, got creative, and made sure to recognize their foursquare-using customers. By taking the time to truly understand how to use foursquare for their business, Coffee Klatch was able to engage Matthew to the point that he is posting about Coffee Klatch on Facebook, he’s created a YouTube video sharing his experience with Coffee Klatch & foursquare, and he’s telling everyone who will listen how great of a coffee shop Coffee Klatch is… Pretty nice payoff for a little extra work.

Through their use of foursquare Coffee Klatch was able to create a unique experience for Matthew, an experience that he thought was worth sharing. Please take a few minutes to watch the video below to hear his foursquare Coffee Klatch story. Who knows, it might inspire you to get creative and start using foursquare to Obtain, Engage, & Retain customers for your small business.

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Posted in location marketing | 3 Comments »

Foursquare Specials Nearby Are Now Being Promoted on foursquare.com

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

In browsing through foursquare.com it appears that foursquare is now serving up Foursquare Specials Nearby on their website. What’s cool is that the Specials are relevant to your current location. Foursquare must use either your home location, or the last location that you checked-in, to serve up relevant local Specials from those smart businesses who understand the benefits of running a Special on foursquare.

Foursquare Specials Nearby

Adding Specials Nearby on foursquare.com isn’t HUGELY significant. It’s simply a cool add-on that foursquare came up with to offer more value to their business users. What it does is get more eyeballs to your foursquare Special. It’s great that it’s tied to a web users’ location, making the Specials relevant. It also builds more awareness for your small business. For not having to do anything extra after creating a foursquare Special, it’s a nice add from foursquare.

Is your small business running Specials on foursquare? What special have you been running? Has it been a catalyst for new sales? Share your stories by leaving a comment below.

Download Your FREE Copy of the “How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business” eBook

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Claim Your Small Business on Facebook Places

Monday, January 31st, 2011

After giving Facebook Places plenty of time to prove itself as a viable competitor to location-based giants like foursquare and SCVNGR, we now know that Facebook Places is definitely a tool that all small business owners who have a physical storefront should be taking advantage of. Due to the sheer size of the Facebook community, small businesses should use Facebook Places as a viable marketing channel. Hopefully most of you reading this article have added your small business to Facebook Places. Once your business has been added to Facebook Places you can go ahead and claim your Place on Facebook.

There are a number of benefits to claiming your business on Facebook Places. Once you claim your small business you can then update your Place. Small Business owners can post updates to anyone who ‘Likes’ your Place page, which means you can use Facebook Places to build relationships with customers and prospects. You can also ensure all of the business information is correct and even run promotions through your Place page on Facebook.

Claim my Facebook PlaceNow that you’re convinced that claiming your small business on Facebook Places is the way to go, let’s go ahead and walk you through how to claim your business on Facebook Places.

Find Your Place Page on Facebook

The first step is definitely the easiest of all the steps. Simply navigate to your Facebook Places page. Find the “Is this your business?” link on the left sidebar.

Claim Your Place Page on Facebook

Click the “Is this your business?” link on the left sidebar. A pop-up message will appear. Read the message and when you’re ready, check the box next to “I certify that I am an official representative of your business name“.

Verify Your Place Page on Facebook

So step 1 was the easiest part and this last step is the most difficult. With that said, it’s not terribly time consuming, but it is a little more tedious than claiming your business on foursquare. In order to verify that you’re an official representative of the business, Facebook requires you to provide an official document, like your local business license. Once that’s been reviewed and approved you’re now the proud owner of your Place page on Facebook!

Use Facebook Places to Promote Your Small Business

Now that you’re officially in control of your business’s Place page on Facebook you can start using it to engage customers and prospects. Location Marketing is a growing trend and with 500+ million people on Facebook, it’s a good thing that you took the time to claim your small business on Facebook Places.

Leave a comment below to let us know what you think of Facebook’s “claiming process”.

