10 Ways to Leverage Location-Based Marketing

Introduction: Shortly after Foursquare was released, LBS was once a hot topic in the field of social marketing. However, with the decline in user activity and the lack of interest in participating by businesses, LBS services seem to have become a "tasteless and a pity to discard" chicken ribs. The former LBS service provider DiGuo has also transformed into a photo sharing website, and NetEase's LBS application "NetEase Bafang" has even closed its service. Jiepang is one of the few remaining LBS applications that is still developing well. So can we use LBS for marketing? This article takes Foursquare as an example (you can refer to Jiepang in China) to introduce you to 10 ways to use LBS for marketing, which may give you a different understanding of LBS marketing.

#1 Know where your business is located

First, you need to create your own profile on Foursquare and specify your location so that your location can appear on Foursquare. Use your mobile phone to download the Foursquare app, and the system will automatically search for your location after you sign in.

At this point, you need to enter your location, select a category, and enter your detailed address. Specifying a detailed address will make it easier for people to search for you. Then choose a category that clearly describes your location. The main categories are:

• Arts & Entertainment
• Colleges & Universities
• food
• Nightlife
• Professional Locations & Other Places
• Place of residence
• Shops & Services
• Travel & Transportation

The main categories are further subdivided into more categories. For example, nightlife is subdivided into bars, beer houses, cocktail bars, and affordable bars. Then continue to select subdivided categories to make your location more precise. If you can't find your location, try entering the name and then searching. If it still doesn't work, scroll to the end of the dialog box and you can manually add your location information.

The last step is to enter your address, which is crucial, even though the dialog box tells you that this is optional. When filling in the address background on Foursquare, write as much relevant information as possible, which will help you convey your information to existing and potential customers, and this also applies to other social networks.

Select the address area, enter the address, intersection, city, state, zip code, phone number and Twitter. This will effectively convey everything the customer wants to know, so they can better find your location or communicate with you.

If your location is already there and you are the owner of this place, you can click Do you manage this place? You can also complete this action on a computer by visiting the web page on your computer and clicking the same button as on a mobile phone.

At this time, Foursquare will send a verification email via mobile phone or email. Mobile phone is very fast, but it won't work if you need to verify many places. If you choose to verify by mobile phone, Foursquare will automatically call all the phone numbers in your address to ask for the store name, your name, and your relationship with the store. Next, enter four digits and finally verify your mobile phone number and business. The steps for completing the email are similar to those for mobile phones. You can verify by entering the verification code you received.

Finally, you'll need to pay $10 to review your verification information. If you want to know more about the verification steps, especially if you need to verify a lot of places, visit Foursquare's verification resource page

#2 Share different update information in different regions

Sending updates via Foursquare is a new feature that lets people who have been there before or are nearby get updates and participate in your promotions.

You can update and send some coupons, activities or related information to Foursquare users. These updated information can be accompanied by text, pictures or specific activity rules.

This feature is only available on computers, and you can add text, photos or other services. This information can be organically shared with specific stores and all branches. This feature disperses information to fans within a specific range and releases news more accurately.

Luke's Lobster, a chain store in New York, uses Foursquare to publish regional information in the city and convenient food trucks in 7 different locations. What makes users excited is that they can use Foursquare and Twitter to track the convenient food trucks in New York, which will attract more people to buy. The restaurant shares very interesting information with people in different places, ensuring that the content is always relevant to fans or friends of fans.

Another recent launch is promotion updates, which allows merchants to re-share messages in certain areas by paying. Although this feature is currently only available to certain companies, it is a good promotion method to allow merchants to select some good update information and re-publish it.

This feature is very new and may only be used by certain large companies. In the end, it will be related to the price of this form of advertising. Time will tell whether this paid advertising feature can benefit companies.

#3 Offer Foursquare

All businesses offer specials and offers. But if you want to be unique and offer something eye-catching based on your customers' online and offline habits, you can use Foursquare specials. With Foursquare, you can set up free offers to attract new customers or reward loyal customers.

Examples of special events to attract new customers:

• Group activity - "If 30 people sign in together, they can get a 25-cent flight badge"
• Friends activity - "3 people sign in at the same time and get a free snack"
• Flash event - "The first 10 people who sign in after 8 o'clock can enjoy a 25% discount"
• Newbie activity - "Get a free cake for your first sign-in"
• Sign-in activity - "Sign in and get an appetizer"

Examples of activities to reward old customers:

• Loyalty campaign - "Sign in for the third time and get a free cookie"
• Most Customers Event - "The most frequent customers can get a 20% discount"

Which activity do you think is most helpful to your business? Many businesses use a combination of these activities to encourage customers and make returning customers more satisfied.

I recommend running two campaigns at a time to see which one works better for your users - just like A/B testing web ads, but with social giveaways. Post updates and promote your offers on Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms where you are active.

They used the Promoted Updates feature to allow many stores to run promotions that were ranked first in search results. This ensured exposure and increased impressions for the company. They hope to use these features more widely. American Express was unique in the scale of their campaign, but using two Foursquare features to support each other is a tactic that any marketer can use for their business.

