HOW TO: Start Marketing on Foursquare

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There are more than 8 million users on Foursquare up from just 1 million a year ago. This explosive growth means one thing you might want to get your business on Foursquare. After all, Radio Shack reported that the average Foursquare user spends 3.5 times more at its retail shops than the average customer.

The most recent iteration of the location-based app, Foursquare 3.0, expanded the features and made it much easier for businesses to jump on the bandwagon and start marketing. Best of all, its free. Foursquare is winning the location-based app game because it has the biggest user base [aside from Facebook Places] and it pleases both parties customers want to be recognized, and businesses want to know who their biggest fans are. Mashable spoke with Eric Friedman, Foursquares director of business development, about how businesses can get started on Foursquare and the various marketing options they have available to them.

Foursquare works well when a moment of commerce happens, says Friedman. And commerce is exactly what business owners are looking for. Plus, as smartphones penetrate the U.S market (currently, about a third of U.S. consumers have a smartphone), there will be even more Foursquare users.

Were on every single platform thats out there, so theres never been a better time for businesses to start using Foursquare, Friedman says. Theres no cost, its easy and it works.

Want to get started? Below, Friedman walks Mashable through all of the steps.

Brands With Brick-and-M! ortar Lo cations

[Small businesses] have the same resources available to them as a super large QSR, an Italian restaurant or a Starbucks, and thats a really powerful tool, says Friedman. Hes referring to the Foursquare for Business Merchant Platform, which creates an even playing field for restaurants, retail stores, museums, mom-and-pop shops and other businesses. The owners can claim venues on Foursquare, establish specials and analyze data on Foursquares dashboard. Heres how to do it.

Claim Your Venue

To claim your venue, search for it on Foursquare.com. Its likely that someone has already created your venue to check into it, and you can claim it by proving that you own it. If you cant find it or you are opening a new venue, click Add a new venue to Foursquare, which is at the bottom of the page. Fill out the information in the wizard. Once all the information is plugged in, your venue page will come up. Click Claim here on the venue page.

Foursquare will ask you a few questions about the business (i.e. Is this a chain?) and whether you are authorized to claim the venue. Then it will ask how youd like to verify your ownership either by phone or by mail. If you verify by phone, Foursquare will call you and provide a 4-digit PIN that you can enter on the site. If you opt to verify by mail, the PIN will be sent via postcard. Once youre verified, you will also receive a Foursquare window cling so customers know you are a Foursquare-friendly establishment. (Fear not, efficiency lovers: If you have numerous locations, you can verify in bulk.)

Adding Specials

Once youre verified as the owner of a location, you can use Foursquares Merchant Platform to create specials to reward your customers. The method for creating specials is pretty self-explanatory, and the wizard walks you through each step as you create your special. You can have two specials running simultaneously at a given location. Foursquare 3.0 introduced a new group of specials:

Swarm Special. A special is unlocked when a certain number of people are checked in. For example, an ice cream store can give away a free scoop of ice cream when 10 people are checked in at once. You can set a limit for how frequently this special can be unlocked so that you dont give away too much product.
Friends Special. A reward for when friends check in together. You can specify how many friends need to be checked in and what they receive for being checked in.
Flash Special. A special for the first X people who come at X time. Its great way to incentivize customers to stop by during your slow hours.
Newbie Special. A reward for people who check in to your business for the first time. Offering a reward for a users first checkin even if its a small one, like 10% off or a free side dish is a great way to start a relationship with a new customer.
Check-In Special. A reward for every single checkin. Restaurants can offer a free soda or a discount, while retailers might offer a few dollars off a purchase.
Loyalty Special. A reward for a users third, fifth, seventh checkin you determine the interval to incentivize customers to return a few times to cash in on their special. Loyalty specials can be recurring! (every three checkins) or not (on your third checkin).
Mayor Special. The mayor is the person who has checked into a venue more than anyone else. In theory, he is your best and most loyal customer. As such, he deserves a prize, whether its a discount, a free t-shirt, a beer or a meal on the house. Mayors tend to be proud and protective of their mayorship, and you might even see some turf wars when the mayorship changes hands. You can offer something whenever a new mayor earns the crown, or you can offer a daily reward for the mayor.

Now that youve seen the offerings, click the special youd like to do and fill in the requirements for unlocking the special. Once you finish entering the stipulations and select what venues will feature the special, it will be live (though it wont show in the Nearby Specials filter until a human verifies that the special is legitimate). There are two one-sheets you can print off to explain Foursquare one for employees, so they know how to recognize a special, and one for customers, so they know how to get in on the Foursquare action.