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Posted in Facebook Marketing, location marketing | 19 Comments »

Facebook Places Is a Valuable Small Business Marketing Channel

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

After months of hearing about foursquare and the rise of location-based social applications, Facebook decided to join the party. Back in August of 2010 Facebook released Facebook Places and the rest might well be history. Subscribers of this blog know how much we love location-based game foursquare, so before jumping in with our thoughts on Facebook Places, we wanted to give the new tool some time to show how effective it can be for small business owners. 5 months later, we are ready to say that Facebook Places will be a viable small business marketing channel. If you own a small business, it’s time to start really taking advantage of location-based marketing tools like foursquare, SCVNGR, and now Facebook Places.

Facebook: The Power of the Community

Facebook Places Small BusinessAfter the first 5 months, Facebook Places doesn’t really offer any new earth-shattering technology or features when compared with foursquare, and you could say that SCVNGR’s features blow both tools away. With that said, what Facebook Places currently lacks in WOW factor features is made up for by being backed by the biggest online community on the planet. Although foursquare is continuing to add new users faster, Facebook’s numbers are staggering. With so many small businesses already using their Facebook Business Page to connect & engage their prospects and customers, Facebook Places is a natural progression for those small businesses who see the power of Location Marketing.

Check-In at My Small Business on Facebook Places

Facebook Places allows prospects and customers to check-in at your business on Facebook. When a customer or prospect checks-in to your Place page that activity will end up in their friends’ News Feed. This is pretty powerful especially when many Facebook users have hundreds of Friends and some have thousands. That’s a lot of relevant eyeballs for your business. Oh and by the way, your business may already have a Facebook Places page, as users can add a Place if it’s not listed when they go to check-in. You should probably look into that. ;)

Small business owners should encourage customers and prospects to check-in on Facebook Places to capture the eyeballs that we discussed above, but also as a way to start getting to know the people who visit your store. When someone checks-in at your Place you can see who that person is, which means you can start engaging him or her around relevant topics about your business and industry.

There are a lot of other great features for small business owners to take advantage of with Facebook Places, but first you must claim your Facebook Place. This is a topic for another day. For now, hopefully this post has convinced you to start using Facebook Places to promote your small business. That doesn’t mean you should stop using foursquare and SCVNGR, it simply means that until we find out who the winner of this location marketing race will be, you should be using all of the tools that make sense for your business and your customers. At this point we are ready to say that Facebook Places deserves a spot alongside of the traditional location-based social tools like foursquare & SCVNGR.

We will discuss claiming your Facebook Place in a future post. When you claim your Facebook Place you will get access to even more features geared towards helping you promote your small business on Facebook.

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Posted in Facebook Marketing, location marketing | 5 Comments »

Malls Should Build Treks on SCVNGR to Drive Engagement & Sales

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Surely by now you have heard of SCVNGR, you know, the geo-location tool that allows users to check-in & complete Challenges at businesses across the country… Here at Catalyst we have written about SCVNGR quite a few times already, as we think it has a TON of potential as a marketing tool for small businesses. If you need a refresher on SCVNGR, please feel free to check out some of those past articles like, “Use SCVNGR to Drive Sales for Your Small Business” or “Corporate Chains Should Create Treks on SCVNGR“.

For those of you who are familiar with SCVNGR then you know that SCVNGR allows people and businesses to create Treks on SCVNGR. Treks are a set of Challenges across a geographic area. Once a Trek is created SCVNGR users can work to complete the Trek by completing each of the Challenges that make up the Trek. Treks on SCVNGR provide a HUGE opportunity for Malls and the stores that rent space within malls. In this article we are going to walk through how malls, and even shopping centers, should be taking advantage of building Treks on SCVNGR.

SCVNGR TreksMalls are essentially made up of a group of businesses who all share a close proximity with one another. The most successful Treks on SCVNGR are the ones that consumers can complete without traveling great distances to complete each Challenge. Treks on SCVNGR have been setup across cities and local towns, but what’s better than having a Trek that you can complete without leaving one single location? Now, consumers who don’t drive (like teens under 16-17) can participate, as well as, everyone else who visits the mall.

