If you are a local business that you think Foursquare is your salvation in these challenging economic times, think again.  It may just as easily breed mediocrity your business mindset and create an opportunity for your competition to get a hand up on you.  As a local business you need to treat every one of your customers, every day, like Queens and Kings.  They need to feel special all of the time.  Believing that you can simply concentrate on the few customers who use Foursquare to build your brand, and business, is a mistake.  Yes, it may give you a little bit more visibility, but the question is how effectively this translates to your bottom line?

What is Foursquare

For those who don’t know, Foursquare is a website and application that runs on your location aware smart phone to enable users to “check in” when they visit your establishment.  When a user checks in to an establishment they have chance of collecting “virtual badges” and possibly becoming “the mayor” of your establishment.  They are in competition with other customers to become mayor and collect badges.  This competition for badges and to become mayor is based in gaming theory and used to drive adoption.  Anyone can add your business to Foursquare and once added people can check in and become mayor.  When they check into a location, they can broadcast that fact others in on Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook and other social networks.  It certainly may increase the visibility of your business, but remember your business is local and a person’s social networks are often highly geographically dispersed.  As a business you have the opportunity to sign up with Foursquare and reward your mayors with specials, or whatever you want to offer them.  The gaming aspect has proven to be fairly addictive and fun for certain demographic, namely techies, early adopters, and the younger social crowd.

So what’s wrong with that?

So here’s the rub.  Foursquare is a tactic; a tactic that relies on a few loud customers who are more concerned about collecting virtual badges than they are in evangelizing your business.  They are advocating your business as a secondary effect rather than a primary purpose.  Everyone on Foursquare knows this, they know that people check in because they want to collect badges and become mayor, and many maybe get something free of the.  Yes, of course, they probably like your business or they wouldn’t go there in the first place, but checking in really doesn’t tell anyone that your business is special.

While it is true that Foursquare can connect local businesses to tech oriented and younger customers, it misses the boat with women, most importantly “moms” – the demographic that controls 85% of local purchases.  Women account for a staggering amount of consumer spending,  Sylvia Ann Hewlett, writing for the Harvard Business Review points out that “Globally, women control nearly $12 trillion of the $18 trillion total overall consumer spending”.

Now, I do know moms who use Foursquare, but they are the exception to the rule.  There are two reasons why moms are likely to be very reluctant to adopting Foursquare.

1- Moms are leery broadcasting their location
2- Moms could care less about the gaming aspect

If a location based service wants to attract moms it need to offer real value everyday, and not broadcast their whereabouts to the world.

Dave McClure, a highly visible Silicon Valley VC, believes that $5 is the opening bid.  He talks about it in his article “Check-Ins are Coupons. Game Mechanics are Bullshit. Show Me The MONEY or Go Home”

It makes perfect sense to add Foursquare to your marketing mix if you are targeting the techie and young social adults.  If these demographics make up a decent portion of your customer base, and for a good counter point to this article, take a look at Olivier Blanchard’s article “Do you know who the mayor of your business is”

From what I can tell, Foursquare may be a great way gain visibility and loyalty among a targeted demographic,  but I don’t think it is the next big think everyone is hyping nor do I think it can easily crossover to other demographics.  I have never heard anyone who is not either a techie or scenester rave about it! Have you?

Getting back to basics

If you want to generate positive word of mouth, deepen customer loyalty, and cultivate customer evangelists, you need to be an exceptional business in the hearts and minds of your customers.  Not only do you need to offer great products and services, but you need to consistently provide great experiences.

Make all your customers feel special

Treat every customer like they are special, every day.  Learn their names. Tell them you’re really glad they stopped by any hope to see them again soon.  Give them a reason to come back; tell them “by the way, I know you like brand X, a new shipment is arriving on Tuesday.  I should have it out on the floor by Wednesday”.  Think other creative ways you can make customers feel special that are particular to your business.  If you are a flower store, your customers usually for someone else; give them one for themselves.

Make your employees feel special

Make this part of your company culture by making your employees feel special.  If for some reason you have a hard time doing this, get new employees; find ones that you really feel are special.  Believe me your customers sense when your employees are happy and feel good about working for you.  It makes them feel better about doing business with you and keeps them coming back. Exceptional employees are one of your biggest assets.

Survey your Customers

If possible, survey your customers by asking them at the end of their visit to write down the first three words that come to mind when they think about today’s experience with your business.  This will give you some great insights and, at the same time, tell your customers that you care.  Collect these words, group similar words or feelings together, and keep a tally. This will give you a good idea of your brand, areas in which you excel, and areas that you can improve.

Celebrate your customers

Throw them a customer appreciation party.  Invite them to your employee appreciation party.  It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate.  Even if your customers can’t attend, the fact that they know that you are having a customer appreciation party will affect how they feel about you.

Remember customers are not Mayors, they are Queens and Kings; be grateful to be able to serve them!

Yesterday, a prospective client called.  He was having difficulty convincing his company management to budget for social media, and he posed an excellent question to me: Why should a successful established niche B2B company spend time, money and resources on social media?

