Business Learning Center

What’s Foursquare?

Foursquare is a tool that helps people track where their friends are and what they’re up to. If your business is based on a physical location, you can use Foursquare to manage–and maximize–its popularity.

Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people
for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with
game mechanics — our users earn points, win Mayorships and unlock badges for trying new
places and revisiting old favorites.

Foursquare compiled this guide for promoting your business with their service:

Using Foursquare To Promote Your Establishment

As a business owner, you can use foursquare to engage your increasingly mobile customers with
foursquare “Specials,” which are discounts and prizes you can offer your loyal customers when
they check in on foursquare at your venue. Don’t forget to show extra love to your
venue’s Mayor! Additionally, if you offer foursquare Specials to your customers, you will be
able to track how your venue is performing over time thanks to our robust set of venue analytics —
for free!

If you want to dive right in, get started by claiming your venue right from its foursquare venue page:

Simple tools to create engaging Specials

We’ve built simple self-service tools to allow you, the business manager, to create different kinds of foursquare Specials,
manage multiple Specials and ultimately track how these Specials perform. We think these services will empower you
to develop more engaging ongoing relationships with you customers. You’ll be surprised how effective a
little friendly competition — over the Mayorship, over free fries! — is at driving customers back to your venue.

Use our tools to create a variety of foursquare Specials, customized just for your venue and for your customers:

• Mayor Specials: unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue. Who’s the Mayor? It’s your single most loyal customer!
  (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days)(“Foursquare has deemed you the Mayor? Enjoy a free order of french fries!”)
• Check-in Specials: unlocked when a user checks in to your venue a certain number of times.(“Foursquare says you’ve been here 10 times? That’s a free drink for you!”)
• Frequency-based Specials: are unlocked every X check-ins.(“Foursquare users get 20% off any entree every 5th check-in!”)
• Wildcard Specials: always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions
  before awarding the Special.

  (“Show us your foursquare Swarm badge and get a free drink!”)

• And more to come!

Promoting your Specials in-store

We’ve seen venues promote their involvement with foursquare via Twitter, signs at cash registers
and sidewalk blackboards. Go for it, and be creative! Also, we can help you market your Special
to your customers by sending you official foursquare window clings.

Once you claim your venue, you’ll be able to add your mailing info to the list, and we’ll send
some clings to you as soon as we can!

Real-time venue stats

Once you claim your venue on foursquare, you’ll be able to check real time stats about your venue, including:

Promoting Specials across the mobile experience

We’ve woven the Specials platform tightly into all of our official foursquare mobile clients
(iPhone, Android and Blackberry) and we actively call attention to venues that offer Specials
for foursquares users. For example, if a foursquare user is at your bar/restaurant, we’ll tell
them what they have to do to unlock a free snack or discounted drink. If they happen to be across
the street or two blocks away from your venue, we’ll let them know that your business gives special
treatment to foursquare users and that they should swing by for a visit.

Using Foursquare To Promote A Brand or Business Without A Physical Location

The official Foursquare corporate promotion system is great if you run an establishment. But with if you produce a consumer packaged good or are a service-based company?

Well, there’s a great workaround for that. Create a regular user account under your brand or company name (e.g. Coke Zero). Leave tips and to-dos at venues that tie in with your product, brand, etc. Here is a list of potential examples:

• A tanning oil or skincare products company could leave tips at parks and other popular outdoor locations reminding users to apply sun screen
• A beverage company could leave tips at bars and restaurants about drinks that include that beverage
• A restaurant could leave tips in the surrounding neighborhood with cool and fun things to do before or after a meal
• A web-design company could leave tips in geeky spots around town (e.g. bars that tech enthusiasts tend to congregate at or consumer electronics stores)
• A company that sells and installs air conditioners could tell about how to keep cool on a hot day with tips on places to cool off near outdoor areas where people congregate on warm days (e.g. parks)
• A brand with a personality as a mascot (e.g. Virgin Airlines) could have that person leave tips at his/her favorite bars, restaurants, and other places around town.

How To Set Tips & To-Dos

Foursquare is designed to be as much about sharing experiences as it as about connecting with friends and discovering new places. Every foursquare user has the ability to create both “Tips” and “To-Dos” for places. Tips are generally things you’d recommend to others (“Go to PDT and try the bacon-infused Old Fashioned”) while To-Dos are more “notes to self” (“Remember to come back and try the pesto noodles”). Whenever a user checks-in to a location, Foursquare will pop-up a tip left by the user’s friends has left at that location or nearby (you’ll be surprised how often these help users choose what to order at a bar or restaurant!).

Promoting Events

This is great for companies that attend conferences or sponsor events. You can then check-in to places to let users know that you’re there. For example, Coke Zero sponsors Nascar events. Whenever their promotions team is at a Nascar event handing out free Coke Zero bottles, they check-in on Foursquare to announce their presence.

To discuss how Foursquare and other location-based social media utilities can enhance your business, contact us or give us a call on 212-260-1978.