1. Why Should I Bother?

Social location sharing is the latest addition to the realm of social media/social networking and as such has a lot to offer individuals and businesses alike. The focus of this book is to illustrate how marketers can make use of the growing trend among the social-media savvy of sharing their location and their opinions about those locations.

The process of utilizing social location sharing tools as a marketing channel is known as social location marketing. Throughout the book I will use both social location sharing (SLS) and social location marketing (SLM). Social location sharing refers to the platforms and applications—such as Gowalla and Foursquare—as used by those sharing their locations. Social location marketing refers to the methods of marketing to those users.

This book examines why people would want to share their locations, the implications of doing so as an individual, and what is in it for those who do. It also offers insight into how businesses, both small and large, with and without physical locations, as well as those organizing events can use these tools as part of their marketing efforts.

The most popular of the social location sharing tools are examined in depth, with guides on how to set them up to benefit your business. Real-world case studies are included throughout the book, which illustrate how different businesses are already using these tools to gain competitive advantage and increase their revenues.

Social location marketing has the ability to impact the purchase decision cycle at all points—brand awareness, brand elevation, brand consideration and purchase. The concept of the purchase decision cycle is best defined as the continuous loop through which customers become aware, consider, select and finally reconsider purchases.

In the pre-social media market place, the purchase decision cycle involved much less influence from strangers. Purchasers were influenced by a closer network of people. Purchasers were also unable to take part in the level of comparison shopping that they are able to do now. Comparison shopping took time, it took effort and in the pre-Internet world, it actually involved travel. With the advent of the internet the travel requirement declined but it still took time to visit all the websites and make notes on which product had which features and which site was offering the best prices.

Price comparison sites quickly became popular with members posting coupon codes and special offers as they became aware of them. Social media took all of this to the next level. Twitter and Facebook users can post a question and receive hundreds of responses about the best deals, perhaps even getting responses directly from brands themselves.

Now social location sharing not only adds location but immediacy to the mix of that purchase decision cycle.

This is unlike most other forms of marketing communication channels, and as such is a major reason why marketers should be taking it very seriously. Given the low cost of entry, the returns have the potential to be much greater than many other forms of marketing communication and are achievable for all sizes and types of organizations—from the Fortune 500, through the small and medium business to the nonprofit and event-based organization. All of these can, are, and should benefit from taking part in social location marketing. What differentiates social location sharing from much of the rest of social media marketing is that it is specific to a location. It happens as someone becomes or is in the process of becoming a customer, visitor, or user. It is this immediacy that makes it so different, for both the user and the business. This makes the data generated by social location sharing tools incredibly valuable.

In Figure 1.1 you can see that the impact of social location marketing is extremely broad. How can this be so? How can the simple act of a user checking in at a location have such a broad impact on a business and on the purchase decision cycle?

Figure 1.1. Social location marketing’s role in how your customers make buying decisions.

When users check in at a specific location, they are publicly declaring an affinity with that location. Wittingly or unwittingly, they are making the statement that they use this location as part of their lives. Whether it is a grocery store, a clothing shop, a restaurant, or a hair salon, the effect is the same. They are telling the people in their networks, all of whom they have selected to share with, that this is a place they go to. Some of these places will have a certain cache attached to them, and therefore the reason for sharing has an element of selfishness to it. Some users want their network to be aware that they can afford, gain entry to, or otherwise be associated with a certain location—more because of what it says about them as a person than what it says about the location.

At other times, users will have more altruistic motivations. For example, perhaps they want to promote a local business because of the great service they have received from them. They believe that by announcing this location and its great service, they are helping to promote and prolong the business (which, of course, they are).

Event attendees have their own motivators for checking in. Checking in at a conference that has a desirability factor among peers and that is known for being a place at which to meet important figures within an industry is a way of establishing credibility. This shows that the user knows where it is important to be and who it is important to be seen with and learn from. Foursquare, in particular, leverages this “cool by association” factor in that it announces who else the user is checking in with at the same time (or within a certain time frame). Likewise, a music performance, festival, or even a flashmob can all have a cache of “being there” that adds credibility to the user. What would Woodstock have looked like with social location sharing?