Social Media is not an Island

I think the answer lies in understanding that social media is not distinct from other online marketing efforts; it is really part of the same effort, one of the many levers that could be pulled to reach strategic objectives.  It is just one part of a smart integrated marketing strategy.  While SEO is used to drive traffic to your website, and advertising is used to build awareness, social media works in concert with all the others efforts and aims to get more people to talk more frequently in more places about your products, services, and company, with the goal of selling more products, more frequently, and at higher margins.

From what my client told me, they had been able to generate excellent word of mouth referrals and that has been a great source of sales leads. This is awesome and I suspect the same business qualities that have enabled them to generate this word of mouth, could be extended online.

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in both the quantity and quality of online social interactions.  Facebook just hit 350 million users.  Millions of people write nearly 6 million tweets per day, and YouTube streams more than one billion videos in a day.  People are commenting, social bookmarking, sharing and socializing online, both personally and professionally.  So, the obvious question is: how could they extend what was successful in face-to-face interactions to the social realm of the Internet.

Start with SEO

After a cursory examination of their website, it was clear that they should start with SEO.  This became obvious after I did a Google search for the keywords they used in their metadata and on their site and did not find their site after looking six pages deep in the Google search results.  Ideally, they want to show up on the first page, hopefully near the top.

If you haven’t yet optimized for search STOP everything else and go do this NOW! It is absolutely crucial for you to figure out what your customers type into the Google search bar when they have the problem that your company solves!  You need to know exactly what they type; these are the keywords that you should use in the copy of your website, as well as in the metadata.  The Google keyword tool can help you figure this out.  If you don’t know how to use this tool call me (831) 239-6745 and I will help.  Doing this will make it much easier for your future customers to find you, and more likely that they find you before they find your competition. You can work in your differentiation points around the keywords.  SEO is key, and if you have a website that’s not optimized for search, a huge part of the benefit of having a website is being wasted and sales are being lost. Social media can be great to make people aware of who you are and SEO can help them easily find you when they need you.

How to use Social Media to improve SEO

Not only will social efforts reach and influence people directly, they will improve search ranking.  The more your site is linked to by other sites, the higher it will place in Google results, especially if the linked text is the same as your keywords and if the links come from well respected high traffic or academic websites.  Another factor that influences page rank is the “freshness” of your site; a measure of how current the information is and when it was last updated, as well as, the frequency of updates.  A blog can help with this.  If you specialize in shipping expensive equipment, write the definitive guide to doing so and post it on your blog, comment about it in forums, etc.  Create a slide deck about it and post it on Slideshare, maybe even share videos about it on YouTube, as well as on your site, and have everything linked back to the appropriate page on your site.  Find out where the conversations are already happening.  Look at blogs, forums, social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Linked In, for discussions of  topics of your expertise and participate.  You can find these conversations by setting up Google alerts for your keywords, you company name, the name of your competition, or important products or issues.  When joining a conversation, use your real name and show you company affiliation, be transparent and authentic and look to give value and do not directly try to sell; this will build credibility.  The sales will organically come both directly through these interactions and indirectly as part of the resulting brand equity and presence.  All else being equal, people do business with people they know and like.  Go build relationships, become known, be likeable and helpful.

Being Social is Not New, you know how to do this already!

Social media is a set of tools and techniques that are used to do exactly what you have been doing via traditional methods for years – getting people to be interested in and to comment about your products, services, and company.  The great thing is that when it’s done online, it can reach more people more quickly and at the right time.  Most of all, social media is storytelling – tell your story and you will differentiate yourself from your competition.  Give your customers something to relate to, something they can remember.  One key to success lies in understanding that stories are told and consumed differently on the Internet than in traditional media or in person.  They are told in snippets; a video here, a comment there and an insightful blog post – what emerges is a picture who you are, what you stand for, and why your customers rely on you. This is your brand image. You have the choice to make your website a static online catalog or a dynamic experience for your audience. One is not that much more difficult than the other. You also have the choice to embrace the social internet and create a presense that extends past the walls of your website, or go about business as usual.  The choice is yours but I tell you that your competition will sooner or later do this.  The social internet is still in its infancy and you have the opportunity to benefit from early mover advantage. When you do this, make sure that your efforts and the tactics you choose are guided by your greater marketing strategy.

How to get Help

First and foremost, whomever you choose to work with must understand your business.  Many companies struggle with social media because they rely on so called social media “experts” who know the social tools, but lack the marketing background and strategic experience to understand their prospective clients’ business and their unique challenges. Look for a consultant who listens more than they talk and who is asking salient, probing questions about you and about your business. They should be able to explain how the social web is changing the relationship between customers and companies and, in turn, how that is changing the definition of “brand” and what customers expect of brands.  They should also be able to share with you their success stories of working with other clients, both in traditional marketing and social efforts.   Make sure they walk their talk and have created an effective social media presence for themselves.  And, the last piece of advice is to work with someone you like.  Part of their job is to help you understand the world of social media and to help you build relationships, so if they’re not a good communicator and likable, it is a pretty good warning sign that they may not be the right person for you.

I would love to hear your stories and challenges, what you learned, and what I missed in this post; share your thoughts with me here or tweet me @andrewmueller.  Thanks for reading!