Malls should run a Trek on SCVNGR as a promotional opportunity. Malls can have the businesses who rent space within the mall sign-up if they want to participate. It would be in the stores’ best interest to participate as a successfully executed Trek promotion can drive a TON of foot traffic to all participating stores! Malls can also create a new revenue stream out of this by charging a small fee for participants (stores).

Once a list of businesses within the mall who want to participate is created the mall Marketing Department can work with store managers to setup unique Challenges on SCVNGR for each store. After the Challenges are established then all that remains is setting up the logistics of the Trek and Trek Promotional Campaign. Things like how long the promotional campaign will stay active, the rules for the contest, and most importantly the prize details will all have to be determined. It is highly recommended that prizes are awarded to those who complete the Trek on SCVNGR. Determining what prizes to use and how they should be awarded can be accomplished in many different ways. A small prize can be given to everyone who completes the Trek on SCVNGR. There could be three big prizes and everyone who finishes the Trek on SCVNGR get entered into a drawing to see who wins the 3 top prizes. Whatever you decide is best for your mall, be sure the prizes have significant value for the participants or they won’t bother to participate in your Mall Trek Promotion.

Proper promotion of your new Mall Trek on SCVNGR is HUGELY important. Here are a few ideas for promoting your Mall Trek:

  • Create YouTube videos explaining the contest and embed them on the Mall’s website, Facebook page, etc. – At least one video should be dedicated to explaining how to sign-up for SCVNGR as it’s still in the early growth stage as far as mass adoption is concerned.

  • Design & print fliers about the contest. Hang them up around the mall.

  • Ask participating stores to create their own promotional fliers (or even better, the mall can provide them to each store) and ask them to also promote the contest on their social media sites.

  • Connect with local media for media coverage of the contest.

  • Shoot videos and take pictures (be sure to get release forms signed by anyone in the footage and photos) of consumers completing the Trek on SCVNGR through the mall. Use these to entice more people to participate and for post-event promotion.

  • Stores should run related Sales during the promotion in order to capitalize on all of the extra foot traffic.

SCVNGR is a really great new tool for businesses. As we always say, all that it takes is a little creativity to come up with engaging ways to use the tools effectively for driving sales. Malls should definitely look into creating Treks on SCVNGR as it will drive mall traffic and store traffic. The benefits of running a Trek on SCVNGR promotion for your mall are numerous. Here are a few of the main benefits:

  • Creates engagement between local consumers, the mall, and mall stores
  • Great for publicity
  • Drives sales for mall tenants (businesses)
  • The promotion could go viral, which will drive even more participants and media coverage
  • Keeps consumers in the mall for longer periods of time than they would normally stay
  • Drives consumers into stores they may not normally have entered, which might lead to new customers for those stores

There are many ways to run a Trek on SCVNGR promotion. Hopefully this article simply shows you how to use Treks on SCVNGR for promoting your mall and your mall tenants, explains why you should create a mall Trek on SCVNGR, and its benefits. If you have any questions about how to execute this promotional opportunity at your mall or if you want some help in setting it up, please feel free to contact Catalyst with your questions. Good luck and please let us know how it goes!

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Promote Your Small Business On SCVNGR with Builder Profiles

Monday, October 18th, 2010

SCVNGR is at it again. Last week SCVNGR released another upgrade designed to benefit those who build on SCVNGR, which are mainly businesses. As you may know from reading this blog, businesses large and small have been all over SCVNGR since it’s release only a few months ago. AT&T is building on SCVNGR. The Smithsonian is building on SCVNGR. The Boston Celtics and New England Patriots are building on SCVNGR. The list goes on. Now for the first time businesses that build on SCVNGR will have their very own profile page on SCVNGR.com. It used to be that only players had a Player Profile on SCVNGR. Now with the introduction of Builder Profiles small business can use SCVNGR to promote their business online.

