Archive for the ‘location marketing’ Category

Small Business Takes Advantage of Nearby Tips on Foursquare

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Have you read our recent post about Using Foursquare Tips to Promote Your Small Business? In that post we explained foursquare tips, as well as, why small business owners should use foursquare tips. In this article, we will take our foursquare tips discussion to the next level, by reviewing how Nearby Tips on foursquare drives more people into your business.

When a foursquare users opens their foursquare application she can select the “Tips” tab along the bottom navigation pane within the foursquare application. When “Tips” is selected, the screen that comes up shows the foursquare user all of the Nearby Tips. Foursquare pulls in every tip, from every business, within a geographic radius of your location. For business owners, not only do those foursquare users who check-in at your location get access to your foursquare venue’s Tips, but ALL foursquare users who access foursquare near your venue will get access to your foursquare tips!

Foursquare TipsLooking for an example to help solidify what was described above?? Let’s say that a foursquare user is in close proximity to your business. She goes ahead and opens foursquare to check-in at a local venue. Before or after she checks-in, she taps on the Tips button to check out all of the Nearby Tips. If you’re actively prompting your customers to leave foursquare tips about your venue, then those tips will show up under Nearby Tips. Depending on your tips, the prospect may decide to stop by your business (if its relevant to her interests). Sometimes your business won’t be relevant to her interests, but other times your products & services will be highly relevant. If you have positive foursquare tips associated with your foursquare venue, then you’re more likely to attract her to your store. The flip side is that you don’t have any tips at all, which means your business will never get in front of that prospect. You totally lose out on a new potential client.

The Nearby Tips feature from foursquare can be hugely powerful to those businesses who build a proper foursquare tips strategy, actively leave their own foursquare tips, as well as, prompt their customers to leave foursquare tips. Those businesses who have positive tips associated with their venue can use those tips to drive new customers into their store. If you think about it, this can be an extremely effective tactic for driving your target audience into your store. Not only that, but it doesn’t take a LARGE marketing budget or even a ton of your time. You simply need to claim your venue on foursquare, get a foursquare tips strategy in place, and engage those new prospects when they come into your store.

The last part from the paragraph above, “engage those new prospects when they come into your store”, is key to your success. You should have some sort of sign at your store that says something to the affect of, “10% off to those customers who discovered our store through foursquare”. Be sure to track how many folks take advantage of the offer. This way you can understand the return-on-investment of your foursquare activities. When applying the discount and finalizing the sale, encourage your employees to mention that it would be “awesome” if the new customer would leave a foursquare tip about her experience…and the cycle continues…

What do you think about foursquare Nearby Tips? Can you see the power of this feature?

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

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Experiencing Delays in Claiming Your Venue on Foursquare?

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Back in April we wrote about explaining the importance of claiming a venue on foursquare. Foursquare rolled out the ability for business owners to start claiming their venues just a few months back. It seems that foursquare may have rolled out the venue claiming tools prior to be fully ready to support the process.

Since we published our post providing business owners with a step-by-step guide to claiming a venue on foursquare, we have had several blog comments, tweets, and Facebook comments from business owners who have claimed their venue on foursquare, but have not heard anything for weeks from foursquare. The waiting process has been frustrating business owners looking to use foursquare for business more effectively. If you’re one of those business owners who’s waiting to receive confirmation that you’ve successfully claimed your venue on foursquare, you’ll be happy to know that there IS something that you can do.

Foursquare MarketingFor those business owners who have gone through the process of claiming a venue on foursquare, but have not yet heard back from anyone at foursquare, please feel free to email foursquare at bizhelp@foursquare.com or team@foursquare.com. Here at Catalyst Marketers, we claimed our venue a few months back. Like many business owners out there who are using foursquare for business, we did not hear back from the folks at foursquare right away. After a little research, we found the email addresses above. After sending an email to foursquare, we heard back from a foursquare representative within 24 hours. It was actually quite impressive. Not only did that individual confirm that we had successfully claimed our venue on foursquare, but we then sent a few emails back and forth asking a few questions about using the new foursquare tools. The foursquare rep got back with us immediately with the answers to our questions. It was nice to contact a large organization and get a human response.

