Posts Tagged ‘location marketing’

Who Is the Foursquare Mayor of My Small Business?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

If you’re not asking yourself, who is the Mayor of FourSquare for my small busines, you may want to start, as there could be a great marketing opportunity in it for you. FourSquare likes people to think of them as an “urban mixtape”. FourSquare allows users to check-in at their favorite local hangouts. When connected with friends on FourSquare, your check-ins allow your friends to know your whereabouts. It also shows them some of your favorite places, which may entice them to meet you there or go try the place on their own. Many different types of businesses, like cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, gyms and more, can take advantage of FourSquare’s service.

UPDATE: Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

FourSquare Doylestown PAAs a business owner, you are probably starting to see the power of FourSquare for business. The more people you get to “check-in” at your local business, the better. Basically those customers who check-in at your local business on FourSquare, just helped you market your business. The cost to you, $0.

A key to FourSquare immortality is becoming the Mayor of a local business. The more a person continually checks-in at a local business, the better his or her chances are at becoming the mayor of that business. With that said, we do live in America, the land of possibilities, so if you’re not careful, another local patron can come in and steal your Mayor title out from under you. That happens only if another person starts checking-in at the local business, for which you’re the Mayor, more than you do.

As a business owner, there is a HUGE potential marketing campaign that you can run through FourSquare. Call it “Election Night” or “Vote for Our FourSquare Mayor”. The goal should be to get as many of your current customers as possible, along with new customers, to begin checking-in on FourSquare EVERY TIME they come to your business. The goal for customers is to become the Mayor of your small business. In order to entice customers to participate, you should come up with a remarkable offer for the winner.

Since Mayor-ship can change hands frequently, you should put a time limit on the promotion. You could run it 3x a year and whoever the mayor is on X date, is the winner. Perhaps the winner receives a big party at your store in their honor. They can bring friends/family for a free night of food and drinks. If you’re a travel agency, perhaps you can offer the winner a free set of plane tickets somewhere. Whatever the offer is, it should be something that your customers find valuable. This will entice them to participate, along with spreading your promotion to their friends and family.

When it comes to promoting this new marketing campaign, use your other online social tools, like your company blog, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn account, and Twitter. Get the word out to as many people as possible. You may even want to reach out to some local media outlets, as a promotion like this, could garner interest from them – FYI Twitter is a great place to connect with local media personnel. Also use your store to promote the campaign. Perhaps you want to spend a few bucks and print a big in-store billboard for the program and then provide a URL to your blog for customers to learn more. There are countless ways that you can get the word out about your FourSquare promotion, you just have to get creative.

FourSquare is a great new tool for small businesses. There are a lot of creative things that you can do with FourSquare to help drive sales for your small business. The costs for a program like this, except for maybe the incentive, are very small. You can definitely pull this off. So with that said, who’s the FourSquare Mayor for your small business?

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Posted in Online Marketing, Small Business | 4 Comments »

Claim Your Small Business on Yelp

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Do you own a small business? If not, do you know someone who does? If so, then Yelp is a tool that needs to be used. What is Yelp? Straight from the Yelp website, “Yelp allows consumers to share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses and lets business owners share information about their business with their customers. Simply put, it’s word of mouth– amplified.” We wrote about Yelp a few weeks back, check out our article on Running a Yelp Campaign for more Yelp-related information.

If you’re looking for ways to get the word out about your business while not spending a ton of money on traditional advertising that doesn’t work…You know what I’m talking about. Those radio spots and print ads that you’ve been paying for that haven’t returned any positive sales growth for who knows how long. Follow the steps below and unlock your business profile on Yelp today.

  1. Navigate to biz.yelp.com and perform a search for your small business
  2. Setup your free business profile
  3. Check out what people are saying about your business
  4. Respond to any customer reviews
  5. Check out your stats by clicking the “My Businesses” tab
  6. Add images and more detail to your profile to make it stand out
  7. Use Yelp to promote specials, coupons, and events
  8. Stay active on Yelp to get the most out of the social tool

That’s it. You’re all setup. You can now log into Yelp as much as you want. Employees at Yelp created a great video that goes into more detail on the steps above. Check it out when you have some time.

