FourSquare – The App that Buzzes Local Marketing

 local-seo-app

FourSquare is the pioneer of “check in” technology, has over 33-million members and is growing at an astounding rate.

How can FourSquare help you as a business?

 

Increase Customer Return Rate

FourSquare has a moderately competitive culture to it. Friends want to have more badges, more checkins and more mayorships than other friends.

Naturally, if they frequent your business, they’re going to want to come back even more often so they can check in more, get more points, more badges and perhaps even become mayor of your location.

 

Bring in New Customers

Other people will see their friends checking in to your location. If one or more of their friends are regulars, they’ll of course want to check it out for themselves.

The more people you get to check in to your business, the more new people they’ll bring in.

 

Create Buzz & Contests

If you create special incentives for mayors, you can often get a nice competition going amongst your customers.

For example, if you give the major and his/her friends all a 20% discount as long as they’re mayor, you could get a lot of people competing for the position. The discount will easily pay for itself in terms of increased sales.

FourSquare has also recently launched a program that allows you to create your own custom badge. This does require a small fee however.

 

Get Spot On Feedback

feedback

It’s rare that a customer will give a manager honest feedback. It takes quite a bit of effort on the customer’s part. Usually, managers only hear feedback when it’s a complaint.

FourSquare can change that. With FourSquare’s “tips” and other people’s “check ins,” you can get to hear what other people really think about your business.

They won’t feel like they’re leaving feedback for management; just that they’re sharing their opinions and tips with their friends. But you can use a lot of what was shared as valuable data to help improve your business in the future.

In order to take advantage of FourSquare, you need to first claim your location. This gives you administrative access, so you can add events, to-dos, badges and change other settings.

 

Step 1: Search for Your Business

Is your business already listed in FourSquare? If so, try to find it by typing in your business name and the city.

1-Search-For-Your-Business

Step 2: Claim Your Business

If your business is already in the system, click on the “Claim here” button on the right hand side.

2-Claim-Venue
Click “Get started” when prompted.

3-Continue-Claiming

Finally, tell FourSquare whether you’re a chain or not.

6-How-Many-Locations

Step 3: Verify

FourSquare will need you to verify that you’re authorized to manage the account by either answering the listed phone number or accepting mail.

They’ll first prompt you for phone verification. If you can answer the phone, click #1. If not, click #2 to go to mail verification.
Upon verifying your authorization, you’ll then have access to your FourSquare location!

 

Step 4: Adding a Location That Doesn’t Exist Yet

What if your location isn’t in FourSquare yet? If that’s the case, you’ll need to add the venue.

Go to: https://foursquare.com/add_venue

Add your venue by filling out the information form.

9-Add-Venue

After adding the venue, follow the same steps to claim authorization.

Congratulations! You now know some of the main benefits of using FourSquare, as well as how to claim your venue or setup a new one.

1 thought on “FourSquare – The App that Buzzes Local Marketing”

  1. Heard about FourSquare but didn’t think it could help my business, but now after reading your article, I am thinking yes it could and what a great idea! Thanks!

    Reply

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