One thing we like to do with all our clients is introduce them to new ways of marketing themselves, in particular avenues online that they may have not considered or thought were for them before. Right now what is working extremely well for a lot of our clients is social media tie-ins such as location service-based social network-come-games.
As more and more people switch over to smart phones these ‘games’ are becoming increasingly more popular, and one in particular Foursquare, is ruling the roost. Foursquare’s game element comes from getting it’s users to ‘check-in’ to places they’ve visited and tell their friends about it. The game element is very clever indeed as it converts these ‘check-in’s into points, and the person who has ‘checked-in’ the most times at a given location then wins the much-coverted title of ‘Mayor’.
When Foursquare started off nobody was really sure what to do with all these Mayorships, but it’s a whole different ballgame these days, especially for the savvy minded business person. Big businesses like Starbucks have offered their loyal customers a $1 discount on Frappucino’s as an incentive to get them checking-in on Foursquare. When checking-in this special message greets the mayors:
Starbucks Foursquare Mayor offer
But it’s not just the big dogs who have got wise to this clever customer loyalty game, restaurant owner Joe Sorge attracted 161 Foursquare users at the same time to his burger joint in Milwaukee, AJ Bombers (pretty astounding considering there are approximately only 300-400 total Foursquare users in the area!) with the promise that they could receive the ever elusive and almost impossible to gain, Swarm badge. Earning the coveted Swarm Badge can only be achieved when over 50 Foursquare users are checked-int o at the same place at the same time. A pretty impressive idea we think. Even more impressive though is the fact that the restaurant increased their sales by 110% that day! You can read about this story in more depth in this great post on the Hubspot blog.
AJ Bombers Swarm Badge
So don’t just sit there thinking just because you’re not a national name or part of a great big chain that you can’t get in on a piece of this very tasty Foursquare pie. If you’re not sure how to get started with promotions and offers like the ones mentioned above there’s a handy little how-to guide on Foursquare’s website. And If you’d like to know more about how we can help your business utilise these services, drop us a line.
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