All of these motivators can be leveraged by marketers and all have their place within the purchase decision cycle. In the following list, I have broken down the purchase decision cycle and explained how social location marketing affects each stage.

• Brand Awareness: Making the target audience aware of the existence of the brand. This is traditionally something that is associated with advertising, but in the current environment of a society that is more “word of mouth aware,” getting existing customers to be your advertisers/advocates is a much more common effort. Social location sharing tools are most definitely achieving that. These tools broadcast the fact that the user is not only grocery shopping but is shopping at a specific grocery store. Regardless of whether it is a chain or a local store, the fact that a user is telling his network that he shops there calls attention to that brand and places it in the awareness of others who might not have encountered it before.

• Brand Elevation: Making the target audience aware of a brand is not usually enough to trigger a purchase. Rather, having made the target audience aware of the brand, the next step is to move the brand into the consideration stage of the purchase decision cycle. To do that, the brand needs to position itself as a better choice than its competitors. Again, social location sharing tools play their part here. Given that most brands face some kind of competition and that most customers have several choices for their purchase, positioning against those competitors and having more reasons for a purchase is extremely valuable to any business. Having an advocate in the form of a social location sharer share her decision to make a purchase at a location immediately aids that business in providing a reason why it is different from its competitors. Given that the people in the user’s network are faced with the same, sometimes dizzying, array of choices, information that helps them make a decision quickly is considered valuable. A recommendation from a friend, whether delivered in person or via a social tool is very likely to move a business into the consideration phase for a new or returning buyer.

• Consideration: This stage can be immediately before purchase or can be several months, even years ahead of purchase. Much of this depends on the immediate need of the purchaser, the price point of the product or service, and the amount of information available. A customer looking to buy a pair of jeans is unlikely to spend the same amount of time in the consideration phase as a customer buying a new car or even a home. However, social location sharing tools can and do play a part in all these decisions. Users checking in at the Apple store, for example, are stating a preference for a particular brand, but they are also stating a preference for a particular type of technology. Among their networks will be people who are in the consideration phase of buying new technology. Seeing someone from their network whose opinion they value might give them an additional incentive to investigate a brand that they might otherwise have dismissed. By moving a brand, product, service, or location into the consideration phase a business has a much greater opportunity to convert a browser to a customer.

• Purchase: Checking in at the time of purchase, and announcing that a purchase has been made, is obviously the most powerful use of these tools. Each of the tools allows for this in different ways, but at the most basic users can tag their check-in and in doing so start a conversation on other platforms such as Twitter. Because these conversations are happening at the time of a purchase, they provide the best opportunity for businesses to get feedback and join the conversation. Everything from a simple “Thank you” to a more detailed conversation shows that the brand is a part of the community, and that the company values its customers and wants more business from like-minded users.

Who Cares Where I Am?

As with most new technologies, the very early adopters are enthusiasts. They already understand the concept and some of the benefits of the new technology. They might even have a vision or share the vision of the creators as to where the new technology might go. As more people begin to adopt a new technology, a common question is asked: “So What?”

When Twitter started to gain popularity it was certainly the most common question, along with “Why would anyone want to know I am <insert banal activity here>?” So it is with social location sharing. Why should I bother telling people where I am? Who is really interested? And why would they care?

An additional concern that has been raised with social location sharing is that of safety. Is it a good idea to broadcast your location? Aren’t you inviting stalkers to find you? Telling burglars that you are away from your home? Especially for women, these questions have become prominent among those who are both trying to raise genuine concerns and those who are against the general “over sharing” trend. We will discuss the safety implications of these tools later in the book, from both the perspective of the user and of the locations.

So why does anyone want to share their location with the world, and what would make them want to continue to do so in the face of all of these concerns? Competition, rewards, and incentives are definitely part of the answer, as is the ability to share when they are somewhere that has a “cool” factor attached to it. Knowing the why’s makes it easier for the marketer to appeal to the users and create reasons for their location, event, or business to be included in the free publicity that social location sharing provides. Chapter 3, “Games People Play,” explores the motivations behind why people get involved in these types of games and activities. This is important for marketers and business owners to understand so that they can ensure they are including the right type of offers, targeted at the right type of user, on the right platform.

