How to Use Location-Based Marketing to Grow Your Business by Matt Bodnar - HTML preview

"THE BIG PLAYERS IN LOCATION BASED MARKETING"

Before teaching you the tips and tricks for building a successful location based marketing campaign, it's important to understand who the big players in the market are and what this book will be focusing on.

There are 2 major players in the LBM market. The first and most established is without a doubt Foursquare. As a result, the guide has a tilt towards focusing on Foursquare as it has the most established systems and the longest standing user base. Foursquare is the brand name that consumers think of when they think of location based services.

The second big player is Facebook places. While this is the newest entrant into the market, there is a lot of hype about Facebook Places. Given Facebook's massive user base, it has the potential to tap the largest user market and reshape the location based services landscape.

There are also several somewhat smaller, but also very important, players in the LBM market. The first is Gowalla. Gowalla doesn't have as strong a market position as either of the other two players, so the meat of the guide will not focus on Gowalla.

However, Gowalla does have some interesting and exciting features. This book will explain how to set up a Gowalla campaign and use its settings. Also, the marketing and optimization strategies will work for a Gowalla LBM campaign, but you may have to do some small tweaks on your own.

The fourth player is a relative newcomer to the LBM scene - SCVNGR. SCVNGR uses many of the same features and devices as the other LBM services but is much newer and as a result, not as much information is available. This version of the book will not focus on SCVNGR, though future editions may.

Image: Foursquare

Foursquare Overview
This how to guide is designed to teach you how to use location based social media as a marketing tool for your business. I will provide you with a brief overview of some of Foursquare's user features and some of the more relevant statistics about the platform from a business end.

Foursquare is the most well known brand in the location based services space. When people think of location based services, Foursquare is usually what comes to mind. The initial idea for Foursquare came about as a service to let people know where their friends were and what their friends were doing. This has evolved into an entire platform for reaching consumers.

Image: Foursquare

Foursquare pioneered the concept of location based services with gaming elements. Foursquare allows its users to "check-in" with their mobile phone to any location they visit. Users can check in to unlock specials or achieve in game accomplishments called "Badges."

Foursquare also has a built in "Tips" feature which allows people to leave notes about their present location. The social media aspect of Foursquare comes from the fact that you can check in and share your location with friends or compete with friends to earn different rewards. Foursquare also has several other user features.

Before setting up your LBM campaign, I suggest downloading Foursquare on your mobile device and playing around with it. This will give you good familiarity with the platform and how your customers will be using it.

It is estimated as of November 2010 that Foursquare has approximately 4 million users. Foursquare is said to be adding nearly 20,000 users per day. Keep in mind that the location based services market and LBM specifically are still in their infancy - as these platforms become more mainstream, the ease of scalability for a mobile app means the user base can grow exponentially.

Here is a Compete analysis for Foursquare.com's unique visitors since the service began. While this is not representative of the user base as a whole, since Foursquare is a mobile platform, it gives you a good look at how many people are using the website to look for deals and locations.

What are the major advantages of using Foursquare?
Foursquare has two advantages which make it one of the most attractive location based services to use as a marketing platform.

Foursquare has the best analytics and analysis tools out of all the LBM platforms. Foursquare has developed the most in depth analytics regarding visitors and specials and presents the data better than any of the other location based services do. This is a major advantage for Foursquare as analytics are the key to running a successful LBM campaign and monitoring the effectiveness of your promotions.

Foursquare has the most brand awareness and first mover advantage. Facebook Places is the new player in this market, but Foursquare is the most established, despite their smaller user base. This also means that Foursquare's user base is the most attuned to location based marketing as they are familiar with the service and will pay attention to deals and specials that you offer. While Facebook Places has a larger user base, they are not necessarily as familiar with LBM as Foursquare users.

Foursquare is also alone in having a "mayor" concept on their platform. This is a unique tool that can be used to reward your most loyal customers and increase their incentives to do repeat business with you. While it may be possible to create specials similar to this on the other LBM platforms, the mayor concept is hard coded into Foursquare and a defining feature of their platform.

Given its current role as the market leader in location based services, you cannot ignore Foursquare as part of your LBM strategy. Foursquare is a key player and this book will teach you how to set up your LBM campaign to take advantage of Foursquare's robust platform.

Image: Facebook

 

Facebook Places & Facebook Deals Overview

Facebook is one of the most recent entrants into the location based services market. Facebook staged their entrance using a service called "Facebook Places." Facebook Places began simply as a method for people to check in to locations and let their friends know what they were up to. To get the official Facebook announcement about the launch of Facebook Deals check out this link.

