Location based services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places have started creating a lot of buzz about a concept called “location based marketing.”
What is location based marketing? Just another social media buzz word or something that has the potential to change the way businesses interact with their consumers?
Here is a definition from one of the leading mobile marketing gurus:
Location Based Marketing: A social media marketing strategy focusing on mobile check-in services, like Foursquare or Gowalla, to bring deals, promotions, coupons, discounts, or specials to customers in real time on their mobile devices.
At its core this strategy stands at the intersection of social media marketing and mobile marketing. Also known as “LBM” – location based marketing is creating a way for businesses to literally bring value to the palm of their customers hand.
Customers can “check-in” to at a store on their mobile device to unlock specials and deals. This takes the often mushy concept of “social media” and creates a way for businesses to quantify exactly how their Facebook or Twitter presence is generating revenue. Social media turns into a tool to drive real traffic into restaurants and retail stores.
LBM is a low cost and easy to use marketing strategy for small businesses and restaurants that uses cutting edge mobile marketing strategies to transform customer engagement from a small business perspective.
This is exactly why LBM has so much potential and has generated so much buzz lately in marketing circles sites – it is finally a way for brick and mortar businesses to generate concrete revenue with social media.
