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Top Tips on How to Set Up a Location-Based Social Media Marketing Campaign

By now you should already be aware of the value of social media where marketing is concerned. These days, there is another aspect of social media marketing that has become a very powerful tool. It focuses on something that has long been considered important in traditional marketing: location. Known as location-based social media marketing, it aims primarily to encourage people to “check-in” physically at your business location by offering discounts and other incentives in exchange.

The Advantages

A location-based social media marketing campaign costs practically nothing. Therefore, if you’re able to get significant results from this campaign, it can indeed be very cost-effective. For the most part, the only investment you need to launch a successful location-based campaign on social media is your time and effort.

It doesn’t even need that much time and effort as compared to other types of online marketing campaign. As soon as you’ve set up your account on a location-based platform and put your marketing campaign into place, your customers can pretty much do the work for you and spread the word about your business.

The Disadvantages

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of launching a location-based marketing campaign on social media is that if you fail to make your customers do much of the work for you, then your campaign is likely to fail as well. This is why most businesses offer discounts and freebies as part of their location-based marketing strategy.

While this is likely to cost you a significant amount in the long run, the returns you get from such offers could more than pay for the cost. Another thing that may be seen as a disadvantage where location-based marketing is concerned is the fact that concrete data as regards its effectiveness is hard to come by at the moment.

For some reason, only a few businesses have so far revealed how much business they’ve been able to generate from location-based platforms like Foursquare and Scvngr.

Offering discounts and freebies is one of the strategies businesses use as part of location-based marketing. Flickr.com photo by bargainbri

The disadvantages notwithstanding, you may indeed be able to reap huge rewards from location-based marketing as long as you know how to do it right. Here are some tips on how you can create your own location-based social media marketing campaign:

 1.      Choose Your Venue

There are several platforms on which you can build your location-based online presence. You’ll have to create an account and claim your venue on your chosen platform.

 Sign-up specifics vary from one platform to the other and you’ll have to make sure you follow these specifics on every platform you choose to use.

 Foursquare is perhaps the most popular location-based platform to date and the good news is that this platform is completely free to use. It even gives you some useful suggestions on how you can stay engaged with your followers.

 2.      Configure a Location Marketing Page

Any platform you choose for your location-based social media marketing campaign won’t require you to change the default information in your profile. However, it is highly advisable for you to do so.

 A good number of online visitors do take the time to check out the profile information of a business account, so it’s definitely a good idea to make sure anyone who takes a peek will like what he or she sees on your account profile.

 Bear in mind as well that major search engines like Google also index information in social media profiles, which can make it a lot easier for people to find you.

You need to do your best to ensure that anyone who peeks into your profile on a location-based platform will like what he or she sees. Flickr.com photo by LabyrinthX-2

 3.      Set Up a Performance Monitoring Plan

In order for you to know how well your location-based social media marketing campaign is faring, you’ll have to set some specific goals at the outset. These indicators may include the number of daily check-ins, the number of check-ins that are cross-posted to Facebook and/or Twitter, and the number of offers or deals visitors redeem on a daily or weekly basis.

 4.      Come Up with Relevant Offers

Remember that location-based marketing is all about incentives. Most people check-in to online venues only because there’s something in it for them, which they consider of value. Therefore, you have to make sure the deals and incentives you offer are relevant not only to your business, but also to your target market’s expressed and implied needs.

 You could perhaps offer a small discount or reward simply for checking in. Bigger discounts or more valuable rewards may be offered to those who leave comments (preferably positive, of course) regarding your business. 

You have to give people a good reason to check-in to your online venue. Flickr.com photo by dennis

You could also make the experience more fun by coming up with, say, weekly games and challenges. Winners may be rewarded with a sample of new products or a free product of their choice, among other things.

Sometimes even simple pins and stickers would suffice as rewards because people often just enjoy beating their friends at games and challenges.

