Location Based Marketing Strategies

Location based marketing & digital strategies you can use. WhatDidEricSay.com

Tag Archives: Online Communities

How Word of Mouth Marketing Will Explode

Everyone knows how powerful Word of Mouth marketing is. It’s about to get an incredible shot in the arm thanks to the new social graph features within the upcoming Timeline profile.

Facebook’s goal is to let you share every facet of your life with anyone and everyone you care to. Sure, on a personal level we may not be in interested in all of this activity (hello lists) – but from a digital marketing perspective, this is just huge.

One of the activities users will be able to share is that new car they just bought. (When, where, who they were with, description & share a photo) Note the location element. Should be a fun feature to leverage.

Facebook Timeline Marketing

 

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Facebook Places Can’t Find It’s Place

The location based marketing services landscape just shifted. Heavily.facebook places

Facebook Places, their answer to the check-in game, is shutting down. Not a major shocker. Sure, there was activity, relegated mostly to larger metropolitan areas. I used it two times – once at a restaurant to show my friends how it worked and once at a concert with my wife. No rewards, no tips, no to-do’s. Not even a goofy badge to show off.

Businesses failed to promote the check-in activity, presumably from a lack of support or a defined benefit. I tried to find the opportunity to leverage Facebook Places for Auction Direct, but it didn’t make sense. A lack of purpose, rewards and trust made it difficult for anyone to make checking-in within Facebook a consistent activity. Most users probably won’t even notice the service isn’t even available once shut down.

Killing off Facebook’s Places leaves me thinking about three items:

  • Great opportunity for Foursquare to pick up additional activity from Places users
  • New opportunities for niche check-in platforms such as GetGlue
  • Niche location and photo-sharing applications will have had a longer life than Places, such a CarZar. And possibly even more users, such as Foodspotting.

Will you miss Facebook Places?

Update: Ok, so location as a feature hasn’t been shut off 100%. It just won’t function as it did before – completely pointless. The mobile app hasn’t been updated yet, but the web version has. Still pointless to me, yet shows Facebook is looking to change how location based services fit into their platform. Not quite sure what that change will look like seeing that Facebook Deals has been axed as well. Stay tuned.

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Checking In! FourSquare and Foot-Traffic

Attract new customers, create loyalty and track foot traffic

Foursquare and other Location-Based Services are increasingly helping dealerships attract new customers, create loyalty, and track ever-elusive showroom foot traffic. Fun and free, these tools are growing rapidly in popularity among individuals and businesses: Overall awareness of location-based services has reached 56% of US-based cell phone users, and 39% of them currently use at least one location-based application (eMarketer study Feb. 2011).

What’s Foursquare All About?

Individuals use apps such as Foursquare to find friends, check out tips from other users and receive rewards from the different places they visit. Rewards range from vendor deals and discounts to unlocking badges, becoming the “Mayor” of a venue and earning points:

  • Badges: Users unlock badges for checking into specific locations or doing specific Auction Direct Foursquare Specialactivities. Is this virtual “reward” corny? Yes. Is it effective? Very. Foursquare users cherish their accomplishments and flaunt them proudly.
  • Mayorships: The person who checks-in to a location the most over a 60-day period becomes its “mayor”.
  • Points: Every check-in earns you more points–another game element which helps foster the competitive nature of the application.

How to Get Your Dealership On Foursquare

Foursquare currently has ten million registered users checking-in to venues at a rate of one per second, activity that presents several unique opportunities for dealerships to connect with, engage and retain customers. Four simple steps make this possible:

  1. Register. If not signed up already, do so here: http://Join.4sq.com/emiltsch
  2. Claim your venue: Once logged in to Foursquare, search for your dealership by name and select “claim your venue.” Add your dealer’s name, keywords, address, URL, categories and tags. Be sure to add a complete description. TIP: Individuals have profiles; businesses have venues. Don’t make an individual profile for your dealership.
  3. Create your specials: Make a special for your venue. These can be Mayor specials, for a visitor’s 1st check-in or after multiple check-ins–a free oil change on your 1st check-in, for example.
  4. Monitor your venue: Foursquare provides a nice set of free analytics tools to track your visitor’s check-ins: day and time, demographics, frequency, etc.

You can even measure Social Reach by the percentage of users sharing check-in activity on Facebook and Twitter. TIP: Hang window clings & print fliers of your specials to share with employees and your visitors to help spread the word. Foursquare provides these resources on their website.

Capturing the Benefits

When Foursquare users check-in to venues, notifications of nearby specials are displayed within the app. Individuals can also add tips and to-do’s left by other users to their profiles, which means activity involving your dealership can extend to an online audience far beyond your core users. These benefits will only continue to expand as smartphone adoption continues to grow and more consumers will experiment with geo-location applications.

So, where are your customers checking-in?

Original post appeared on the Dealer.com Newsletter

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6 Twitter Strategies You Can Really Use

People still debate the issue whether or not twitter is a channel that should be utilized for any purpose other than sharing nonsensical information.

Still have your doubts? Check out this great infographic from Olgilvy PR Wordwide. This outlines six strategic approaches by sharing the basic principles with regards to who you follow, what you should create and how you should engage. Click image to expand.

6 Strtegic Approaches to using Twitter

How are you using twitter now?

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Thanks For Your Shorty Award Votes!

Thanks to all of the amazing friends and colleagues who have supported my passion for automotive technology & the CarZar app!

Truly honored by Mike Johannson @mikefixis for his initial nomination – thank you Mike, nice gesture. And while it has my name attached, my partner in this location based marketing project, Jared Hamilton, deserves a ton of credit for his contributions to CarZar as well.  As of right now, we’re in 5th place among 100+ nominated apps!