What’s in It for the Individual?

From a user perspective, social location sharing appears, on the surface, to be nothing more than a game. Check in more times than your friends and claim the title of “Mayor” of a location, visit a cool bar and collect a funky guitar, visit your favorite restaurant and buy it virtually. So what? In much the same way that new Twitter users are stumped by the question “What are you doing?” new social location sharing users find the act of checking in at a location somewhat pointless. As a friend of mine says, “other than enabling stalkers, what exactly are you getting out of it?”

Although some early adopters think that the current value of social location sharing to the average user is minimal, this is mainly isolated to users who stay mostly in their home towns. If a user checks in at the same restaurant as her friends, she might get a recommendation for an alternative restaurant, but that’s it. Although this was certainly true at the end of 2009 and early 2010—before businesses became aware of the marketing implications of these tools—it is less true now and will become decreasingly relevant as a criticism of these tools as adoption from the business community increases and the rewards offered by them increase. Users who travel have been realizing different benefits from these tools almost since joining these communities. Mostly these have come in terms of recommendations for places to visit, things to do, and the potential of meeting other users—the core of social media. It is this last element, the ability to connect individuals (the core of good social media platforms) that adds real value to users. New friendships are created, new business is agreed, and new networks are strengthened and grown.

Just as Twitter has spawned numerous add-on services and applications, social location sharing tools are doing the same thing by opening up their APIs. As these new tools start to appear, the value of the social location sharing tools increases. Also, as marketers start to realize the real potential of these tools, the user benefit increases accordingly. Already we are starting to see the appearance of some very innovative tools that leverage the use of social location sharing and reward users for sharing their locations. The case studies in this book include some good examples of how both companies and users can benefit from a little imaginative thinking—from small business tools to integration with point of sale systems. These are only the beginning.

The organizations that are providing the best user rewards are those that already have some form of customer loyalty program in place. Cafes, bookstores, gas stations, airlines, and so on have all been leveraging the concept of “frequent visitor” loyalty for a long time. Social location sharing now allows the customer to not only take part in a social game but be rewarded for doing so. As more industries start to see this benefit to them, we, as users, can expect to see more places offering rewards. Businesses need to start realizing the benefit of knowing that they have regular customers and believing that it really is easier—or at least less expensive—to keep a customer than to obtain a new one. As is often the case in marketing communication, small businesses are early to realize the truth of this. They do not have the luxury of ignoring customers. They have to fight for each one and in doing so realize that the closer they make the customer feel, the better the chances are that the customer will return.

Industries such as the airlines have had multi-tiered reward programs in place for a long time, and by combining it with social location sharing they can not only provide added rewards but can use these tools to be more in touch with their customers. It’s one thing for an airline to sell you a ticket, to know that you have checked in for your flight, but quite another for them to see, in real–time, what you think of the gate where you are sitting, the service you received from the staff, and what you thought of the flight attendants.

This level of sharing not only benefits users in that they feel more empowered to be able to tell their friends, followers, and so forth about their experiences, but it allows the organizations concerned to respond in a more timely fashion.

Currently, rewards tend toward the lower value. This is appropriate given that the technology still lends itself to being “gamed,” and why would a marketer want to risk a high-value reward for someone who has cheated the system? As these bugs get worked out, we can expect to see more high-value rewards being offered for loyalty. Hotels offering a free night’s accommodation, free upgrades, and all things they offer in other marketing promotions will start to find their way into social location sharing.