Social Media Marketing Agency PhiladelphiaIf you’re familiar with SCVNGR then you know that users can be both players and builders, but up until a week ago only the players were able to showcase their activities on SCVNGR through a Player Profile. With this new release small businesses can now continue building Challenges and building Treks on SCVNGR and those activities will then appear on your Builder Profile on SCVNGR.com.

What this means to small business owners might be HUGE. Now you have online real estate on SCVNGR.com to drive your online community to. If you build a new Challenge on SCVNGR you can promote it through Facebook and Twitter. You can write a blog article about the new Trek you built on SCVNGR and link people to your Builder Profile. This allows your online community to check out your new Challenges and Treks before they decide if they want to participate. Builder Profiles on SCVNGR are a great way of getting your customers and prospects who may not be familiar with SCVNGR to learn about the new location-based tool, while also learning about all of the great activities and Challenges that you’ve setup for your small business on SCVNGR.

SCVNGR Marketing IdeasThink of your Builder Profile on SCVNGR as your foursquare Venue page or your Facebook Business page. These are pieces of online real estate that you have claimed and can now use to promote your small business. Your foursquare venue page allows you to leave tips about your small business, run foursquare Mayor specials, and check out foursquare Analytics. Your Builder Profile page on SCVNGR will allow you to show off all of your recent Challenges, Treks, and Rewards that you’ve created for your store, display a description about your small business (filled with keywords for SEO of course), as well as, show your Social Score.

Your Social Score is the new hook for small businesses. You now compete against other builders (ie. possibly your competitors) through your Social Score. The more you build, the better you engage, and the more people who participate in your Challenges and Treks, the higher your Social Score goes. SCVNGR has created a way for you to show your customers and prospects just how social you are. A high Social Score indicates that you are truly engaged in what you’re doing on SCVNGR. It builds trust that you will honor Rewards, continue to update your Challenges, and even every once in a while run a creative contest on SCVNGR to keep your customers and prospects engaged.

If your competitor has a higher Social Score then you, your prospective customers (or at least the subset that are SCVNGR users) may end up buying their product or service instead of yours. This may be hard to believe, but if your prospective customers are SCVNGR users (and more and more people are) then they’d rather go to a store where they can compete in fun activities through SCVNGR while they are making their purchase. With all of the great features that SCVNGR provides to small businesses and all of the fun that you and your customers can have with it, be sure to take advantage of it. Don’t let your competitors have a higher Social Score on SCVNGR then you! Get building… :)

Are you using SCVNGR for business yet? What do you think about the addition of Builder Profiles on SCVNGR? Leave your comments below or head over to our Facebook page to engage with other small business owners to see how they are using SCVNGR for business.

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When Will Foursquare Add Custom URLs?

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Custom URLs for Facebook and Twitter are great for SEO and for easily promoting your social media links to customers & prospects. When promoting your social media links on print ads or on your business card you want something short and memorable. A lot of small business owners like to create custom URLs that include their company name at the end of the URL string. This helps people remember the link if they don’t have it in front of them when online. For example, our Facebook URL is Facebook.com/CatalystMarketers. It’s pretty easy to remember a URL that has our company name in it. So with all of the benefits to offering users the ability to create a custom URL, why hasn’t foursquare offered custom URLs for foursquare venue pages?

Custom Foursquare URLSome people might question the need for a custom foursquare URL since check-ins take place via your mobile phone, but both businesses and foursquare users can get a lot of value out of the web-based foursquare venue page. Foursquare users can stop by a foursquare venue page to get contact information for your business, to see who the Mayor is, check out your latest foursquare special, and to read tips from other foursquare users about your business. Having an easy to remember URL will allow foursquare users to navigate to foursquare venue pages more efficiently.

