Foursquare is a mobile social media experience. It’s an app that runs on a mobile device (generally iPhone or Blackberry) and lets you tell the app where you are and then lets your friends know where to find you.
Using the Foursquare app, you can "check-in" and post "shouts" (updates or tweets) based on where you are and what you’re doing. You can choose to have your shouts go to Twitter and Facebook as well. Linkedin can’t be far behind. You can also find your friends, add new friends, search venues, earn badges and ultimately become the "mayor".
Don’t Get It?
In terms of perception and understanding, Foursquare is currently in the same boat Twitter was a few years ago. People don’t understand why anyone would want to let people know where they are. Just like people "…don’t care what someone’s cat had for breakfast" implying that’s the kind of banal conversation taking place on Twitter.
If you’re expecting me to explain the value now, I’m sorry to disappoint. Even if I tried it wouldn’t help. You need to try it, use it, in order to understand the value.
Play Foursquare
You earn points for every check-in — which may sound like a joke, but don’t knock it till you try it. You’re rewarded with points for things like:
- checking in at multiple spots in one day
- being adventurous and exploring different parts of the city
- your tips that other people try
- to-dos you complete
Foursquare for Retailers
There are already a couple hundred venues listed in and around Victoria BC (my home town) including some innovative retailers like Rocky Mountain Soap, almost every retail outlet in the Mayfair Shopping Centre and Liquor Plus who has listed all of their retail outlets as well as the LP HQ.
You Can Do It
You can add your business to Foursquare yourself, it’s easy. You can also place a Foursquare widget on your website or Facebook page to let the world know you’re there, who’s currently mayor and what’s on offer for mayorship.
I have a few hundred check-ins, more badges than a cub scout and I’m mayor of four different Starbucks. In fact Starbucks was one of the first retailers to really embrace Foursquare and my first "special offer" for a free coffee. Now I drink free most of the time, which is a pretty good ROI for Starbucks when you consider how many people my Tweets and updates reach.
If you would like to know how your business can leverage applications like Foursquare contact us here.
Whether you are a consumer or a business I would love to hear other’s experience with Foursquare. Please leave a comment below.
6 thoughts on “Foursquare for Retailers”
Thanks for the post, Chris! Local businesses don’t yet seem to recognize the power of social networks for promotion. Foursquare, and other up-and-coming services like it, hold the potential to dramatically increase an average customer’s lifetime value.
Thank you for the primer on Foursquare.
I’d just like to point out that Starbucks’ ROI from giving you free coffee is entirely dependent on whether the people who follow your Twitter stream/updates actually go out and get a Starbucks coffee when they see you have done so. This is ridiculously difficult to track, so I don’t think it’s an effective argument for the ROI of Twitter or Foursquare.
For businesses looking to invest in social media, the direct connections between online activity and profit are still in their infancy stage. We would do well to promote accuracy and transparency about the development of this field, not make claims.
Sorry for being an ogre.
Thanks for the post!
In our view, Foursquare still doesn’t have enough active users in and around YYJ to make it “worth” the time investment to monitor. Most of the businesses in Mayfair have single digit or no check-ins and even Rocky Mountain only has 14 unique visitors. Where we are in Sidney, there are literally a handful of semi-regular Foursquare users.
We find that monitoring nearby Foursquare check-ins via twitter is a better way to engage with Foursquare visitors until the volume of active users in YYJ grows (if ever).
Jessie
http://www.facebook.com/jessiesjuiceco
twitter: jessiesjuiceco
Good post!
In our opinion, the Foursquare population of active users in and around Victoria is not large enough to merit more than a cursory amount of energy or attention at present time.
Though the Mayfair mall itself has gotten a decent number of checkins, most of the businesses haven’t received that much activity.
As a customer loyalty tool (which from a businesses perspective is what it is), it still has a LONG way to go before replacing far more basic and analog in-store practices.
We search for North Saanich as a search term in Twitter and find FourSquare users and engage with them via Twitter promoting our mayors discount. Though the test data is very small, the results aren’t promising.
However, if one of your readers wants to become our first mayor, here is our FourSquare link: http://foursquare.com/venue/4701047
We’ll be sure to make the coronation party awesome!
Jessie
With the adoption of smartphones, and the growth of location based services, it’s only a matter of time before retailers find the right way to leverage services like foursquare for themselves. It’s another tool to help build loyalty across channels.
I’m an avid FourSquare user with multiple badges and dozens of mayorships in the Victoria area. I am also the owner of Rocky Mountain Soap (full disclosure). I use FS personally because it tells me what businesses are popular out there – I’ve discovered a lot of cool places because of it. Furthermore, I love the deals – the free Serious coffee on Mondays for example, which I take advantage of. I know friends that patronise businesses that I FS – simply because they trust my judgement – it is word of mouth advertising.
As a business owner, I am interested in FS because geolocation and information push to smart phones is where it is going to be at. I also use Gowalla, Yelp, Kickball, Waze and so on. It is not there yet, as BWest has stated in their blog post here and there isn’t critical mass as Jessie has pointed out. But there will be eventually and I’d like to be on the ground floor, leading the parade, rather than playing catch up.
As for ROI – social media accounts for a significant portion of our new business and was a great factor in our 39% year on year increase in sales in 2009 – by all accounts a very tough year for most retailers.
FourSquare is but one tool in the social media bag, but I think, after some growing pains, it will become an important one – especially if FaceBook buys it.
Scott