It seems like every day there is more and more written about Foursquare for business. The topic is really picking up steam, especially on leading Technology & Marketing blogs like Mashable, HubSpot, and OPEN Forum from American Express. As you know, we’ve written about Foursquare a few times now on the Catalyst Marketers blog. A few weeks back we talked about small businesses running Foursquare Mayor promotions, and we are also in the process of writing a Foursquare eBook –> Stay tuned to the blog and/or follow Catalyst Marketers on Twitter for more information on that. In this post, I’d like to discuss an idea about using Foursquare for Cause Marketing.
UPDATE: Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business
Does your business donate money to charity? Do you ever run promotions to help fight for a cause? If so, Foursquare offers a unique opportunity to combine your charitable promotions with an increasingly popular location-sharing platform. Foursquare allows you to use the check-in feature to present a special savings opportunity to customers, which can then be tied to your donation.
Run a Foursquare Check-in for Charity Promotion
Here’s how it could work:
- Use your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and in-store materials (use all of your communication platforms) to promote the Foursquare Check-in for Charity Promotion
- Ask patrons to check-in at your retail location each time they come by
- Create a Foursquare special tied to the check-in –> The goal being to encourage a purchase
- Determine a percentage from each sale that will go to charity (only from transactions using the foursquare special coupon)
- Run the promotion for a set period of time – I’d imagine that the longer it runs, the larger the donation pool will be
- Make the donation and promote the post promotion success via your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
You might be thinking, well, it sounds like it could really work…but what happens if it really works?? I could be on the hook for a big donation. That’s very true, and it’s exactly why you may want to tie the Check-in process with a foursquare special and percentage donation. This way you only make a donation on the transactions that occur as a direct result of the promotion. If a customer uses the foursquare special to receive a discount on her purchase, then you use a percentage of that sale to make a donation. As long as you tie the donation to the purchase, you should have enough money at the end of the promotion for the donation. You can also make it a flat donation; it doesn’t have to be a percentage (ie. For every purchase using the foursquare special, we’ll donate $2 to charity).
The benefits of using Foursquare for Cause Marketing
By using Foursquare to execute your Cause Marketing program, you get customers accustomed to checking-in at your retail location. You can also benefit from local media exposure since Foursquare for business is an increasingly popular topic, and will continue to be for some time. Foursquare also allows you to reward the customer actions with a special savings opportunity on a purchase, which ultimately provides you with the funds to make the donation. Cause Marketing is a great way to build a following for your business and it’s a great way to generate buzz. Foursquare provides small businesses with a fun and cost-effective way to execute a Cause Marketing campaign.
Tags: cause marketing, foursquare for business, foursquare marketing
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