Competitions based around social location sharing are already starting to appear. Time-limited offers based on frequency of check in, number of different locations checked in at, and even the platform used are all being rewarded in various ways. Because of the nascent state of social location marketing, organizations are still very much in the stage of trail and error. Users of social location sharing tools will be the ones who benefit from the additional offers and marketing efforts that appear because of social location marketing. Also, as the accuracy of the software reading your location from the GPS chip increases, so too are marketers gaining confidence in offering prizes with real-world value. Adobe partnered with Gowalla to place virtual versions of their new software release (CS5) at various locations across the United States. For example, when the Gowalla user found the virtual copy, the user was informed that he or she had in fact won a copy of the actual software, a $1500 value. This is certainly a great way to both promote a product and gain users of the social location sharing platform at the same time.

So what is really in it for you as the individual? As an early adopter, it is primarily a sense of competition. If competition isn’t something that you are motivated by, then the rewards that are increasingly being offered by businesses through social location sharing tools will certainly attract you. These rewards will overshadow the competitive nature of social location marketing and lead to a broader adoption.

Of these secondary features, the most compelling—and the one that is greatly overlooked at the moment because of its nascent state—is rich content. Being able to view not only friends’ thoughts on a product, service, or venue but also “expert” opinion drawn from valued sources is going to become a compelling reason why these tools will see a greater adoption rate. Imagine being able to read a venue’s menu, critic reviews, and friend reviews and suggestions all on one screen before entering and ordering a meal.

As we see the convergence of existing data on various platforms being drawn together into these tools, the time each individual spends with the tool will increase. We will see a transition from simply checking in to actually reading, annotating, and making decisions based on the information provided. Why would someone go to a venue that their friends have dismissed, even if the critics love it? Combining both network opinion with valued “expert” opinion and even “informed stranger” opinion into one information stream is the direction that the major players in social location sharing are taking us. This makes the need for search capability obvious.

The ability to get recommendations for alternatives will also be a compelling feature of these platforms as they evolve. Having a friend tell you that you probably won’t like a particular restaurant is one thing. Having a friend recommend an alternative restaurant is even better. Better still is a recommendation that comes with a map showing how to get there, a menu, and of course the reviews of the new location. It can start to sound all a little too sci-fi—a cross between Big Brother and Minority Report—and I’m sure the conspiracy theorists are having kittens reading about the new data that is being captured about an individual’s movements. The reality is, the technology has been unboxed—no one is going to repack and return it, and those who adopt early will benefit early.

The benefits of these services are likely to expand to include notification of special deals, available only to users of these tools. This will also increase adoption and will ultimately fuel even more of these types of offers. So even for those who aren’t game players, getting involved early on and deciding which of the various tools to use could ultimately lead to much greater rewards in the near future.

What’s in It for the Small Business?

Small businesses have long had an advantage in the social media space. They are traditionally much closer to their customers and have become used to developing relationships and handling feedback at a personal level. Social media is simply another tool in the small business arsenal and allows the businesses to do what they have already been doing in a more organized, trackable, and measurable way.

Social location sharing is no exception to this. Knowing when their customers are at one of their locations, knowing which of their customers are regulars, and which are first timers is all extremely valuable information to any small business, regardless of the type of business. The TV show Cheers comes immediately to mind when thinking of a location that knows its regulars. In the show, the patrons were greeted by name and the bar staff knew their favorite drinks, what was going on in their lives and were considered friends. Many small businesses do operate that way.

However, not all small business have embraced social location marketing, and not all are even able to do so. A busy café might not have the bandwidth to be able to pick out regulars from semi-regulars from first timers. However, using social location sharing tools allows them to gain that insight, even if it is after the fact. Whereas it might not come as a surprise to a small business who becomes “Mayor” of its location, it might surprise that business to learn who the other regulars are that are sharing the location with others and what types of comments they are making about that location. It is the sharing aspect that many venues overlook. As the term implies, if users share their location, they must be sharing it with someone. In fact, in the case of social location sharing tools, users are likely to be sharing it with a lot of someones (via the user’s personal network—many of whom live in the same geographic location). The simple act of sharing a location, without even adding a comment, validates that location among the user’s network. The people in this user’s network see where the user is, think about the activity that takes place at that location (coffee, food, music, and so on), and include that venue in their consideration phase the next time they are looking to take part in the same activity.