Dashboard Analytics

Once youve claimed a venue, you can access a dashboard of analytics that show how many checkins youre getting each day, the time of each checkin, as well as a breakdown of the genders and ages of your Foursquare customers. Plus, there are two lists: one of your top visitors in the past 60 days (your most loyal customers), and one of your most recent customers, along with their Twitter handles (so long as they provided that info when they logged into Foursquare). In my experie! nce, onl y about 25% of people push their Foursquare checkins to Facebook and Twitter, so having access to the Twitter handles of loyal and new customers provides businesses with an opportunity to reach out, follow up and see how a customers experience was. That personal touch is likely to bring customers back, and it may also turn that person into an evangelist for your business.

Also, remember that Foursquare is flexible, and you can make changes in real-time. You can run two specials simultaneously at each venue, so experiment and figure out what works for you and your business. With the right campaign, you could actually be saving money Friedman says several business have stopped advertising altogether, since Foursquare allows them to reach customers for free.

Brand Pages

But not every business has a brick-and-mortar location look at MTV and Zagat, for example. If your company is a brand without a physical presence a magazine, a TV channel, a university of a consumer packaged good you can use Foursquare Pages and Partner Badges to reach consumers.

Foursquare Pages are a place for brands to have a program and have a cool way to interact with consumers, Friedman says. The Foursquare website outlines a step-by-step process for setting up a Foursquare Page, which must be done manually (in the future, businesses will be able to create their own brand Pages). Business owners must submit a form; the Foursquare team will reply in about two weeks.

Your Page is highly customizable, and you can have a custom banner to incorporate your logo. The grey box on the right can be populated with information about your brand, along with links back to your own site or to social media sit! es. And of course there are tips you can leave for your followers so that when they check in to certain places, your tip pops up. The History Channel leaves factoids all over the country at places like New Yorks Highline and Londons Tower Bridge, which provide context as you traverse the city. Likewise, Zagat leaves restaurant tips for dishes and cocktails.

Tips can be timeless, or they can be geared to promote an event. For example, The New York Times left tips all over Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. Tips can be saved to a users to-do list, too. The Foursquare site points out tips for crafting good tips:

Tips can direct people to a certain place or instruct users to try a certain item. The point of Foursquare is to enhance someones experience in a location if you have some insights, share them.
Dont leave a tip that is obvious try to share insider information, a secret menu item or a fun tidbit

Brand Badges

Once a brand has a Page, it can also offer badges for Foursquare users. Of course, Foursquare has its own badges that users love unlocking, including:

Crunked. Four stops in one night.
Photogenic. Checking in to three places with a photo booth.
Swarm. Checking in to a place with 50 other people.

But the brand badges are more self-promotional, and theyre unlocked for checking in to places and doing fun things that are relevant to your brand. (Foursquare doesnt disclose individual badge prices, which can vary, but $25,000 a month with a multi-month commitment is typical.) Users must follow a brand on Foursquare to unlock badges, some of which include:

MOMA Art Addict. Three ch! eckins a t MOMA or PS1 in one month.
The Wall Street Journal WSJ Lunch Box. Two checkins during lunch at a restaurant thats been reviewed in WSJs Lunch Box column.
Gogo Inflight Mile High. One checkin while in flight.

New York Magazine recently did a Foursquare integration with its Where to Eat 2011 feature. Below each highlighted restaurant, users could add a restaurant tip to their to-do lists. Checking in to 5 of the restaurants in the list earns a user the Where to Eat 2011 badge, which could also unlock discounts and prizes at these restaurants.

Advice From Foursquare

Friedman has some tips for businesses about how to optimize Foursquare:

The best kind of Foursquare specials are those that make users feel, well, special. You dont need to give a discount and lose your margins. Offering exclusive access to a sample sale or a special dessert that is only available for Foursquare users is a great way to get people coming back and checking in. Plus, not offering discounts means you can attract and maintain customers without affecting your bottom line.
Remember to utilize the fine print when youre filling out your special.
Use Foursquare to grow your business run a special during your slow times to keep a steady flow of customers all day.
Make sure you train your staff on how to recognize and reward Foursquare users.
Remember to set an end date for a campaign if its a limited-time offer or a one-day special.

We try to give all the answers on Foursquare, says Friedman, but if you have questions, leave them in the comments. Also, if youre a business owner, tell us what your ! experien ce with Foursquare has been like.

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