If you’re one of those business owners who is waiting to hear back from foursquare about your claim, then shoot them a note to one of the email addresses above. Let us know how it turns out!

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@SCVNGR is Using Twitter to Build Relationships with Early Adopters

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

SCVNGR gets it! SCVNGR is a mobile game about going places, doing challenges and earning points. SCVNGR is one of the newest mobile games built around geo-location, and like the 10,000 lb gorilla in the category, foursquare, the opportunities for small business owners to promote their message through SCVNGR are HUGE! One thing that’s really cool to see is SCVNGR using other online tools, like Twitter, to build relationships with early adopters, like Catalyst Marketers. We talk a lot on this blog about the power of Twitter for reaching your target audience, and building relationships with those folks. SCVNGR obviously sees the power in Twitter for business, and in this post, we are going to discuss just how @SCVNGR uses Twitter.

SCVNGR MarketingI guess it was about three weeks ago at this point, when we first heard about SCVNGR here at Catalyst. I read about the New England Patriots using SCVNGR to engage their fans during the “off-season” in the NFL. After a little research, it was clear that SCVNGR is onto something BIG for businesses. We went ahead and penned our first post on using SCVNGR for business. As we do with ALL of our content, we promoted it through Twitter, and included a @SCVNGR mention. It was great to see that @SCVNGR actually responded to our tweet, with a mention, and began following Catalyst Marketers on Twitter.

Since our first interaction on Twitter, we have now exchanged multiple tweets with @SCVNGR. We have even started to follow some of the amazing SCVNGR employees & founders. They have followed us back, and we are at the beginning stages of building our relationship with them. It’s been such a great experience to see an organization going about using Twitter the right way, that we just had to write yet ANOTHER SCVNGR post on the blog ;)

As you may know from reading some of our Twitter-related content, we feel that Twitter is hugely powerful for business owners. When leveraged properly, it can help you reach more people, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately drive sales. Let’s breakdown what’s gone on between Catalyst Marketers & SCVNGR over the past few weeks on Twitter. This will allow you to see how a forward-thinking organization like SCVNGR is using Twitter for business. Hopefully it will help give you a better understanding around using Twitter for your small business.

    SCVNGR Marketing

  1. SCVNGR created a plan & identified their target audience – Early Adopters & Marketing Agencies
  2. SCVNGR built their social media foundation on select tools & started producing content
  3. SCVNGR then began following & interacting with their target audience (Catalyst Marketers being one of the many)
  4. SCVNGR continues to engage with their target audience around content
  5. SCVNGR is promoting the use of their product & helping folks understand the value that’s created by using their product

SCVNGR is doing all of the right things when it comes to using online tools to reach their target audience, build relationships, and ultimately grow sales. Social Media Marketing is a process, and when you have the proper plan, a little creativity, and the right process, you can use online tools to grow your business. We look forward to continuing our relationship with SCVNGR and cannot wait to see how they progress in the future.

Obviously SCVNGR is a smaller organization right now, but if/when it starts to grow, we hope that SCVNGR won’t forget that it all started with that personal interaction through online tools. I don’t think they’ll begin to move away from that, but you never know. Either way, it shows just how important it is to use online tools, like Twitter, to engage your target audience.

SCVNGR MarketingHere at Catalyst Marketers, we were fans of SCVNGR before we started our relationship with them, now that they’ve engaged us, and taken an interest in what we do, we are HUGE advocates. Every time we write a blog post about SCVNGR or tweet about them to our followers, the SCVNGR brand grows. Who knows, perhaps we’ll even write our next eBook, in our Driving Growth for Your Small Business eBook Series, on SCVNGR. SCVNGR created a remarkable product, and they are now using online tools to help build relationships with early adopters, and drive growth – IT’S WORKING. Now, that’s the power of using online tools, like Twitter, to build your brand!

