While Gowalla and Foursquare checking in and gathering badges and become a place-mayor is still a novelty, many businesses can take advantage of check-in incentives as an additional way to lure the tech-savvy to their establishment. What happens, however, when nearly every store in a shopping mall offers something free if you're their Foursquare mayor or offers virtual Gowalla goodies redeemable for real stuff? Will people take the time to open those different social apps to explore what check-in incentives exist at each store they like? Will a geo-location macro hybrid app that runs on most mobile devices that lists all participating stores in the the whole shopping mall (or nationwide) make it easier for people if, say, when an opted-in app-user came within a short distance of the shopping area the app pushed a text message announcing available deals for stores of interest? What apps have you seen to date that are trying to accomplish this? Perhaps both Foursquare and/or Gowalla will add functionality of this nature and make it much easier not only for customers to use to find businesses offering incentives, but also for small businesses to buy into geo-location incentive marketing campaigns.
Posted via web from Vancouver Internet Marketing Consultant - Brent Purves
We are at the beginning of an exciting new era of location based advertising that integrates geo-location with advertising and apps. Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, Yelp, BrightKite, Loopt. These are just a few of the geo location based applications that are going to change everything in advertising & marketing. Location based advertising allows anyone to target potential customers when they are within a certain distance from a select location such as a store, event or meeting place. Start thinking now how your business can integrate its goals, offerings, services and products with location based advertising opportunities.
