FourSquare is an emerging social network that specifically joins consumers with local businesses and local, regional and national brands. Consumers can determine what FourSquare providers are in their area and discover discount coupons, reward programs and heightened FS status, all of which lead to more discounts, rewards and status advancement.
Local Businesses
Let’s say you own a dry cleaning business. You advertise effectively in the terrestrial world with newspaper ads and even a billboard or two. You have sales regularly, and you are located in a very convenient section of town. You even have a terrific website through which you have a loyal email list to which you send periodic notices, information and yes, sales pitches.
However, you want to do more. Enter: FourSquare.
If a potential customer finds you among the local FourSquare businesses, and the discounts you post in your business profile presents a lower price than that customer’s usual cleaner or you offer a service the other business doesn’t, odds are good that the potential customer will seek you out, at least on a trial basis.
Your service is excellent, and your prices reasonable. Your new customer can reach you with little or no difficulty. To whom do you think he will return next time his three-year-old child “shares” his Koolaid with the customer’s dress slacks?
Branding Advantages
Your job in a national or international corporation is to improve sales. One of the ways you work toward that goal is to put your brand in front of the buying public via social media. With FourSquare, you present discount vouchers that are otherwise unpublished—hidden bonuses. Your potential customer may enter a grocery store, for example, in response to a sale flyer from the store on a competitor’s product right next to yours on the shelf. He finds a better deal with your brand’s FourSquare discounts, and he saves an additional 10 cents below the competition’s price. He’s not wasted gas or time, because he was already there or at least going there.
You just won a sale that your competitor whos not on FourSquare just lost. You have increased your brand’s profile, and you did your job. And if your product is acceptable, you probably gained not just a customer but a repeat customer, and that’s a win-win situation.
Each time a customer registers on, or checks in at FourSquare that he’s at your establishment or bought your product, the user gains points. When enough points are accumulated, the user’s status on FourSquare is advanced, gaining even more reward points. Loyal, repeat customers can get “elected” mayor of your location or of your brand in that store.
And customer users brag. They gloat, and they pass the word. They pass word of their status and their savings to friends, co-workers, family, tweeters, fans and followers. And your FourSquare marketing just went viral.
Add coordination through your website, your e-mail campaign and other Internet marketing methods to maximize the effect, and your business could expand exponentially.
About the author: Article written by Sara Woods from Coupon Croc, the best resource for savings on professional car hire and small businesses looking for rental cars with a Hertz discount code.