I’m a big fan of Location-based marketing (LBM). I check in every where. I like the competitions I have with friends to be the mayor of certain locations (You know who you are!). I like sharing photos, tips and seeing what other people recommend or have done when I go to a restaurant, winery or event.
Many people I know have stopped checking in and I get why. Lots of people don’t see the point in taking the time to pull out their phone to check in because in our region there’s almost no incentive – few businesses offer any specials or discounts.
What I don’t get is why local businesses don’t see that Location-based marketing (LBM) is an incredibly powerful tool that they really NEED to be using. There’s been lots of talk about community, engagement and sharing but not enough of how your business can not only make money but also save money by using LBM to offer special deals.
As I was watching the Marketing Profs webinar by Aaron Strout & Mike Schneider on The Six Golden Rules of Location-Based Marketing I realized that, as with many things social, the ROI of using LBM has been missing from the conversation. For small businesses, the payoff can be huge and can be done with fewer person hours than Facebook and Twitter.
Aaron & Mike, who’ve written the new book Location Based Marketing for Dummies, used incredible case studies to demonstrate what a great investment LBM can be for businesses. The examples below are larger businesses but any small business can do these:
Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) & SCVNGR – during March Madness BWW used SCVNGR to move beyond the simple check-in. BWW asked it’s customers to check in with SCVNGR and complete challenges to earn points and rewards. These challenges were simple things like taking a picture with a fan in one of the BWW locations. As customers completed the challenges they were rewarded with small (low cost) prizes like $5 off or a free Coke and wings. The points that customers collected qualified them for the grand prize – a trip to see the NBA finals with Scottie Pippen. The results were pretty impressive:
- There were 184,000 unique players at 730 nationwide BWW locations.
- 1 in 3 players returned to play again.
- On average, users completed 7 challenges, meaning they did all the ones provided by BWW and a few user-generated ones.
- The campaign generated more than 100 million social impressions via Facebook and Twitter.
- On average, a player spent 90 seconds per challenge, meaning that BWW saw the equivalent of 3.6 years of brand engagement in its locations during the campaign.
For more results see the Mashable post at http://mashable.com/2011/01/12/scvngr-buffalo-wild-wings/
USA Today & Foursquare – This is an interesting campaign of using location based marketing without a location. USA Today is using a Foursquare branded page (any business can do this for free) to leave tips at locations across the US which highlight “hidden treasures”. When a person checks into a location they get a tip that then drives people to the USA Today website to learn more, positioning USA Today as a helpful expert. Creating a branded page in Foursquare is a great way for brands and businesses to connect with customers in a non-selling way and doesn’t require businesses to be super active on social networks.
People are always looking for the next great social tool and these are some examples for LBM:
Shopkick – You don’t even need to check in. It knows when you go into a store and alerts you if you have the app open. http://www.shopkick.com/
Ditto and Forecast tells your friends where you’re going to be and checks you in when you get there.
Ditto - http://www.ditto.me/ Forecast – http://foreca.st/
If you’re using LBM, here are a couple of tools that help you monitor where people are checking in:
Valuevine – http://www.valuevine.com
Geotoko – http://geotoko.com/
Momentfeed – http://momentfeed.com/
Janice and Robin are two of the founding members of