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Corporate Chains Should Create Treks on SCVNGR

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Starbucks, Marriott, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, 7-Eleven, Rita’s Water Ice, Cheesecake Factory…you name the chain, and I’ll tell you that they should build a Trek on SCVNGR. Using SCVNGR for business is going to increase in popularity over the coming months, especially after the publicity from the New England Patriots SCVNGR campaign that’s currently going on. SCVNGR is a mobile game that ties geo-location into real-world activities.

SCVNGR users can create challenges tied to a physical location, as well as, create Treks, which are a set of Challenges across multiple locations. Business owners can use SCVNGR to create Challenges at their business. These Challenges help business owners keep their customers engaged, as well as, allow the customer to help spread your marketing message. If you own a chain of stores, like the companies profiled above, you should consider building a Trek on SCVNGR to promote your message, keep customers engaged, and generate buzz.

SCVNGR MarketingStarbucks should create a National Trek on SCVNGR, whereby customers who stop at stores across the U.S. will check-in and complete Challenges at each location. Starbucks can even create a Global Trek on SCVNGR. The possibilities don’t stop there, as local county-based Treks can be built, or Treks for a city. What I’m saying is that if you own multiple stores, you can build a Trek on SCVNGR for your business. You don’t have to be Starbucks to take advantage of this creative marketing opportunity. Perhaps you’re a chain of 3 local donut shops, a chain of 11 regional hotels, a chain of 20 gyms…whatever business you’re in, SCVNGR provides a platform for you to engage your customer across multiple locations.

SCVNGR users who complete your Treks should be awarded prizes. A local Toyota dealership gave away a car. A jeweler in Philadelphia gave away a diamond ring. The couple who found it got engaged right then and there. The story was all over the news in Philadelphia and SCVNGR is promoting it on their site as well. By getting creative, taking advantage of new technologies, and giving away a $5,000 ring (which probably cost the dealer about $2,200), this jeweler got a TON of awesome PR, numerous local prospects now know about his business, and one happy couple is going to tell their engagement story thousands of times over the rest of their life. That’s pretty powerful stuff!

The more we dig into SCVNGR here at Catalyst, the more we love what we see. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Marriott Corporation or the owner of a few motels out in Vegas, you can use SCVNGR to promote your business. Let us know if you have any questions about using SCVNGR. We can help you strategize and execute your next SCVNGR promotion.

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Use SCVNGR to Drive Sales for Your Small Business

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

FOURSQUARE, FOURSQUARE, FOURSQUARE. Anyone who reads this blog knows that here at this Online Marketing Agency, we absolutely LOVE foursquare as a business tool – heck, we even wrote an eBook on the subject of using foursquare for business. With that said, new tools are popping up all of the time, and although we don’t see SCVNGR as a foursquare killer, we do see it as offering very unique benefits for those early adopter business owners. In this post, we are going to discuss what SCVNGR is, who’s using it, and what the initial benefits are for your business.

What is SCVNGR?

SCVNGR Marketing“SCVNGR is a game about doing challenges at places”. People play SCVNGR by going places, doing challenges, and earning points. SCVNGR is currently available for both the iPhone and Android. With that said, one really cool feature is that anyone can play as long as they can text & snap pictures from their phone. Similar to foursquare, SCVNGR has given the user the power to add to the game by adding places (think venues on foursquare), creating Challenges, and even building Treks. Challenges are built into every location on SCVNGR. Challenges can range from snapping a photo, scanning a QR code (this is pretty unique), or taking part in an activity. Users then earn points based on the Challenges that they complete. Treks are a series of Challenges. Treks can be completed as one-time events, or can be on-going. Treks can also be completed over time. When completing a Trek, SCVNGR users go from place to place completing challenges. What’s really cool about SCVNGR is that business owners can build their own Challenges and Treks! This feature provides TREMENDOUS marketing value to small businesses.

Who’s Using SCVNGR?

Did you know that the New England Patriots are currently in the process of running a very prominent treasure hunt on SCVNGR? Vince Wilfork of the New England Patriots has lost his Super Bowl ring. New Englanders can use SCVNGR to help Vince find his missing ring. The Patriots are hoping to build some buzz during a normally media-quiet period of the year. It seems to be working as thousands of folks are participating in the program currently.

