Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

A Newbie Takes on foursquare: A Q&A with Strout and Reid

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This guest post by colleague, Brian Reid, originally appeared on our WCG work blog. Brian is a director at WCG in the product group, where he specializes in media. He is a former journalist who believes content really is king.

 

I love technology and take pride in early adoption. My first blog post went up in 2002. My first podcast hit in early 2005. But I’ve resisted location-based services until last month when I jumped in after reading my colleague Aaron Strout’s smart takes on the potential of location-based services for businesses. On the heels of Aaron’s recent vacation, where I followed his exploits through check-ins, pictures and updates, I decided to take the plunge and test out a location-based service for myself on my vacation. That 10-day trial led to some observations, which sparked the following conversion:

Strout: With so many location-based services out there, how did you end up on foursquare? I ask because this is the problem a lot of first time LBS users face: which service to go with?

Reid: I wish I could tell you that there was a lot of research. Foursquare was just top of mind; I had a sense that it had the most buzz and the biggest user base.

Did it take you much time to get the hang of foursquare?

I had decided that I was going to test-drive this on my vacation, and I literally set myself up while I was multi-tasking to rush out to the airport. It was all done via the mobile app, and I was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was.

As someone that is brand new to using location-based services, how much of a role did “gamification” play in your experience?”

I didn’t go into location-based services for the game element. I could not care less about mayorships or checking into more places that my friends. Yet, as I used the service, I found that the points and the badges and the graphs showing progress had a lot more pull than I expected. On the second night of vacation, I checked into a nice restaurant. But because my GPS hadn’t update the location, I didn’t get any “points.” I was taken aback by how angry I was that the service didn’t think I deserved credit.

In your opinion, how good a job are businesses doing using location-based services to engage their customers? In general, what percentage of businesses (that you checked-in with) are actively participating?

I was disappointed in a couple of different ways. First, the number of businesses that seemed to have any sort of presence was pretty small, and this was in an upscale, tourist-driven area where every other form of marketing was on display. I’d done a good amount of Internet-based research before I left on things to do or see to eat, but staring at the landscape through my phone showed a completely different landscape, with some businesses completely invisible. Secondly, the “specials” rarely seemed significant enough to make a difference in my decision-making. And that held for both large and small businesses. I spent one night in a Starwood property, and Starwood offers twice as many points for declining housekeeping for one night than for a check in.

What more could businesses do to up their game using LBS?

Businesses that aren’t on foursquare need to get there. For people who rely on LBS, not having a presence utterly eliminates you for some percentage of the population. It’s like being erased from the Yellow Pages. And the businesses that are there could stand to be a bit more creative. I don’t have enough checkins to gather a really robust sample, but few of the specials seemed achievable or worth it.

Did you see a value in the “tips” or “photos” at the venues you checked into?

Not really. When you read a board on chowhound.com or Yelp, people can get into details, and you can get a sense of whether you can trust a given review. Because comments on foursquare are so brief, not only is the actual recommendation short, but I didn’t get enough cues to let me establish whether the reviewer’s tastes matched mine. A caveat: I’m not using the social aspect of foursquare because I don’t have local friends on the service. Perhaps tips from friends would be better, but that assumes much heavier adoption.

Now that you’ve gotten the LBS “bug,” will you continue to use foursquare? And if so, how?

The short answer is “yes, but.” I’m not sure I get a huge benefit as a consumer, but the potential here is pretty big, especially if businesses and institutions get better at taking advantage of the opportunity. Though the offering is currently pretty slick, the “how to use it” aspect seems stuck in beta. For that reason, I’m really looking forward to reading your book (Location Based Marketing for Dummies, which hits soon.)

What could location-based services like foursquare do to make their services better/more engaging?

At the risk of spouting clichés: it’s the network. I imagine the real fun comes when there are large numbers of friends, nearby and far away, all hitting the same places. And I think that businesses, too, need to keep honing their presence on foursquare. Honestly, all foursquare did was tell me the soup of the day at my favorite café, I’d be a happy user. But that’s not information that’s being offered right now, and a checkin at a place that isn’t aware that I’m using FourSquare – no matter how much gamification you layer on top – isn’t going to do a very good job of holding my attention.

Pre-Commerce and Location-Based Marketing Mashup

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[cross-posted on WCG’s Common Sense blog]


Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of presenting to about 75 business professionals at the Big Frontier conference in Chicago, Il. The event is run by Steve Lundin who is a peach of a guy and knows a thing or two about events (he’s been running them for 12+ years now). The goal of the conference is to feature 1-2 book authors who write about the innovative ways that businesses are evolving.

Originally, my colleague Bob Pearson, was supposed to present along with fellow author, Rick Mathieson. An immovable set of meetings combined with the fact that I too happen to be a book author (and know a thing or two about Bob’s book, Pre-Commerce) conspired to put me in the presenters seat at the event. After chatting with Bob and Steve, we decided to do a mashup — a best of so to speak — of Pre-Commerce and my upcoming book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies.

What made my presentation relatively easy is that we live and breath the concepts from Bob’s Pre-Commerce book at WCG. It is also helpful that the idea of location-based marketing works nicely as a sub-discipline within Pre-Commerce. And lastly, location-based marketing fits perfectly across one of the most important core concepts of the book, namely the 4 A’s (which replace the 4 P’s), by providing ways for businesses to create greater awareness, assessment, action and ultimately ambassadorship for their products and services.