Getting on the radar is incredibly important for any small business. Most do not have the budget for advertising campaigns, and when they do it tends toward the mass communication type, such as Yellow pages, local newspapers, and perhaps radio. What is more powerful is word of mouth. The referral to their business by a satisfied customer has long been the way most small businesses grow.

In marketing terms, being a part of the consideration phase of the purchase decision cycle is essential to being chosen as a vendor. People have to know you exist first (brand awareness) before they can consider you. To be considered, they must attach some value to the business—something must prompt them to increase their value judgment of the business (brand elevation). When this occurs the potential customer can then place the business into the consideration phase, which is what ultimately leads to sales.

Social location sharing achieves brand awareness and elevation for the small business in a way that is not possible at the same price point for many other communication channels. In many cases, it is happening without the business even knowing, just as it has before the creation of these social location sharing tools, through word of mouth. However, social media in general, and social location sharing tools in particular, allow the business owner to become aware of these conversations and, time permitting, even join them.

All other forms of awareness and elevation activity undertaken by small businesses lack the feedback that social media in general and social location sharing in particular give access to. Although having lots of Twitter followers is nice, it is ultimately just that, a number. The number of check ins at a venue has a direct effect on the money at the checkout. These are more than just followers or fans—they are real customers who are at the location. They are spending money with the business, and they are telling others about their activity. This is a huge opportunity to both reward and take advantage of that behavior. Reinforcing this behavior with positive rewards for customers will encourage them to do it more often.

The rewards can be simple, low cost, or even free. Recently a friend of mine became Mayor of a coffee shop that was an outlet of a national chain. However, the staff at that outlet treat it as though it were the only one of its kind and treat their customers the same way. When they noticed that the customer had become Mayor, they put up a whiteboard sign, which they produced at her next visit, congratulating her on becoming Mayor and gave her a free coffee that day. Simple, cheap, and the reason I know of this story is because she took a picture of the sign and shared it with her network. Free promotion for that coffee shop. Notice the correlation here between having the information and acting on it. No point in having all this rich data if you don’t use it to both improve the customer experience and increase affinity with the location.

Being armed with this information allows venues to provide a better experience for customers, regardless of whether those customers are regulars. Read the case study on AJBombers in Chapter 6, “Get Set, Go” on how they adapted their menu based on feedback left via Twitter. This type of inclusion, although possible before, is now not only possible but desired by customers. Social location sharing tools provide customers with both the ability and the outlet to give valuable feedback to the venue.

Social location sharing tools can bring other benefits to small businesses beyond simply understanding their customer’s behavior. With the creation of open APIs and the advent of third-party applications utilizing the data captured by social location sharing tools, information that would have been extremely difficult and costly for a small business to capture is now becoming available.

One type of application that is being developed mixes Foursquare data with that of Google maps to produce heat maps of check ins, like the one shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2. This map mixes Foursquare data with Google maps data to show a heat map of check-ins.

While still in development as of April 2010, this type of tool has many applications beyond producing pretty pictures for individual users. As you can see in Figure 1.2, the heat map (which is for my check ins in Austin) gives an immediate picture of where I am most likely to check in and which parts of town hold the most appeal for me as an individual user. Applying this to the small business space, we can extrapolate the following example:

A service call business providing air conditioning services for homes or businesses could have technicians use Foursquare to check in at each call. Using a heat map service, they can then see exactly which part of town their most frequent calls are from, and more importantly which part of town they are not getting calls from. This would allow them to make very targeted marketing efforts instead of simply blanketing the city with their message. If doing so achieves nothing else, it helps reduce the cost of materials and the time distributing them, depending on how they are acquiring new business. Even if they don’t decide to go after this area of town, they can at least get a sense of where their best customers are and the ones that give them only occasional business. Again this information aids the business in building greater affinity with customers when combined with other information that the business already has.

Previously, this type of technique would have been cost prohibitive for most types of small business. However, with free tools like this, small businesses are able to compete with much more sophisticated software used by larger companies. Now instead of wondering where their next customer is coming from, they can specifically market to an area that is currently not using their service and may not be aware that their company exists.