The New England Patriots are just the latest organization to start capitalizing on using SCVNGR for business. Over on another blog that we follow here at Catalyst Marketers, Ryan Gerardi discusses how Jay Wolfe Toyota used SCVNGR and gave away a free Toyota to the lucky winner! The folks at Jay Wolfe Toyota built a Trek on SCVNGR throughout St. Louis. Approximately 500 local residents competed to complete the Trek and win the free car. Jay Wolfe Toyota was able to capitalize on some fantastic PR, as well as, build brand awareness with their target audience – local St. Louis car owners.

What are the Benefits to Using SCVNGR?

SCVNGR MarketingSCVNGR provides small business owners with yet another fantastic platform to use to reach, and engage their customers. Building Challenges on SCVNGR entices your customers to take part in an activity while at your location. That activity is then shared with others who are connected to your customer on SCVNGR. You can change challenges as often as you’d like for your business. This will help keep customers engaged.

We also talk a lot about Local Partnerships here on this blog, and building Treks on SCVNGR is a great way to partner with other local businesses to engage an entire community in a treasure hunt. Are you in charge of tourism in a local community? Do you manage guest activities at a resort? Perhaps you’re a small business owner who likes to participate in things like community sidewalk sales? Treks on SCVNGR are a great way to get your customers active around your brand and your community. Each time customers come into your store as part of a Trek, there’s an opportunity for them to purchase something. As you know, getting customers into the store is one of the toughest parts of closing a sale. SCVNGR helps business owners get more people into their store. Building Challenges & Treks on SCVNGR helps business owners keep those customers engaged once they get there.

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Use Foursquare Tips to Promote Your Small Business

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Are you looking for ways to communicate important information about your small business to your customers and prospects? Have you considered using foursquare tips to provide that information directly to those who check-in at your venue on foursquare? Foursquare allows people to leave tips about your business. Tips are limited to 140 characters, but they are a great new form of word-of-mouth marketing. Not only are numerous business owners taking advantage of foursquare tips already, but many owners and marketers are finding creative ways to use foursquare tips. This post is going to explain foursquare tips, and show you how foursquare tips can be used to promote any important information about your business to customers and prospects.

What are foursquare tips?

Foursquare MarketingWhen foursquare users visit your store, and go to check-in on foursquare at your venue, they can leave a tip about your venue. Even those folks who aren’t actually in your store, but are reviewing your venue from foursquare.com, can leave a foursquare tip at your venue. Foursquare tips are limited only to the customer’s imagination.

For some small business owners the openness of foursquare tips scares them, as they don’t want anyone to say anything bad about their business. Here at Catalyst, we always recommend to clients that they not fear negative feedback. It’s better to get access to that information, so that you can work to change that customers opinion, than to not have it, and lose that customer forever. Transparency for businesses is a growing trend, and small business owners must embrace transparency in order to thrive in the coming years.

Why should Small Business Owners Use Foursquare Tips?

For those small business owners who decide to use foursquare tips, they’ll quickly realize that they can use foursquare to promote their own messages about their business. Not only can customers & prospects leave tips about a foursquare venue, but owners can leave tips for their customers as well.

Foursquare TipsUpon checking-in at a location, a foursquare user can click the “Tips” tab on her smart phone to review all of the latest foursquare tips associated with that venue. Others will be checking out your foursquare tips via foursquare.com. Either way, your message will get in front of the right people, at the right time (when they are either at your location, near your location, or checking you out via the website).

Foursquare tips can range from promotional, such as publishing a foursquare tip about a weekend sale at your small business. Other foursquare tips can be educational about your products, services, or business – think FAQs for foursquare. Foursquare tips can also be used to communicate emergency information, such as store closings due to weather, class cancellations, etc. If you have something that you want to communicate about your business, 9 times out of 10, foursquare tips will be one channel that you’ll want to use. Foursquare tips allows you to get specific information about your small business into the hands of customers & prospects at a time when your business is on their mind, either because they are currently at your location, or because they are researching you on foursquare.com.