 5.      Offer Strategic Incentives

 Create special offers that help you increase your volumes during typically low-business hours or days. For example, if you are in retail business and see low footfalls on Mondays, you could use Foursquare to start a discount campaign with offers valid on Mondays only.

 6.      Offer Your Customers Incentives

 Challenge your customers to do something at your location and offer them incentives for the same. For example, a fashion-clothing store, could issue a challenge to its customers to mix, match, and create a party outfit in under one-minute.

 The pictures can then be shared on platforms like Facebook and Pinterest, etc. The customers in the pictures would in all likelihood share the pictures on their networks, thus bringing in more publicity and exposure for your location based social media campaigns.

 7.      Review, Adjust, and Optimize

Using the monitoring system you’ve set up based on your identified performance indicators, review how each component of your location-based marketing campaign is doing. If one or more component isn’t doing very well, find out where it is failing and then make the necessary adjustments to improve your performance in that component.

 Be sure to set a schedule for reviewing your performance to ensure that your campaign is optimized and sustained for the long term.

 With people relying on mobile devices more and more these days, it may indeed be smart for you to start taking advantage of geo-location technology for your business. With the right tactics and proper management, a location-based social media marketing campaign may just be one of your most useful and cost-effective projects to date. 

Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media, a Vancouver based SEO company. Pitstop Media has been helping businesses across North America successfully increase their search visibility. If you want to invite the author to guest post on your blog please contact www.pitstopmedia.com

Posts You May Have Missed Last Week: Incentives for a Positive Work Environment and Oldies But Goodies

Life sometimes prevents us from enjoying ourpleasures. And by pleasures, we mean Cheap Revolution. 

Just in case you missed our top posts from last week, we compiled them into a short list for your convenience:

3 Incentives for a Positive Work Environment

We often try to provide our employees with incentives to motivate them, which we hope will provide our business with positive results. Thephilosophy, of course, is that wemust keep our employees happy in order to run a successful business. If our employees view us as the boss without a heart, they will be more likely torebel or be careless.

Free White Paper: "Social Mobile User Engagement" by Virtue

According to eMarketer, by the year 2016, the growth of mobile social network users is expected to reach 1.7 billion users, a 210% increase from 2011. Marketers need to be aware of this growth and begin to build a strong foundation for an effective mobile social engagement strategy now. In this whitepaper, Virture explores how mobile users are connecting with brands on Facebook.

Posts You May Have Missed Last Week: 4 Ways to Promote Your Business Online in 2012 and Seth Godin

Life sometimes prevents us from enjoying ourpleasures. And by pleasures, we mean Cheap Revolution. 

Just in case you missed our top posts from last week, we compiled them into a short list for your convenience:

Top Entrepreneurs on Twitter: Seth Godin

Each week, we will seek to provide you with one entrepreneurwho can be considered to be a must follow on Twitter. We will base our selections on inspirational entrepreneurs who providevaluable insight, as well as content for our readers. 

 We encourage you to follow our reccommended entrepreneurson Twitter, so that you absorb various viewpoints and opinions.By using Twitter, you enable yourself to consume an endless database of knowledge.

This week's top entrepreneur: Seth Godin.

4 Ways to Promote Your Business Online in 2012

Promoting your business has been easier than ever. Instead of wasting money with print advertising, the Internet enables us to take advantage of money saving alternatives. 

Do you own a website? How many social media channels is your business currently involved in? Does your business have a blog that is frequently updated?

All of these alternatives are essential to businesses in 2012, however, many may not be taking advantage of these cost saving solutions.

Posts You May Have Missed Last Week: Crowdsourcing, Pinterest and Guy Kawasaki

Life sometimes prevents us from enjoying our pleasures. And by pleasures, we mean Cheap Revolution. 

