Have you tried using social media for your business and found that it just isn’t working? A lackluster Facebook fan page or twitter account really doesn’t provide much value for the traditional brick and mortar small businesses of today.
The problem with these social platforms is that they don’t provide customers a direct incentive to walk into the store and make a purchase. When someone logs onto Facebook, the last thing they want to deal with is a local restaurant spamming their news feed with deals or promotions. People log onto Facebook to see updates from their friends.
How do you overcome this barrier? Use social media to market to people who are ALREADY in your store. That’s right. It sounds a little bit ridiculous, but with location ABM platforms, its a reality.
Not only can you market to people are physically present at your store, but you can also market to potential customers and give them incentives to stop by.
You can also craft deals and specials that entice people to return more frequently and to bring friends, leveraging social media to increase your customer base even further.
But before I get too ahead of myself, let me explain a little bit about location based marketing. I am a restaurateur and have used location based marketing successfully in my own businesses.
Location based marketing is the hottest new trend in online advertising and social media marketing. Location based marketing takes advantage of GPS enabled “location based services” or LBS such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Deals, and SCVNGR in order to allow customers to access coupons, deals, and specials in real time on their mobile devices.
Location based marketing is changing the way that businesses both big and small are engaging their customer base. Also known as geomarketing or proximity marketing – location marketing let’s small businesses reach their customers in real time using mobile technology.
Small businesses have often wondered – how does social media really help my business? It is very difficult to quantify exactly what benefit social media marketing has on your bottom line. It’s great to have twitter followers or fans on Facebook, but until you can monetize that revenue stream – there is no tangible impact.
Location based marketing turns these soft social media platforms into concrete social distribution platforms that can be used to directly increase your sales. The best part is that these service can be used for free, just like other forms of social media, drastically increasing your marketing ROI and the return on your marketing dollars.