Business owners would definitely benefit from having a custom foursquare URL that could be promoted to customers & prospects. A custom foursquare URL would allow small business owners to easily promote their foursquare venue page. The resulting traffic would likely leave tips about your business and get access to your foursquare special. The result could be that from landing on your foursquare venue page foursquare users see a tip that someone left about your latest foursquare special, sees that the special is still valid, and heads over to your store to redeem the special for herself. By having that custom foursquare URL you were able to effectively drive traffic to your foursquare venue page, educate those folks about your business through foursquare tips and your foursquare special, and ultimately drive a percentage of them to take action by coming to your store to buy something. Pretty powerful stuff. Now if we could just get that custom foursquare URL… ;)

Our readers are well aware of our love for foursquare, I mean, we even wrote a free foursquare eBook for business owners who are looking to use foursquare to grow sales. With that said, we think foursquare is missing an opportunity to add value for their venue owners and foursquare users by allowing business owners to create a custom foursquare URL for their foursquare venue page.

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Posted in location marketing | 2 Comments »

Add a Coupon to Your Google Places Page

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

Are you using Google Places to capture leads and drive traffic to your small business website? Google Places allows business owners with a brick & mortar location to create a free business listing. For those of you who have never heard of Google Places before, be sure to check out an earlier Google Places article we wrote before proceeding with this article. If you have a Google Places listing then you know just how powerful the tool is. With that said, by adding a coupon to your Google Places listing you can increase the effectiveness of your Google Places listing.

Develop a Coupon Offer

Probably the biggest key to building a successful Google Places Coupon is coming up with a highly actionable offer. When coming up with your offer be sure to put your “customer hat” on. Think about your customer and the type of prospects you’re trying to attract. What do you offer that’s most valuable to them? Also be sure to take into consideration outside factors like what time of year it is, what’s going on in the world (current events), etc. By making your offer relevant to outside factors you can capitalize on the extra chatter that is no doubt going on online. This will help drive traffic to your Google Places Coupon. By taking these steps instead of throwing an offer together you will drive more people to take action on your coupon.

Design a Google Places Coupon

Once you come up with your highly actionable offer it’s time to go into your Google Places account and begin designing your Google Places Coupon. Simply log into your Google Places account and you’ll see two tabs. The first is entitled, “Dashboard” and the second is a tab entitled, “Coupons”. Click the “Coupons” tab to begin designing your Google Places Coupon.

Google Coupon

The main inputs for your Google Places Coupon are: | Headline | Sub-Heading | Details | Image | Good Until Date |. When designing your coupon be sure to use your keywords throughout the copy. Your Headline should use keywords and be appealing to the customer-type you are trying to attract. Add actionable details to your coupon to explain as much as possible about the offer. Be sure to include your call-to-action at the end of the Details section. The last thing that you want to remember is to include an image. We used our avatar, but you can use your full company logo, an image relevant to your offer or to your audience. However you approach it the important thing is that you use an image on your Google Places Coupon.

You can watch your Google Places Coupon build on the right side of the page as you add inputs to your coupon. On top of this being free, Google makes it super easy for you to create a Google Places Coupon. Once you have all of your inputs locked in it’s time to finalize & promote your coupon.

Promote a Google Places Coupon

Outsource Small Business MarketingOnce your Google Places Coupon is finalized it will start showing up on your Google Places Page. When people search terms relevant to your business and add a location to their search (ie. Online Marketing Chalfont PA) then your Listing will appear. When your Google Places Listing is clicked on users will be taken to your Google Places Page, which is where they will see your Google Places Coupon. Those who are interested in your offer will print out your coupon and bring it with them to your store the next time they are in need of your products or services.

You can also take an active approach and promote your Google Places Coupon on your website, blog, and social media. Google provides you with a URL to add to your web properties. Check out our coupon for discounted Facebook Marketing services as an example. You can now drive your customers and prospects to your Google Places Coupon, which is a great way to positively impact coupon redemption.