Hopefully by now you’re starting to see the power of foursquare tips as a marketing channel. Let’s say that you own a business in a resort town, many tourists will be looking to spend their money somewhere. As more and more people get on board with foursquare, foursquare tips will influence their purchasing decisions, as we are seeing with those who are already using foursquare. Even if your business isn’t located near a vacation hot spot, foursquare tips has a ton a utility for your business. Foursquare users are using foursquare tips to help them understand who they want to do business with. Be sure you get one their short list by properly leveraging foursquare tips as a viable marketing channel to promote your small business.

How have you been using foursquare tips to promote your small business?

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Foursquare eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

Monday, July 12th, 2010

We recently released our very first eBook, as part of a larger Catalyst eBook Series: Driving Growth for Your Small Business. We have had over 100 downloads so far, with all feedback being very positive. For those of you who don’t know what foursquare is, and how you can use foursquare to drive sales for your small business, you should consider downloading our eBook.

The eBook, entitled “How to Use foursquare to Grow Your Business“, is 22 pages of foursquare-related content. There’s no charge to download the eBook. We simply ask you to provide your name, email address, and answer the question, “Are you currently using foursquare for business”. The eBook is broken out into four main sections, each section containing multiple sub-sections. The content is broken down in a way that’s easy to follow. The four main sections of our How to Use foursquare to Grow Your Business eBook are:

Foursquare eBook

What is foursquare?

In this section, we take it from the top, explaining to our readers what foursquare is, the location-based application’s history, and how it’s currently being used. Here’s a small sample from the, What is foursquare? section of the eBook:

Foursquare is a location-based social application that combines local city mapping, social interaction, and gaming. Foursquare allows consumers to use their mobile phone to Check-In at retail businesses. Anyone and everyone can use foursquare. Foursquare users check-in at local businesses that they frequent during their daily routine. For instance, you can check-in at your local Target, Starbucks, the local tailor, or even a local flea market. If you go to check-in at a certain place, and it’s not listed in foursquare, then go ahead and add it yourself. By checking-in, users unlock badges, accumulate points, and also claim Mayorship over certain businesses.

How Can Businesses Use foursquare to Drive Sales?

Once everyone is on the same page as to what foursquare is, and why people are using it, it’s now time to discuss the business uses of foursquare. Foursquare, when used properly, can drive sales for businesses, both large & small. In this section, we discuss how business owners can leverage foursquare for business. Here’s a small snippet from this section:

Even if you are not actively promoting foursquare use, chances are that by having a robust and accurate business profile on foursquare, you’ll still capitalize on foursquare use by your customers. More and more people are beginning to use foursquare and I’ll bet some of those folks are your customers. As customers check-in, and leave tips for others, your business will be exposed to many more potential customers. Hopefully, over time, you’ll begin to start actively using foursquare for business, whether that’s through a foursquare Mayor Campaign, a foursquare Loyalty Program, or something totally new that you come up with. When you do, I think you’ll start to see just how powerful it is. Foursquare provided the platform, and now it’s our job to take advantage of it to help grow our businesses.

Real World Businesses Currently Using foursquare

Even though foursquare recently celebrated its first birthday, there are numerous large companies using foursquare to drive sales. In this section, we provide examples of how both Starbucks, & Marc Jacobs are using foursquare. Here’s a piece from the Starbucks is Using foursquare for Business sub-section:

The fact that Starbucks, a mega-brand with a HUGE marketing budget, is finding value in using foursquare for business, should be a clear indicator that you can use foursquare to promote your business as well.

What is the Future of foursquare?

In the last part of the eBook, we discuss what the future might hold for this young location-based social gaming application. We provide business owners with ideas for promotions they may see in the future.