The Shorty Awards honor the best people and organizations on Twitter and social media.Nominations may be made through Twitter and this website, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in dozens of official categories, as well as thousands of crowd-sourced categories. For the first time, the Shorty Awards will also honor the industry’s best agencies and social media professionals.

Nominate @emiltsch in the Shorty Awards!

Here’s a sampling of some of the awesome people who have voted – very appreciative and humbled by your comments. It means more than you know.

Shorty Awards

Nominate @emiltsch in the Shorty Awards!

Thank you!

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Study: 36% of Fans Disengaging with Brands on Facebook

Keeping a consistent presence anywhere online, especially Facebook, is more than a full-time effort. Unless you’re among the creative elite, have a seven figure ad spend and an army of support superstars, you’re in for a mighty challenge.

Plus, if you’re in an industry with a less than favorable perception of customer service and experiences – say, automotive – the odds are against you.

It doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Check out CheckeredFlag on Facebook – Christine does such an incredible job owning their Facebook presence with valuable relevant content on a consistent basis. Pictures, videos & contests with the occasional passive sales message; always some new from her – even fun stuff like trivia & riddles. And it works – it ropes me in every time. (Nice job Christine!)

How do you keep your fans involved?

Check out the BizReport Study below for even more info.`

Amplify’d from www.bizreport.com

Study: 36% of fans disengaging with brands on Facebook

Read more at www.bizreport.com
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/dbqQvW

 

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Foursquare Experimenting With Recommendation Engine

Foursquare Logo
Image via Wikipedia

Foursquare continues to raise the bar with their new features.

Users are becoming more familiar with the general concept and the potential benefit they can deliver. Foursquare ‘s next big push is to provide the ability to generate relevant recommendations based on your activities, locations and even items on your to-do lists. (Figured those to-do lists would turn into a proactive feature eventually)

I’m looking forward to the new experiences these developments can create for users and businesses.

Read more about Dennis Crowley’s announcement:

Amplify’d from www.readwriteweb.com

Read more at www.readwriteweb.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/b5q8

 

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Case Study: McDonald’s ups foot traffic 33% on Foursquare Day

Tolpatch - hungarian foot soldier in the 17th-...

Image via Wikipedia

More foot traffic. That’s what every business wants.

Knowing that over 18,000 people per day are signing up for Foursquare daily and even lesser known location based services such as SCVNGR signed up 100K+ in one week because of their Facebook Places tie-in, wouldn’t you want to consider the opportunities these channels may provide your brand? Yet businesses are still reluctant. Now is the time for the self-proclaimed Social Media Gurus to put their chops to work and create some serious change by leveraging the networks they (should) have been building.

A simple offer with a simple message and a small budget is all that’s needed. Start putting that influence to work. Being first to market this type of message is easy, but the window of opportunity to be that shape-shifter won’t last.

And yes, I understand that measuring foot traffic is difficult. The rest of your process needs to be in place to handle (close the sale) the increased foot traffic. Done right, more foot traffic should create a direct increase in revenue. If you’re missing that point, then you shouldn’t be using location based services in the first place

Check out the link to the entire McDonald’s Case Study below to see how their simple plan created measurable results in no time.

Amplify’d from econsultancy.com

Case Study: McDonald’s ups foot traffic 33% on Foursquare Day

Read more at econsultancy.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ameu

 

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2 New Twitter Features. 1 Excellent. 1 Meh.

So what’s twitter been working on recently?

1st item – Location Based Tweets. (The meh choice)

This is probably the only location based marketing feature I don’t even notice. Why? Users can put their location in their bio. Sure – it may not represent their current location, but of all things location, this is not a concern. And, I’m fairly confident nobody else cares where my message originates…

I’m sure this is simply the raw form of something bigger to come – say, integration into a specific service like Google maps; real-time tweets within a check-in based platform a’la Foursquare or Gowalla may be more interesting & relevant. Knowing where someone is when they shriek about Justin Bieber in a tweet is not important to me. Or the rest of the country over 17.

2nd item –  Recommended People to Follow. (The excellent choice)

A sharp conversation with my friend Mike Johansson got me thinking about this deeper. Twitter now provides suggestions as to who you may want to follow. Why show recommended choices? And why does it work? Mike & were in agreement that it played more on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This level of the Needs Pyramid would be Esteem; the need to respect others or be respected by others.

Yes – the whole debate over Maslow and twitter’s success has been played out over the years. But – this finally provides a new visual motivation for users. It could be the face of someone they are intrigued by, someone they have heard of or better yet – a brand they may not have thought about seeking out via twitter – but are now aware.

Either way – I find this element fascinating. Yet, their location…not so much. Hopefully the brands will embrace it though. Location based marketing strategies will continue to drive new life into otherwise lame consumer experiences.

What do you think of these new features?

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6 Words That Make People Share Content

The Open Share icon conveys the act of sharing...
Image via Wikipedia

Dan Zarella dug up some great insight regarding the best words to use, and the best to avoid, to get more people to share you content. If anyone knows, its Dan. (Self proclaimed Social Media Scientist)

Dan stated that adjectives don’t work as well as verbs & nouns; big shocker – sexual references appear to work the best with regards to total sharing.

6 Words that make people want to share content:

  1. Facebook
  2. Why
  3. Most
  4. World
  5. How
  6. Health

6 Words to stay away from

  1. Vs
  2. Apps
  3. Review
  4. Down
  5. Poll
  6. Game

When content is simple and easy to understand, people will share it more often. As reading level and overall ability to understand the content increases, frequency of content sharing decreases.

Simple stuff gets shared.

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