Social location sharing for this type of company just became more than a game. Again, this is all a part of the brand awareness, brand elevation, consideration, purchase paradigm that larger companies operate on all the time but that many small businesses have previously not had the tools to use or even the knowledge to implement. Social media is not only bringing customers closer to all businesses, large and small, but it’s leveling the playing field between different sized organizations.

This type of tool shows that social location sharing is not just for the business-to-consumer market, but can be leveraged by the business-to-business market as well. It is the broad spectrum adoption that will ensure that these tools become an essential part of the marketer’s general arsenal. The business-to-business space has struggled with how to successfully use most social media tools, and social location sharing is no exception. Small businesses in this space, who are often service/product providers to much larger organizations, struggle with how to use these tools to communicate with their customers and potential customers.

However, as you can see in detail in the Ideaworks case study in Chapter 8, “We’re Here All Week,” social location sharing can become a valuable method of communicating to potential clients and increasing your business network in a way that leads to more business. Using social location sharing tools as part of an organization’s outreach to its local business community is a great method of providing awareness of the services/products provided by the company.

For example, perhaps you operate a catering service company that provides the hardware used in coffee shops, restaurants, and bars. Checking in at your potential client’s premises and leaving a tip or comment that highlights a particular need—a need that your organization can fulfill—can be a way to introduce your services without actually cold calling the owner. You have planted a seed—one that other customers will no doubt comment on and one that, providing the establishment is listening (and they should be) will have to take action on. Why not call on them to say that you have noticed the comments about their wobbly chairs? Tell them about your great deals on café chairs. It’s a conversation starter.

What’s in It for Larger Businesses?

Scaling social media, as with any marketing effort is always a challenge. Just because the local coffee shop has managed to increase its customer base using social location sharing doesn’t mean a chain of stores can translate that activity into new customers. The economies are different; the ability to connect at an individual customer level is a much greater challenge. The fact that marketing departments are often siloed in large businesses doesn’t aid these efforts. Social media is often the red-headed stepchild of the marketing world. In some organizations, everyone wants to own it because it is seen as new and impactful. In others, no one wants it, because it is seen as unproven and a waste of time. Does it belong in PR, advertising, customer support, online marketing, or general marketing? Different answers are found in every organization.

Where it fits into an organization has to be somewhere that can leverage the information that is going to flow into the organization. That information is going to be a stream that requires some analysis. Some of it will contain sales opportunities, some of it will contain customer support opportunities, some of it will be advocacy data, and some will be simple mentions in various social networks. All of this needs to be routed to the appropriate departments and acted upon. All this also has to happen without creating analysis paralysis, which is the state achieved when an organization is facing so much information it simply can’t act on it.

Later in the book we will explore strategies that work in large-scale environments that enable organizations to make use of the data in ways that leverage the competitive advantage the data can bring and feed back to the bottom line.

Automation is certainly one solution, and companies like Tasti-di-Lite have made some very good inroads in this area (see the Tasti-di-lite case study in Chapter 10, “Plan, Plan, Plan”). By making it easier for customers to take part in social location sharing, rewarding them for doing so and tying them into a customer loyalty program in one action, larger organizations can definitely benefit from and utilize social location sharing tools.

Where larger organizations have an advantage in social location sharing—as they do in all aspects of business—is volume. A local café might see between 20 to 100 customers in a day. A big box store might see somewhere in the order of 100 times that many people in a day. By giving those customers an incentive to use social location sharing as part of a customer loyalty program, these stores can produce a wealth of data and a flood of consumer-generated content that is broadcast across multiple social media platforms. Leveraging this data, observing trends and frequencies, is something that large companies already do. Having real-time data will make these observations even more powerful.

Leveraging existing partnerships, especially those that offer market development funds is another avenue that is primarily open to the larger businesses. Because they are volume buyers and sellers, organizations without physical locations—such as manufacturers who sell through resellers or retail outlets—can still take part in social location sharing. For example, a beverage company might run an incentive for stores that work with them on a promotion in which customers check in when purchasing their product and add that information to their check in. The beverage company could take that one step further and extend the offer if the beverage is then included in pictures of other locations where the user checks in.