As you know from reading this eBook, foursquare is still in the early stages of development and even though they have already made so much progress, a big smile comes to my face when I think about what the future holds for foursquare. There are a lot of folks out there who think foursquare for business is going to be as big, or bigger, than a lot of the current social tools out there today. Yes, I’m talking about Facebook and Twitter. Now is the time to make your investment in foursquare, so that you can be positioned well as new business uses evolve from the platform. The following sub-sections are a few ways businesses might leverage foursquare in the future. These ideas are not meant to show you future strategic uses of foursquare, rather they are meant as possible nitty gritty foursquare tactics that many business owners can latch onto and implement. Hopefully we’ll begin to see some of that in the near future.

Foursquare for business Here at Catalyst Marketers, we are big believers in the power of bridging the online world with the offline community, and foursquare is a great first step in doing just that. We hope that this post provides you with some intriguing information about our new foursquare eBook. We hope you will download the How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business eBook, and then let us know what you think about using foursquare for business.

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Foursquare Spam or Creative foursquare Marketing?

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Like all maturing online tools, foursquare has been garnering the attention of spammers lately. Now, there are probably conflicting views on whether or not the activities that we are about to discuss are actually spam, or whether they are an attempt at creativity. If you’re a foursquare user, then you know that part of the location-based game is leaving tips about a venue. Business owners generally love it when their customers leave tips about their store. Even if negative tips are left, that provides business owners with a learning opportunity. Business owners can even see who left the negative tip and they can reach out to those folks to begin discussing how the business can be improved. You see, foursquare tips, whether positive or negative, can benefit businesses. Now, with a new form of foursquare tips beginning to appear on certain foursquare venues, it seems that foursquare tips might be taking a turn towards spam.

Foursquare SpamThe other day I was talking with Ryan Gerardi from AutoBurst, an Internet Marketing & Software Development Agency, and he let me in on something that he noticed on foursquare. As you can see from this image, a foursquare user, who’s a prominent online marketer in the auto industry, has left a tip at a local Lehigh Valley, PA auto dealer. Within his tip, he doesn’t leave a positive or negative comment about the dealership, what he does is he promotes a competing dealership that’s located across the street from the venue that he left the tip at. To some, this might be looked at as an extremely creative way to leverage foursquare tips. Now, when customers check-in at this Lehigh Valley auto dealer and check the foursquare tips, they will see this tip about walking across the street to another dealership and checking out what they have to offer. This foursquare tip might actually steal business away from the dealership that the tip was left at. Now, from a marketing perspective, if the goal is to drive traffic to your dealership, this foursquare tip is a creative way to do that. With that said, as a marketer, I’m of the opinion that this is the beginning of a new form of foursquare spam.

In preparation for writing this article, we did a little research and came across another great article about foursquare spam, which might be worth checking out. Here at Catalyst Marketers, we do everything in our power to conduct business with the highest integrity. That means using Permission Marketing when it comes to communicating with folks, building QUALITY relationships versus focusing on driving large quantities of followers who may or may not be engaged in what we’re doing, and conducting ourselves in a way that will always allow us to pass what we call the “red face test” (thanks to my old boss, Debbie Malovetz, for teaching me about that).

The “red face test” occurs when someone calls you out on something that you did. If you know what you did was unethical, your face might get red when confronted. If you acted in accordance to a high ethical standard, then you should have no problem explaining your actions. This is what the red face test is all about. For Catalyst Marketers, we are all about creativity, but for us, this new form of “foursquare marketing” is an activity that would inhibit us from passing the red face test. For us, this is not creative marketing, is new foursquare spam.

What say you?

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Small Businesses see the Power of Specials Nearby on Foursquare

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

This past weekend, we were out with friends for dinner and drinks. We were finishing up dinner and looking for a place to grab some drinks. A few friends made a recommendation on where we should go. The consensus was pretty much set when I pulled out my phone, and brought up the foursquare application. I simply wanted to check out what other bars were nearby. It was then that I saw foursquare was showing that there was a Special Nearby. By clicking the Special Nearby button, I then found that it was actually a bar offering patrons one free drink when they stop in at the bar and check-in on foursquare. With six of us looking for a place to go, that’s 6 free drinks if we all check-in. 6 free drinks at a bar in the city is getting close to $50 without including tip. In any event, we decided to spend the rest of our night at the bar that was offering the foursquare special.