Google Places Coupons are a great way to drive sales for your small business. You can create a Google Places Listing and Google Places Coupon for free! Hopefully everyone with a brick & mortar business will go out and create a Google Places Coupon as soon as you’re finished reading this article. It’s worth the 30 minutes that you’ll spend developing your Google Places Coupon. :)

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Posted in location marketing | 2 Comments »

Christmas Promotion with Foursquare for Small Business

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

Do you run your small business out of a retail store whereby your customers have to physically come into your store in order to make purchases? If so, then there might be a great opportunity for you to use foursquare to promote your small business, while at the same time creating a fun store environment for your customers. I know, I know, it’s only September, but you know as well as I do that you’re going to start seeing more and more holiday decorations and promotions popping up everywhere you go. Just the other day as my fiance and I were driving to a local farmers market to grab our weekly fruits & vegatables I said that it’s really starting to look a lot like Fall. The leaves were falling, the weather is cooling, and summer is starting to fade. All of you small business owners out there it’s time to start the planning process for your holiday marketing campaigns.

If you’re looking for a great way to promote your business, while keeping costs low, but spurring as much word-of-mouth publicity as possible then this foursquare Christmas Tree promotion might be right for you. The tools that we are going to use for this promotion are foursquare & email. If you have a Facebook Business page or a Small Business Blog we might use those to help promote the program and promote the winners. The only other thing you need is a Christmas Tree for your store and a few great prizes. You’ll want one prize for every day that the contest is running (and possibly even a grand prize). We’ll get into the gifts a little later in the post. For now, here’s how it might work…

Holiday Marketing Promotion with FoursquareEvery customer who comes into your store (or perhaps every customer who makes a purchase) will be instructed to check-in on foursquare before they leave the store. The offer that will compel them to check-in on foursquare is that every night the store will randomly select one of the customers who checked-in at the store on foursquare as their winner. That customer will then be notified via email (here’s where Facebook & your small business blog come in, as you can promote the winners through those tools as well) that she was the foursquare Christmas Promotion winner of the day. The customer will then be instructed to come back into the store at a time of her convenience to pick one gift from under the Christmas tree. The sooner that customer comes back to your store to pick a gift, the more gifts that will still be available to her.

Through this program you’re engaging your current customers (or prospects if you allow EVERYONE to participate) and then you’re driving them to come BACK into your store during the holiday season, which may spur them to buy something else. Heck, they may even bring a friend or family member to help them pick the gift from under the Christmas tree. Be sure that when they come back in and select their gift that they open it there – get as many pictures (or video) as possible, ensure you can use them online by getting the winner’s permission, and then post them on Facebook or any other online tools that you’re using to promote your business. You can then repeat this process everyday that the program is running.

In order to find out who’s checking-in at your small business on foursquare you simply need to claim your venue on foursquare and then access foursquare Stats; foursquare’s reporting interface. Foursquare Stats shows you who’s checking-in at your small business (among many other powerful data points). If you have a computer in your business you can check foursquare Stats and pick a winner at the end of the night at your store (maybe that will even drive customers to come back to the store every evening to see who wins). If you don’t have a computer in your store then you can simply select a winner once you get home for the evening and then send out your Winner email. Either way, the first step is to get access to your foursquare Stats and you do that by claiming your venue on foursquare.

When coming up with gift ideas to put under your Christmas tree you can be creative. Gifts can range from a $15 gift card to your store or perhaps even some products from your store. You might want to talk with other local merchants in the area to see if they are interested in co-sponsoring the program by supplying you with a unique gift or two from their store. Now you’re creating strong business partnerships with other local merchants, which can be extremely powerful when trying to create value for your customers in the future. The more you can offer your customers, the better. If you don’t have a particular item or sell a specific service, if you can point someone in the right direction to another local business for which they will be very grateful. You’re also helping to support the local economy, which is really important in today’s America.

The gifts can be anything that the majority of people who participate in the foursquare Christmas promotion will find value in. They can also range in costs from very inexpensive to moderately priced. The goal of this promotion is to drive check-ins on foursquare, engage your customers, & generate publicity & word-of-mouth awareness. Holidays are a great reason to run creative marketing promotions at your small business. It may not be this promotion that you run, but hopefully this article will spark some creative ideas for you! Happy Holidays :)

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