Social location sharing data combined with sales data can add an extremely useful dimension. Knowing that running a 10% off discount on a Tuesday leads to increased sales is great, but knowing who among those buyers are regulars and who among them are first timers is even more powerful, especially when tied into the marketing communications effort that enveloped the offer. Now a company has a sense of who they are reaching and whether these buyers are already brand aware—or are they new to the brand? Add to that the geographic data, and regional targeting becomes an even more powerful marketing method. Perhaps Tuesdays work in New York but Wednesdays are better in Los Angeles for bringing in new customers. Existing customers prefer Mondays and Wednesdays, so maybe a loyalty card incentive would work well for them. The possibility to, appear closer to the customer increases customer affinity. As customers, we find ourselves liking a brand that wants to communicate with us in a way we understand, in much the same way we do with those who are not native speakers of our own language. We applaud their efforts, make allowances for the odd mistake in phrasing because at least there is an effort being made.

Making it easy for the customer, through the use of technology is and always has been an advantage of larger businesses over small ones. Think about devices such as the self-service checkout installed in so many chain grocery stores. These are beyond the scope of most small business, but also a method by which the customer can avoid interacting with store staff and thus being drawn into an affinity situation. Social location sharing data means that larger companies can still offer this “hands-off,” one step removed advantage to those of their customers who prefer it, while still building affinity.

Whereas smaller businesses rely on the customer to do the work, larger businesses are often in a position to take most of this burden away from the customer, which increases adoption and frequency of use. By increasing the adoption rate and the use of these tools, businesses can build ever-larger amounts of user data. Remember that it is not just the real-time nature of the data but the fact that these tools also store historical data along with the competitive data that makes them powerful to organizations.

Knowing when someone stops becoming Mayor of a location is just as useful as knowing when they become the Mayor. Sending them a message to invite them back to regain their mayorship is a quick and easy way of reminding them that they have been a frequent customer and that they should come back. Giving them an incentive to do so may well hasten the visit. This also plays on the competitive nature of these platforms. A sliding scale of rewards that includes not only becoming Mayor but “ousting” an existing Mayor definitely makes people want to take part.

Likewise, for Gowalla users, being aware of which items are currently at your locations and promoting those items is a simple and free way of joining in the game without increasing marketing spending. Rewarding the players who collect items or leave items at your locations, especially items that have a connection to the venue, is a way to give players an incentive to include the location in their gaming behavior. Later in the book we will look at specific cases where doing this pays off, and also how partnering with the various companies behind the platforms can produce interesting elements to campaigns, along with some examples of the costs associated with running these campaigns.

As with so much of social media, companies are only starting to scratch the surface of the ways in which they are able to connect with their customers and answer the overwhelming question, “What’s in it for me?” asked when a customer is approached by a business. Customers do not willingly give up their information for no gain, whether that gain is real or virtual. By combining a sense of “joining in” and exceptional marketing, the customer is more likely to not only give up information but continue to do so across other platforms.

Social location marketing, like any channel, should not be considered a standalone activity. To be truly effective it needs to be part of a much more integrated marketing communications strategy. We’ll discuss some of these options in Chapter 2, “Square Pegs and Round Holes: Where Does This All Fit?” when we look at where social location marketing fits as part of the broader social media strategies. But it is worth noting that a strategy that doesn’t pull the data from social location marketing and incorporate it into other elements is a waste. Email, direct mail, and so on can all benefit from the data drawn from these tools.

As you explore this book, keep in mind that all the strategies and ideas are not meant to stand alone. Make sure that you’re thinking of how to incorporate them into your existing and planned activities. Just as with social media in general, social location marketing is not a silver bullet. It is not a recipe for overnight success for your ailing business. If you have things to fix in your organization, social location marketing—or for that matter, social media in general—is not something you should be doing. Go fix your issues first, and then come back and join in the fun and games.