Location-Based Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses - harringtongraints

Position, location, location: it's vital in property sales (and New-night comedy monologues). And if you play your cards right on, locating-based social media services lavatory service you spread consciousness of your business and drive customers to your door.

The check-in feature at Facebook exemplifies location-based social media use at its simplest. When you check in on Facebook, you're just telling your Facebook Friends "Present I am!" Google+ and Yelp skyward the ante by rallying users to leave reviews.

Other ethnical networks are completely built about location-settled services. They turn the unconscious process of checking in at assorted locations into a real-world game, complete with points, achievement badges, leaderboards, and the ability to win rewards and discounts at participating locations.

Foursquare's Swarm specials act upon best when big events are occurring nigh.

The biggest practitioner of gamified check-ins is Foursquare, but it has plenty of company. Scvngr, for example, puts a twist on the concept by request users not only if to see specific places, but also to make out specific challenges.

When soul completes a project OR checks into a location-based social network, the social electronic network pushes that achievement to the person's friends and to anyone nearby. Gamified networks typically give users the option to post updates to Facebook as recovered, encourage extending the pass on of the notification.

The Good News program

Creating a placement-supported merchandising fight connected a social network can toll next to zero. You don't have to expend big bucks engaging a high-priced advertising agency to explicate a sophisticated advertising crusade. Setting up a balk-in location or reward criteria on Resolute Oregon Scvngr is loose, aside from the time and effort involved in getting it done. Once you've set up a location-founded elite offer, you don't ask to do much to maintain it; the point is to induce your customers spread the word and do the work for you.

The Bad Newsworthiness

Groups of people can see to it in on Facebook, but providing an motivator for them to do soh is skyward to you.

Unluckily, if your customers don't do the work for you, your location-based ad blitz leave evenfall flat connected its fount. Most businesses entice players into checking in past offer discounts or freebies (typically either buy unrivalled, get one free or buy one, gravel the second at a reduced price). This type of offer obviously takes money out of your pocket, but the increased sales mass might produce enough in profit to absolve the disbursement.

Simply concrete Book of Numbers proving the effectiveness of actual location-based social network activities are rocklike to come by. For whatever reason, few businesses are willing to reveal how much business Foursquare and Facebook check-ins are driving to their door. The cost-to-benefit prosody aren't ordinary, either.

Paul John Ross, a frailty president at analytics software supplier Alteryx, told ReadWriteWeb that most businesses see only a 1 percent to 2 percentage gain in gross revenue for every 1000 Foursquare impediment-ins—but anecdotal evidence tells a different tale. HubSpot writes about a burger eating place owner World Health Organization utilised Foursquare specials to entice 161 users to his restaurant at one time during a recent SXSW group discussion, and the owner of the Strange Brew Chocolate House told the New York Multiplication that his year-over-year business grew by 34 percent after investing in location-based social media marketing, at no additive toll aside from the 10 pct single-drink discount that owner Shane Beating-reed instrument offers to customers who check in.

Next paginate: Great ideas for location-settled social marketing campaigns

Foursquare's Explore feature shows all nearby locations that are eligible for a check-in.

Here are some selling tactics you might economic consumption to attract social-network-connected customers to your business:

Give customers who simply check-in a lowercase discount surgery a small reinforcement—read, 5 to 10 percent off the well-ordered price of a particular item. Consider offering a slightly larger reward to customers who leave a passport for your business on the network. Square, Google+, Scvngr, and Yelp each advance users to leave reviews after checking in at a location.
Put up larger discounts when a large grouping of hoi polloi checks in together. For example, you could bring down 15 percent forth the restaurant tab when a group of five or more check in on a social group network, or 1 percent off the bill for all person in a mathematical group of ten or more. You could besides give everyone in the radical a free nonalcoholic drink.
Provide specials for nearby wanderers. Some location-founded social networks, such Eastern Samoa Straightforwardly, let you create specials that look only when someone checks in at a location near. You'll pauperism to give something away—typically a discount or a buy-one/get-one-free deal—to entice foot up traffic, but the tender could spark gross sales that you might have otherwise incomprehensible.
Make up Scvngr challenges planned to stimulate gross sales. This works best for amusement venues and restaurants, but it whole kit and boodle for all types of organizations. If you're a restaurant owner with a big burger challenge, for lesson, you could issue a challenge on a social network and award discounts to diners who eat the entire meal in one sitting. Scvngr also lets you reward people who earn a certain number of points aside doing specific things at a location. Puzzle out creative!
Non all reward needs to revolve around money. Rather than offering a discount, you could reserve choice parking spaces or heyday tables for users World Health Organization check in. Other possibilities include letting them skip lines, sample new products, Oregon rules of order from a special "check-in solely" menu.
Promote your check-in specials through more-mainstream social media channels, so much as Chirrup and Facebook, to beget more awareness.

Foursquare lets business owners create specials that emphasize group check-ins and customer loyalty.

Foursquare has dozens of customization options founded happening peculiar user criteria. The Friends and Swarm special options are intriguing, because they promote several customers to correspond in simultaneously operating room over a relatively brief period of time. The meshwork also offers a bevy of loyalty specials supported how many multiplication a soul has patterned in at a particular location.

You can offer specials to first-time buyers, to hoi polloi who have checked in a foreordained number of times, or to whoever becomes the "Mayor" of your business. In Foursquare parlance, the Mayor of a location is the soul who has checked in there the most often in the old 60 days. Showering your Mayors with bigger discounts is a great means to encourage other folks to come more often in an effort to snag the summit spot.

Has your business organization old location-based social networks to its vantage? How did it go game? Was it cost effective, or did it wind up being a headache? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Brad Chacos is a freelance technology and business author. His work has appeared in Laptop Magazine publisher, the Intuit Smaller Business organisatio Blog, Maximum Microcomputer, and elsewhere.

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