Thousands of consumers share opinions about local businesses every single day on Yelp. Be sure that you are a part of that conversation. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it can benefit your small business. If customers share negative reviews about your small business, and you have unlocked Yelp, you have the ability to respond to that review, both publicly and privately. Another benefit of a negative review is that you can learn about what you should be doing differently to satisfy other customers. If customers share positive reviews about your small business then you’ll capitalize on that positive word-of-mouth marketing when other interested prospects see that positive review and decide to give your product or service a try. Either way, being active on Yelp gives your small business a huge advantage over your competitors.

One thing to note is not to solicit positive reviews. First, it’s unethical and Yelp has a way to filter out reviews that seem overly positive and second, prospects become suspicious if there are nothing but positive reviews on your Yelp profile. True feedback is the best feedback.

Click the image below to check out the Business Owner’s Guide and learn more about what’s available to you on Yelp. If you want to get on Yelp, but just don’t have the time, give us a call about our Localize’it solution. Catalyst Marketers can help get you setup on Yelp and manage your account for you.

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Posted in location marketing | 1 Comment »

Run a Yelp Campaign to Promote Your Small Business

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Yelp is a great online tool that all businesses should be taking advantage of. If you’ve never heard of it until now, that’s fine, keep reading…Yelp claims that it is a “fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great – in your area”. Yelp is a tool that allows people to rate & review their favorite, and not-so-favorite, local businesses.

So what exactly does this mean for your business? Well, it means that you can use Yelp as a way to generate positive customer feedback about your business. Then, when other potential customers are searching for products and services within your industry on Yelp, you have a better chance of driving those customers to your store or website. Yelp amplifies the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Another thing that you want to consider about Yelp is that your business is most likely already in their system. It’s an open network and people can review any business, which means people in your area are reviewing your business already, whether you like it or not. Since people may already be talking about your business on Yelp, it makes sense that you join that conversation. Here are a few reasons why being on Yelp makes sense for your business:

  • Answer any negative reviews that have been made
  • Customize your profile with valuable information
  • Run campaigns to move you to the top of Yelp lists
  • Encourage customers to write positive reviews about your business

If you’re still a non-believer in the power of this tool, check out the 10 things you should know about Yelp. You’ll discover facts like, as of August 2009, more than 25 million people visited Yelp in the past 30 days and that since it’s inception in 2004 Yelpers have written over 7 million local reviews. More and more people are going to Yelp to write reviews and even more than that are going there to read those reviews prior to making purchasing decisions.

How do I get started using Yelp?

The first step is to create a profile on Yelp. After that, you can search for your business in order to “unlock” it and begin customizing it to fit your needs. Check out their video on how to unlock your business on Yelp.

After you get your business setup on Yelp the way you want, start promoting it in your store. Offer incentives to customers for writing reviews on Yelp. Try not to coax them into positive reviews only. You want to know their honest feedback. That feedback can be used to improve things that aren’t working so well, and continue doing things that customers like. The more people who bookmark and review your business on Yelp, the further it moves up the rankings within your category. If you can get listed on “What’s hot on Yelp”, that’s going to drive more traffic to your store. Be creative in the ways that you promote Yelp to your customers. Be sure to offer them something of value for writing the review or bookmarking your profile, such as, receive 10% off your next purchase for reviewing us on Yelp. Before supplying customers with their incentive, be sure they show you (perhaps on their phone) that they wrote the review and/or bookmarked your profile.

Here are some great ways people are using Yelp to find out information on businesses in and around their area:

  • Browse by business category
  • Browse by neighborhood
  • Find popular events near you
  • See what’s hot on Yelp based on bookmarks

If you want some help with getting set up on Yelp or coming up with Yelp marketing campaigns, definitely contact Catalyst Marketers for more information.

Remember to connect with us, other social media experts, and other business owners by signing up for the Catalyst Marketers Facebook Fan Page – A place where business owners and social media experts can converge to exchange ideas around using social tools to grow their business.

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Posted in Small Business | 5 Comments »