Just in case you missed our top posts from last week, we compiled them into a short list for your convenience:

Top Entrepreneurs on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki

Each week, we will seek to provide you with one entrepreneur who can be considered to be a must follow on Twitter. We will base our selections on inspirational entrepreneurs who provide valuable insight, as well as content for our readers. We encourage you to follow our reccommended entrepreneurs on Twitter, so that you absorb various viewpoints and opinions. By using Twitter, you enable yourself to consume an endless database of knowledge.

Top Entrepreneurs on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki

Each week, we will seek to provide you with one entrepreneur who can be considered to be a must follow on Twitter. We will base our selections on inspirational entrepreneurs who provide valuable insight, as well as content for our readers. 

 We encourage you to follow our reccommended entrepreneurs on Twitter, so that you absorb various viewpoints and opinions. By using Twitter, you enable yourself to consume an endless database of knowledge.

This week's top entrepreneur: Guy Kawasaki.

Twitter Tip of the Week: Schedule Your Tweets Weekly

During the week our schedules fill-up with appointments, which sometimes forces us to put our social media strategy at the bottom of our to-do list. Due to this unfortunate occurrence, our social media presence suffers, since of the main ideas behind social media is that you are updating users in real-time. However, the majority of small businesses do not have the capacity to contiously update users with enough content to effectively provide engaging updates. Scheduling your tweets weekly is one way to provide you with a safety net. 

Look to the future - 2010 Social Media and Internet Marketing trends

Many of us are happy to have 2009 behind us! I've enjoyed looking over the predictions and forecasts for
  2010.  I thought it might be helpful to provide a roundup of some of my favorites - and add my reflections to kick off the conversation. 

What are your favorite Internet Marketing and Social Media trends for the upcoming year?  2010 breakthroughs may present themselves as shiny, new technologies... but the biggest surprises might come from mainstream business use of stuff thats been around for some time. 

 

Here are some of my favorite predictions for 2010.

 1) Harvard Business Review takes an industry level peek into how we organize our social media, business scaling, gaming, mobile and more.

2) Dan Zarella, A Social Media and Viral Marketing Scientist who also works at Hubspot, talks about Social Media trends toward more IRL (In Real Life) translation, micro-segmenting, small business Social Media Marketing and the Real time Web.

3) StartupNation has a terrific set of Top 10 Internet Marketing Predictions for 2010 from Tom Now covering everything from the explosion of the US Hispanic Market online through the rise of video blogs, Digital Portfolios and your digital footprint, Location-based Marketing and Integrated Marketing.  

4) Trendwatching wins my creative insight award though... by taking a wide angle lens on all of society and culture they forearm us with predictions of embedded generosity, intention-based online profiles and Tracking & Alerting to manage our INFOLUST.   They wrap with some reflection on the opinionated, risque, outspoken - and (might I add) rude - brand speak of 2010 that emanates from the mouthpiece of the online world.  Hmm... sounds like a teenager to me. 

My Takeaways and Favorites... 

Favorite #1 - INFOLUST and too much noise.  While I haven't heard the term before, it seems to me an accurate perspective on many of our online pursuits.  This necessitates the need for Attention Filters like alerts, automated search tools, RSS feeds and aggregation tools.  Twitter Lists, Google Sidewiki and other ways for the collective to annotate our ramblings reminds me of how folksonomies are being taken to the entire Web. 

Favorite #2 - Craving of life to meet life.  IRL (In Real Life).  As a  Meetup organizer, I appreciate the value of online meetups.  Meetup passed the 50 Million RSVP mark this year, with 5 Million Meetup groups per Scott Heiferman in this YouTube video on Meetup in 2009. 

Favorite #3 - Portfolio thinking - Digital portfolio/digital footprints.  For the past year, I've been realizing and advocating that we are all going to have start thinking in terms of portfolios. In the highly fragmented world we call 2010, it is more and more likely that our money, time and attention will be coming from/directed to a wide range of sources.  How many income sources do you have?  (I can count six and growing).  How many social (online and offline) outlets do you have (I'm well over a dozen). Have you Googled yourself lately to see your Digital Footprint? 

