5 Great Ways To Use Foursquare To Get More Business

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This is a guestpost by Matt Hamilton, great blogger and Social Media enthusiast at Near Coast Media. Mor about him at the bottom of the post.

It’s nothing new any more and I’m sure you have heard. At over 15 million users, Foursquare has recently grown up from nice gimmick to powerful business tool.

In short, it is a smart phone location based app that allows you to ‘check in’ to businesses that you are visiting. The app shares these updates with your friends and awards special merit badges. This fun social app for consumers is also a powerful business tool to grow brand awareness and profits.

I dug into Foursquare a lot recently and wanted to find out which great ways there are to use it for businesses:

1. Creating Deals to drive traffic

If you claim your business on foursquare, you have the ability to offer special discounts when someone checks in at your location. Claiming your business is free and just takes a few minutes, just visit the foursquare merchant page

With over 15 million users, people often search for nearby businesses that have great new deals to check out. Your offer may be the difference between a new customer and losing them to the competition. Be creative with your special deals and entice new customers to see what your business is all about.

Examples of foursquare deals:

  • Check in and receive burger and beer for only $8.99
  • 15% off your next merchandise purchase
  • Receive a free tax consultation when you check in

2. How to use deals to create loyal customers

Foursquare deals can be used to create a virtual customer loyalty program.

Getting new customers in the door is great but any marketing or sales person will tell you that current customers are the most valuable. Use this opportunity to reward those that visit your business often by creating a reward based program that gives a special deal after a check in goal is reached.

This is very powerful because it creates a connection between the customer and the business and helps to make customers feel compelled to come back.

Some great foursquare loyalty examples are:

  • Free 16 oz coffee on your 10th check in
  • Check in 3 times in 10 days and receive a special gift
  •  $1 off popcorn every 3rd check in
  • Free business name t-shirt on your 25th check in

 

3. Easily understanding your demographic with analytics

Anyone running a business knows that having more data about your customers is always going to help. If you are a small business owner, surveying customers to collect demographic data is probably not on your to do list. Luckily foursquare can help you collect some of this data and also present it in a easy to digest manner.

To make sure you are getting as much data as possible, let customers know you are on foursquare as often as possible. When claiming your business you will receive a window sticker that encourages customers to ‘check in here’.

Check in data available:

  • Check in #’s and averages
  • Where check ins are shared (Twitter and Facebook)
  • Gender of customers
  • Customers ages
  • Times and frequencies

 

4. Get comments and tips from customers

Foursquare users are allowed to leave comments or ‘tips’ on the profile of venues they visit. Although negative comments could hurt your business, this feature is generally used positively by members to share a favorite dish, pizza topping, service etc.

I have decided to eat at a restaurant solely based on a tip left on foursquare, this isn’t a resource to overlook.

It is also a good place to read feedback left by customers in order to make changes or improvements in your business.

 

5. Free advertising to hundreds or thousands

If there’s just one reason to convince you foursquare is right for business, this is it.

When a user checks in, that check in is shared to all of their friends on foursquare. Since most people also link this to Facebook and/or Twitter, this check in is being broadcasted to all of their friends and followers. This means that thousands of people are potentially viewing a free advertisement for your business.

Claiming your business and optimizing the listing with your contact information and website will give you the best return from this free promotion. For businesses of any size, this kind of exposure is absolutely worth a few minutes of your time.

I’d love to hear how foursquare has helped your business. Let me know in the comments if you have any unique use cases and share your success or struggles.

 

 

About the author:

I got to know Matt as an absolute ace in Social Media. Check out his blog Near Coast Media for resources, services and business consulting. You can also follow Matt on Twitter @mattjham or visit his Facebook Page.

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  • http://freshtightdesigns.com freshtight

    This is a nice list – I especially like the Loyalty Rewards or Deals – these help to create loyal customers who you know will be evangelists for your brand online (well, at least on Foursquare). That’s the center of social media marketing – using the various tactics to build and expand your network – at the same time, building and maintaining relationships (with customers, partners, etc). and in turn, these individuals will be glad to promote your product or services.

    • http://www.nearcoastmedia.com/ Matt Hamilton

      Thanks for the comments. I agree that there are so many important tactics to build your social media marketing and reach a larger audience. Like you said, these efforts create relationships and bring in loyal customers. To me social media marketing is word-of-mouth marketing, the best kind.

  • http://twitter.com/LMTSocialMedia Lawrence Taylor

    Nice blog, but what are the demographics of Foursquare users? Not every business with a physical location will have a type of customer who uses Foursquare. Saying that, it doesn’t cost anything to implement so what do you have to loose?

    • http://www.nearcoastmedia.com/ Matt Hamilton

      I think this is sometimes a problem for business owners, often I’ll hear “my customers don’t use x” but in reality they just don’t know. Since it only takes about 5 minutes to claim your business on foursquare, there really isn’t any reason not to try. I wouldn’t put the effort into making deals until I see that at least a couple of people have checked in.

  • http://twitter.com/chrisgomedia Chris Tompkins

    These are terrific suggestions.  I speak to clients every week that are struggling to make sense of how to harness the power of Foursquare for their business.  I’ll make sure to bookmark this article, as it has great info that my clients would love!

    • http://www.nearcoastmedia.com/ Matt Hamilton

      Thanks Chris, I’m glad it helps. It is always nice to show businesses these niche social networks that can really help them.

  • http://www.phdbox.edu.in/ PhD Thesis Writing Services

    I’ve using foursquare for last few months, but never use it for marketing purpose. I was certainly missing this nice marketing opportunity.