While I won’t share all of the slides I presented — you can find all the models, back-stories and anecdotes from Pre-Commerce in the book — I’ve incorporated three of the slides that really resonated below.

These are a few of the major shifts taking place in the world that are driving the way consumers want to (and should be) engaged by businesses big and small.

 

Leveraging the what people are doing online versus trying to change their behavior is critical to becoming a Pre-Commerce company

 

Recognizing the "Ten Channels" of online influence and how to create meaningful content for each is key to improving SEO and engaging customers.

As far as the location-based marketing portion of the presentation, I used the content from a previous blog post I did titled, Ten Keys to a Good Location-Based Marketing Campaign. If you want the Readers Digest of the ten rules, I’ve listed them below:

  1. Claim your location
  2. Pick a service (or two)
  3. Find your influencers
  4. Set goals
  5. Pick a great offer
  6. Measure, refine, optimize
  7. Gamification FTW
  8. Market your program
  9. Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize
  10. Play with the API

Based on the audience feedback, it appeared that the event was a success. It didn’t hurt that Rick picked up where I left off sharing several important trends from his latest book, The On-Demand Brand, including two that are near and dear to my heart i.e. mobile and augmented reality. My two favorite examples Rick shared were 1) the increasing importance of branded games (people like to play games) citing Burger King’s success with its Kings Game. It sold over 3 million copies and was linked to a direct increase in food sales at the locations where the game was sold and 2) the shopping experience of the future. This second example included not-too-far from reality concepts such as:

  • auto-checking in as you walk into the store (he had me at “check-in”)
  • receiving special offers based on your profile
  • sharing which clothes you are trying on with friends on Facebook and getting their opinion
  • watching videos of runway models wearing the item you are trying on background on design by the designers themselves
  • the ability to walk out of store while wearing the clothing you just tried on because you are already registered with the store and an RFID or NFC reader scans the item as you walk out

Have you read Pre-Commerce yet? Or On-Demand Brand? If you have, what’s your favorite model or example from the book?

10 Keys to a Good Location Based Marketing Campaign

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Originally posted on my work blog at WCGWorld.com on April 7, 2011

If you aren’t familiar with location based services, some of the top providers are foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Facebook Places, Whrrl and SCVNGR. These services help companies engage with their customers and create loyalty 2.0 programs by exchanging value (offers, coupons, badges, mayorships) for tips, check-ins and spreading the word. In this particular post, I’m going to share 10 basic tips that any company can use to help build a successful location based marketing program:

  1. Be sure to claim your location across each of the top 5-6 location based providers, even if you don’t plan on regularly monitoring/engaging in all of them.
  2. Pick 1-2 services to use (hint: if you’re in the travel and entertainment industry, Gowalla is a great choice). One way to decide which service(s) are right for you is to see how active your customers are across each service.
  3. Find out who your influencers are (the mayor, ambassador or the person at the top of your leader board is usually a good place to start) and get to know them. Heck, invite them in for coffee, lunch, a wine tasting.
  4. Set some goals. Are looking to drive foot traffic? Loyalty? Sales? Engagement? Think about how to measure this.
  5. Pick a great offer. Note that “great” doesn’t equal “expensive.” Sometimes, a sign in your store/venue honoring the “mayor” might be enough. My co-author, Mike Schneider, and I have what we call the “Ben & Jerry’s Rule” named after one of the first successful campaigns ever to roll out on foursquare. They offered 3 scoops of ice cream for $3 for everyone that checked in (cost for 3 scoops is normally $5.50). And even better, the mayor got a free extra scoop.
  6. Measure, refine and optimize.
  7. Don’t be afraid to leverage the “game dynamics” of some of these platforms as appropriate. For instance, on SCVNGR, you might give extra points for a picture with the store manager. Or if you sell coffee, a bonus for the best drink recommendation.
  8. Remember to let people know about your program by putting up signs, telling them in your newsletter, including a mention on your “on hold” music, etc.
  9. Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize. This means that if you are going to run a location based marketing campaign, train your employees. Train yourself. And make sure you have whatever it is that you’re promising. Not operationalizing is where many companies fall down.
  10. If you are tech savvy (or have some tech savvy developers), try experimenting with some of the APIs these location based platform providers make available for free. You can jazz up your website or your mobile app.

Has your company launched a location based marketing campaign? If so, tell us about it in the comments below.

Using Location-Based Services as a Content Harvester

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Guest post by Jay Baer, social media and content strategist at Convince & Convert, and co-author of The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLmmmah5XL8]

Sure, location-based services are great for customer engagement and loyalty rewards. But they are also potential sources of great content.

When we say “content creation” what we usually think of is the company in question creating informational materials themselves, and putting that information on a website, blog, and/or YouTube. But when you look at the tips in Foursquare (or the customer-created microcontent in any LBL platform) you’ll see an array of potential content handholds.

At Yogi’s in Bloomington, Indiana the Foursquare tips talk about karaoke night, the restaurant’s signature “Big Salads”, and even a beer education class. All of these + other tips are potential blog posts, email newsletter topics, podcasts and other content pieces that Yogi’s can use to inform and entertain customers and prospects.

Through location-based services, customers are telling companies what they think is most interesting and noteworthy. Tap into that stream and use it as raw materials for your next round of content creation.

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