The Future of Foursquare: Understanding Location-Based Marketing

The recent launch of Foursquare's 3.0 version

• Creating Serendipitous Experiences

The new app adds an Explore tab which is Foursquare's first attempt at becoming a true recommendation engine. The addition of that feature throws Foursquare into the competitive land dominated by Yelp, Google and Facebook. In a year, Crowley stated, Foursquare should be a tool that knows what people like and recommends new things for them to do.

• Prompting People to Be Proactive

When a user walks by a coffee shop, for instance, they would receive a notification that a friend visits that shop often and recommends it. Foursquare would also be looking at new technologies like NFC that will help users checkin to locations more easily in the future.

• Marketing Takeaway

Location-based marketing can be a valuable customer aquisition and retention tool for brick-and-mortar businesses. Many Web platforms will be competing to offer services bridging the gap between online and offline marketing efforts. With fewer than 8 million users, Foursquare is fighting an uphill battle against some of the Internet's most successful companies.

As a business with a retail location, you should claim your business on location-based networks like Foursquare and test out some of their marketing features to see if it impacts foot traffic into your business. After this type of testing, you can determine if a bigger time and monetary investment is needed. If you don't have a physical location, it is probably best to monitor the changing opportunities in the location-based marketing industry while investing time and resources into tactics that are currently a better fit for driving results for your business.

Read the full article at Hubspot