#4 Add posts about your company or other interesting topics

People who visit your page can leave comments. Users are encouraged to leave comments about the places they have visited, whether they are negative or positive feedback. The top comments are the ones that are most liked by other users. In fact, the ranking of comments is often due to the fact that the higher the ranking, the more relevant and true the comments are.

Adding helpful posts to your company page is a great way to showcase your company’s strengths and your creative edge—most importantly, your company’s people-first approach.

Recording important company moments, your favorite employees, or even the information of the ATM closest to your store are all information that can help your users get the most out of Foursquare.

It’s also important to post information about other businesses, as this will build your own community, help you establish yourself as an expert on a particular issue, and establish your company brand before relevant users browse other pages.

Both the NHL and ESPN wrote about PNC Sports to get other users' attention and provide users with useful experiences of other stores. Posting about your business will help you build a user base and may also get other pages to post about you.

#5 Create a Foursquare Page

This page is your company's hub on the web, where all your stores can be managed in one place. Users can choose to follow your Foursquare page, which is an ideal method for large companies and brands with many stores.

This page can promote itself more - the page starts with an image of the same Twitter avatar, and there is an 860×130 pixel banner on the page. Below the banner, there is a place to write a brief introduction about your company, present your company's website address, and can also connect to your Twitter and Facebook.

As a page manager, you can post posts about your store or related nearby stores, as we mentioned above. On the page, you can post information about your brand on your store or other places, providing valuable and novel information to users. Your page also has two other functions: as a check-in place for all your stores and as a page for managing branches.

If you manage a place on Foursquare, you can't just check in to it like you normally would. This page is your company page, where you can promote your brand and share the latest events and updates about the place with your audience.

To achieve this, you update your tab when you check in at a different location. Add text, pictures, Twitter and Facebook to your check-in and share with your followers. When the page shows that you check in at a special place, this information will be displayed on your page and your followers. These check-ins are different from the updates discussed previously because they are for the entire company, not a specific store.

For example, H&M has many stores and many promotions at the same time. From their homepage, the company will update the news about promotions in specific stores. This will let followers know about the overall brand activities and the activities in the stores near them.

#6 Use your page checklist

Another useful feature is that you can provide a list of places. Publishing a themed list of places can be very valuable to the community. Publish a list of your company's favorite restaurants or all of your stores on the East Coast. These are two examples of how you can use this feature.

Users can choose to collect their favorites instead of paying attention to all your activities and other posts. Paying attention to individual posts is more valuable to users, and not receiving other information from your company also allows them to have a unique insight into the post.

For example, in the example above, Zagat lists their favorite restaurants and further emphasizes their restaurant recommendations on Foursquare. A Foursquare user on a mobile phone or desktop can choose to follow posts based on his or her food preferences.

#7 Add plugins to your website

Integrating Foursquare into your website is a quick and effective way to connect to your followers and quickly increase your following. To achieve this, Foursquare's "Like" button and "Save to Foursquare" button provide different ways for users to follow you.

When you add a "Like" button, this allows visitors to click "Like" on your page if they are logged into Foursquare. The more you make it easy for your followers to use your page, the more followers you will get.

The Save to Foursquare button allows users to save your place for later viewing. When users walk into that place, they will receive a push message to remind them of the place. It is very interesting to connect users of online websites with offline users (using push messages).

#8 Increase activity effects

Use Foursquare during the event to push information to more people online and offline at the same time. Update your page and sign in under your company's name, so that more users can know about the event and achieve the purpose of promoting your services, booths, conferences or new store openings.

Events are crucial for both B2B and B2C companies, as they allow you to meet potential customers and build deeper relationships. Update your company presence at your next conference or trade show, along with other helpful information to highlight your company. Like the example above, CNN used Foursquare to share their presence at the Republic Convention to encourage their users to follow CNN.

Follow CNN’s example and provide insightful and valuable updates when your company is attending an event. The example above also includes a link to your website, which is a great way to let your followers learn more about your company if they are interested in a specific topic.

#9 Create a badge

Collaboration is a quick way to grow your business, increase your company's profile, and increase your exposure in your field. Collaborating with Foursquare is a way for your company to continue to deepen the impression of customers online and offline. One way to collaborate with Foursquare is to create customer badges for users to collect.

Badges encourage users to check in, and in return, they get a badge of their own. For example, Bravo created a set of badges that users can earn if they check in at different places related to their TV shows. Badges are an easy way to make check-ins more social and fun. This keeps your customers checking in more often, keeping your brand visible.

#10: Use Signs in Your Store

What’s unique about Foursquare is that your real-life behavior affects your online behavior. Don’t forget to find ways to get your store exposed on Foursquare in your store.

Put window stickers, labels, and notes on the front or door of your store to remind people to check in. One of the main reasons people don't download the app is that they forget. Asking people to use Foursquare will get more people to check in, leave reviews, and make your business more active on the platform.

If you want to get Foursquare window stickers or notes, send an email in the name of the store. You will get an email to confirm the window sticker, or download and print the window sticker.

Final words:

The above 10 methods are very basic but practical. Using social media is a long-term process and cannot be achieved overnight. Would you consider using LBS to market your business? Do you have any questions about marketing based on user location? You can leave your suggestions in the comments below.

via: socialbeta