Checking In With Hyper-Local Marketing on Foursquare

Don’t look now but your favorite restaurant may be stalking you.  Or at least that’s certainly the feeling I got when I checked into a local DC movie theater on foursquare and saw an unusual asset on the top-right corner of the screen.

In case you’re not familiar with it, foursquare is a location-based game for mobile devices like the iPhone and Droid.  You play by whipping out your device whenever you go to an event, a local business or even your office and “checking in.”  Accrue more check-ins than anyone else and you become “Mayor” of a given location.  Along the way, players can unlock “Badges” for patterns of check-ins (for instance, go out four nights and a row and you get a “Bender”) or you can even play against your friends and see who gets out on the town more often.

Business are starting to discover Foursquare as a great tool to not only identify evangelists that frequent their establishment but also build in specials for foursquare users to build new customers. The promotions could be as simple as the one I got for free nachos or as elaborate as special treatment for the Mayor.

As one of many location-based games, Foursquare is really showing great potential as a hyper-local marketing tool.  It allows businesses to not only find another way to get listed on mobile directories, it allows them to make promotional outlays that have a much greater chance at translating into incremental purchases.  So far, local businesses have been the primary interest-drivers in this type of marketing but big chains could certainly get in on the game, as well.

For instance, I would love to see a large restaurant chain who wants to build up the feeling of community in their individual locations tap into a “location war.”  By encouraging a little friendly inter-chain competition, I could see consumers getting very creative to promote their nearest location, helping to build same-store sales.

Until then, hyper-local marketing applications like Foursquare will continue to be the playground of local business. Larger chains should take note or else they might just see their best customers taking detours thanks to some of these well-targeted specials.