Foursquare Specials NearbyHave you claimed your venue on foursquare? If so, have you started running a foursquare special? You know that there are no fees associated with running a foursquare special, correct? If not, now you know! :) As you can see from the example above, running a foursquare special for your small business can drive sales! It’s our opinion that the biggest reason for foursquare specials being so successful is the Specials Nearby alert that foursquare has built into the application. That’s how foursquare informs users, based on their location, what venues are offering specials nearby.

Think about the example above…and no, it doesn’t only apply to bars, which we’ll get into a little later in the post. Consumers were out in the city looking for a place to go. Instead of going to the first place we saw, we whipped out our smart phones, checked foursquare, and saw that their was a venue running a special nearby. Instead of going to the bar around the corner from where we ate dinner, we walked a block or two and spent the rest of the evening spending our hard earned dollars at the bar that was running the foursquare special. Without running that special on foursquare, we would have never known the bar was so close, and we definitely would not have stopped in to buy drinks. Basically, by being on foursquare, and actively managing their venue by running a foursquare special, the owner of that bar drove new sales. That’s pretty powerful!

So, what if you don’t own a bar? What if you own a farmers market, a retail clothing store, or even a small stationary supply store? You can still take advantage of foursquare specials for your small business! If you own a farmers market, and you run a foursquare special, say, one free piece of fruit for checking-in at our venue, then when folks are out in town and they check-in on foursquare, they’ll see a special nearby. When consumers look into the special, they’ll see your offer and the next time they go grocery shopping, they may very well come to your farmers market for their fruits & veggies. The same logic applies to your small retail shop and stationary store.

The first key is being on foursquare, the next is coming up with a motivating offer that provides value to consumers, and the last part is officially creating your foursquare special, and then promoting it through foursquare & other online tools like your blog & social networks.

Let us know if you need any help managing foursquare for your business, or creating a foursquare special.

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Foursquare Stats: Identify & Connect with Your Top Visitors

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Do you know which customers & prospects are taking time to check-in at your venue on foursquare on a regular basis? Understanding who’s coming into your store is a huge advantage to creative business owners. I’m hoping that most business owners have heard, it’s more profitable to keep existing customers, than it is to find new customers. Tools like foursquare are turning this entrenched marketing philosophy on its ear. By using tools like foursquare, business owners are able to identify both customers and prospects for free. Those who act on that information will prosper in the future.

For those business owners who have claimed their venue on foursquare, you know that you now have access to a wealth of data. Through foursquare Stats, business owners can determine who’s checking-in at your venue, the check-in ratio of males/females, when visitors check-in at your venue on foursquare, and much more.

Foursquare stats for businessThrough the Top Visitors report, foursquare provides business owners information on who’s checking-in the most at their venue. Business owners can even see the username of each individual, as well as, their Twitter ID if that’s been added to the user’s account. Having access to this information in a consolidated format allows business owners to use the data in their marketing activities.

Foursquare Stats, and specifically the Top Visitors report, allows business owners to segment out their top visitors, and begin building a relationship with them. There are many ways to leverage this data in your marketing tactics. Here are a few ideas:

  • Use a Top Visitor’s image & begin a conversation with him/her the next time they enter the store
  • Start following your Top Visitors on Twitter, and start communicating with them through Twitter
  • Host a special Sale available to ONLY the Top 10 Visitors – You can have this after hours and make these folks feel like true insiders
  • Run a foursquare mayor special, as the foursquare Mayor of your venue is the Top Visitor of your business on foursquare
  • Name something after a Top Visitor – If you’re a bakery, name a Top Visitor’s favorite baked good after him/her
Foursquare stats

Having access to the rich data that foursquare provides is only half of the equation. Of course, there would be no second half of the equation without the first part. The second half of the equation is creativity. It’s about understanding what the data is telling you, and capitalizing on that information in a creative way. Hopefully your foursquare tactics provide value to both the audience, and your business.

When’s the last time you stopped to check out who your top visitors on foursquare are?

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