Online marketing works best in partnership with buzz worthy promotions. The partnership between geolocation and social networking have had a positive impact on online marketing over the last couple years.
As search engines began to realize that a lot of search is local, sites like Google started focusing on local businesses. This has helped local business owners achieve higher rankings in search engines when users are in the same area as those businesses. Now social networks are taking their cue, and are focusing on geolocation, which helps local businesses boost their online marketing even more.
Location-based networks, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, are the leaders in this new online marketing social movement. Users "check in" to a location, telling their friends where they are. Businesses are taking advantage of geolocation by offering rewards programs to first-time visitors and loyal customers. Whether it's freebies, giveaways, or discounts, the businesses who include geolocation in their online marketing are seeing a payoff.
Geolocation apps like Foursquare use GPS technology that has been built into our smartphones — iPhone, Android, Blackberry — and will allow users to check in to a location just by clicking a button, rather than entering the entire address by hand.
The great thing about geolocation is that it works for the typical customer, on the tool they carry with them everywhere. And as silly as it may seem, customers are eating it up, and enjoying the fun of geolocation. If they think it's fun, they'll participate. And if they participate, they'll participate at your restaurant, store, or location.
Foursquare and Yelp, a restaurant review site, have even upped the ante by giving titles — mayor, duke, duchess — for repeat visitors. People go back to their favorite locations to earn that title. Imagine people coming to your restaurant again and again, just to earn a title someone else created.
Most recently, Facebook got into the act, offering Facebook Places as a tool to compete with Foursquare and Gowalla. Now, the largest social network in the world makes it possible for your customers to tell all their friends where they are, doing your online marketing for you.
Now, for good or bad, your online marketing is being taken out of your hands, and put into the hands of your customers. And because your customers trust their friends more than they trust any marketing you could ever do, your customers will want to try the places they keep hearing about — the places their friends are visiting over and over, in order to win titles and rewards.
The net result of this new online marketing tool is lower marketing costs and higher profits. But only if you take advantage of it. Join the discussion about geolocation marketing with unique online promotions for social media here.
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