Favorite #4 - Embedded Generosity.  The idea of seeing tighter, micro-embedding of cause-based efforts is one of the more positive trends that helps tighten the weave of our global blanket. 

What are your takeaways or favorites? What would you add? 

BTW - I know I'm missing some great trends and predictions.  If you have one, please add it to the comments below.  

Thanks - and here is wishing you a life-inspiring 2010!

-Skip

 

20 Must Have Resources for Internet Marketers

Internet Marketing Tools/Software & Tools to Help Marketers

HubSpot – HubSpot is a powerful, web-based online marketing system that helps small and medium sized businesses capture and convert more qualified sales leads by an optimized web presence.  We like HubSpot because it is robust, easy to use, and they provide great support as well as a lot of opportunities to learn more about Internet marketing. Definitely a must-have if you’re a marketer who works with small or medium sized businesses. You can test drive HubSpot for 7 days.

Constant Contact – As a marketer, you know you need a “mix” of marketing activities to accomplish your marketing objectives. E-mail marketing is still a viable method of reaching your Internet marketing goals. We still use Constant Contact and we’re pretty happy with it. If you’re not sure,you can sign up for a free trial. Read also: 7 Alternatives to Constant Contact here.

Wordtracker – if you’re serious about keyword research, Wordtracker is an investment you need to make. Not only will your keyword research get done faster, but Wordtracker helps you find the most profitable and competitive keywords and you’re able to save your keyword research by project. They have annual and monthly subscriptions as well as a free trial. There are many keyword research tools out there, but Wordtracker is definitely one of our favorites.

Huddle – Managing your Marketing projects with Huddle is a snap! Huddle offers online collaboration, live conferencing, project management software and document sharing. There are five packages – from FREE to enterprise. Depending on what you need, it can be a cost-efficient way to manage your marketing projects. We use Huddle to keep track of our clients and marketing projects and continue to be pleased with the service. Update: This month customers can get 5% off at Huddle for Life by using coupon code: UHGFDX. Offer valid until 28th February 2011 on all paying subscriptions or free to paid upgrades at Huddle. 

Radian 6 – if you’re an Internet Marketer using Social Media, then you know how important it is to monitor and measure community engagement. Radian6 is a powerful platform that is comprehensive and easy to use. It’s a must have if you’re serious about social media!

Premium Marketing Resources

Market Motives – Get online marketing certified in SEO, PPC, Web Analytics, PR, Social Media, E-mail Marketing, and more.

Marketing Sherpa – Premium membership gets you case studies, how-to guides, research reports, certifications, and more.

Marketing Profs – Paid membership gets you access to marketing articles, case studies, videos, webinars, discounts on conferences, etc.

SEOMoz – Becoming a PRO member gives you access to a host of SEO-related tools. A must-have if you’re into search engine optimization.

eMarketing Association – Paid membership gets you resources, discounts on seminars, reports, whitepapers, articles, and a lot more.

Internet Marketing Books

Inbound Marketing: Get Found on Google, Social Media, and Blogs - a how-to guide to getting found via Google, the blogosphere, and social media sites.

The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) – If you are new to SEO, you'll get a complete and thorough SEO education, as well as an array of effective tactics, from basic to advanced. Seasoned practitioners will find this book useful as a complete reference to SEO best practices.

Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business – an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.

Trust Agents – Written by marketing rock stars Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, this book shows you how to tap into the power of social networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and, of course, profits.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity – As an Internet marketer, you know the importance of web analytics. This book provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, and solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns.

Internet Marketing Conferences in 2010

Affiliate Summit West – January 17^th to 19^th in Las Vegas, NV

Social Media Conference – January 28^th & 29^th in Miami, FL

Search Marketing Expo West – March 2^nd to 4^th in Santa Clara, CA

South by Southwest Interactive – March 12^th to 16^th in Austin, TX

Business to Business Forum – May 4^th to 5^th in Boston, MA