Once Facebook had the infrastructure set up with Facebook Places they added in a "Facebook Deals" feature to allow businesses to set up deals and special promotions. This book will interchangeably refer to Facebook Places and Facebook Deals as one and the same - as they are essentially two sides of the same coin.

Image: Facebook

Facebook Places offers many of the same features as Foursquare - it allows users to check-in at various locations and updates their Facebook status to let their friends know where they are checking in and what they are doing.

The platform has many similar features to Foursquare and is available to anyone who already has the Facebook mobile app installed. I would suggested downloading the app and working with it to get a feel for how it works, so you can better understand the user experience.

The major advantage of Facebook Places is that it already exists within the Facebook platform and therefore gives you access to the nearly 600 million current Facebook users. While all the current Facebook users do not use the mobile platform and even those who do are not necessarily Facebook Places users, the staggering size of Facebook and the potential to tap into that user base makes it a must to set up a Facebook Deals campaign.

Another substantial advantage of using Facebook Places is that it has a feature to seamlessly merge your Facebook Business Page or Fan Page with your Facebook Place. This can centralize your social media marketing effort and allow you to tap your Facebook presence to generate actual traffic with LBM deals.

One of the final advantages of Facebook - it is the only platform that officially offers "crowd specials" or "charity specials" (more on those in Chapter 4: LBM Strategies to Generate Sales). While you can certainly offer these types of specials with other platforms, having the functionality native to your LBM platform makes it easier and more seamless to do so.

Facebook Deals has huge potential as a platform largely because of its massive user base - and with 200 million plus Facebook Mobile users - it is necessary to set up an LBM campaign including the Facebook Places platform.

Image: Gowalla

 

Gowalla Overview

Gowalla is another location based service and prior to Facebook entering the location based services market was seen as Foursquare's biggest competitor.

Gowalla offers many of the same features and functionality of Foursquare and Facebook Places. Foursquare is the most game-like of the three platforms and the newest entrant into the commercial aspect of offering check-in specials and deals.

Image: Gowalla

Gowalla has a focus on travel and includes many travel and trip-based features. Gowalla has a big focus on discovering and visiting new places or as Gowalla calls them "spots." In conjunction with this, nearly 40% of Gowalla's user base is international.

Gowalla has a much smaller user base - with around 300,000 users. The smaller user base is the primary reason that Gowalla is not listed as one of the major players in the LBM market.

The scalability and potential growth of LBM makes it important for you to at least have some grasp of Gowalla and how to use it in order to build a successful LBM campaign.

Here is a "Compete" analysis of Gowalla.com's unique visitors.

 

Gowalla has two features which give it some unique advantages over Foursquare and Facebook Places, despite its smaller size. Gowalla has a great "city pages" function which essentially creates a Yelp like directory on their website of different spots that users can check in to, details about the spot, and what deals they offer. This creates an excellent web-based distribution channel for your promotions.

Gowalla also offers a unique custom sticker program that lets your "spot" create its own unique icon within their system and you are given a day where your spot is promoted by Gowalla as the spot of the day. This feature is currently only available in major cities, but nonetheless is an excellent promotion strategy.
While Gowalla does not match Foursquare or Facebook Places in size of user base, the unique promotional offers on Gowalla, combined with the potential growth of the location based services market as a whole, makes Gowalla an LBM platform worth focusing on as well.

Which Location Based Service Should You Use?

Now that you know the basics of each of the major location based services that you can use as an LBM platform - you need to decide which platform(s) to use.

The reality is that each of these services has different features and allows you to tap into a different user base. It makes the most sense to set up LBM campaigns on all 3 platforms using the same promotion strategy. This allows you to access the entire market and give the broadest access to your deals.

The downside however, is that it is clumsy and time consuming to manage all 3 different types of LBM campaigns. If you decide to set up only one LBM campaign, the decision comes down to what you are looking for and which of the above advantages is the most important to you.

Read through the next chapter and learn how to set up different campaigns on each of these platforms. Once you are familiar with all 3, evaluate which one(s) would be the best fit for your business and your marketing strategy.

Now is your time to decide...

Everything you need to get you started in location based marketing without problems with trying to figure it out yourself. So if that is what you want, then this is the fantastic opportunity you've been waiting for!

You don't want to miss this offer and come back because the price will surely go up!

 

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Best of success,

 

J. Matthew Bodnar

 

LBM Guru