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:
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.
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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. |
Through 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. 
The Time Breakdown section of foursquare Stats shows business owners when customers are most active at their venue. The report is broken down into 4 sections:
