Increasingly, companies are using Foursquare to reach their audiences. Numerous promotions have been successful in attracting new customers and converting existing ones to new ambassadors for your brand, which is the basis of social media. It is increasingly important to interact with the customer and their audience. They are no longer passive bystanders as we know, both for communication and marketing. Today, almost everyone has some sort of smartphone, hence the rise of applications such as Foursquare, which allow you to check in anywhere, find points of interest around your checkin as well as current and potential or future contacts. This provides an excellent opportunity for people to become familiar with a product or to create resonance around it and attract attention, which is usually the objective on an advertising campaign.
The most common approach is to provide a discount to users who check in at one of the store’s branches. Many companies including Gap and Starbucks are renowned for this approach. Jimmy Choo, however, took it a step further by organising a type of treasure hunt in the city of London. Through their Twitter account @Catchachoo they posted specific locations around the city and the first person to check in at one of those locations via Foursquare would receive a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes of their choice for free.
McDonalds is another example of an original campaign. The aim was to increase foot traffic to their stores by 33% in one day by using Foursquare. 100 randomly awarded $5 and $10 giftcards were used as checkin bait to attract potential customers. The bait also worked to attract attention from the media and resulted in more than 50 articles talking about their so called Foursquare special. The problem with this campaign was the measurement. The blog thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com provides an excellent summary of this.
