Of all the different social media tools I’ve tried (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc.), a new one I just started using, Foursquare, probably has the most potential for cause marketers.
Why?
Because the backbone of Foursquare is the businesses at which its members visit, check-in and score points.
When you pop into a store, bar or restaurant you can earn points, badges or can even become mayor of your favorite hangout if you “check in” enough. You can also share tips and comments with your friends, check to see if any are close by, give them a shout-out via text or phone and broadcast your Foursquare activities on Facebook and Twitter.
Smart businesses recognize that Foursquare lets customers build the buzz for them. Customers spread the news of cool hangouts or great places to shop, flag meet-up spots for friends, visit new places for points and revisit favorites to retain their title of mayor.
And businesses are working with Foursquare to reward members with everything from special discounts to free products.
As one article points out: “For businesses, it’s social media meets customer loyalty in a tangible and measurable way.”
And since cause marketing is all about helping businesses support their favorite causes in ways that enhances customer loyalty and favorability, Foursquare could be a great fit with cause marketing in a lot of different ways. Both in how Foursquare currently works and how it might work with future updates.
Here’s how.
1. A fellow Boston-based nonprofit colleague @gradontripp–and top ten finisher on Foursquare’s Leaderboard last week (201 points to my measly 68)–tweeted the easiest way nonprofits and businesses could work together.
2. I could use Foursquare this month to promote both Halloween Town and its presenting sponsor, iParty. With almost 50 stores in New England, we could offer the Foursquare mayor of each store on October 23–the day before the event opens–4 free tickets to Halloween Town. iParty would be thrilled because you become mayor by having the most check-ins at a particular business.
3. You all know that I’m a big fan of pin-up programs. Foursquare may be a good way of reminding and motivating consumers to support these lucrative programs. For example, this past summer my nonprofit did a pinup program with four New England businesses: Tedeschi Food Shops, Ocean State Job Lots, iParty and The Upper Crust. The program went well and we raised well over $100,000.
But what if Foursquare members were reminded when they checked-in to any one of these stores about the cause promotion–and maybe even got a discount when they supported it. This could help us raise more money at the register where cashiers are not always good about asking customers to donate.
It also helps the business to earn their halo by letting every foursquare member that patronizes that business know–in a way it’s hard for he or she to miss–that that business gives back to the community.
I also think you could offer a special discount to repeat shoppers at stores that sold pinups. Or maybe shoppers that checked-in at any three stores (say Tedeschi’s, Ocean State Job Lot, iParty) could be entered to win Red Sox tickets.
4. To support the above program, Foursquare could add a “Do-Gooder” badge for members to earn. And how about “Karma Points” for good deeds.
5. Foursquare could also be a useful for cause marketing percentage-of-sale programs like the Absolute Boston program I posted on recently. When you check-in at your favorite liquor store you could get a ping on Absolut Boston and its support for the Charles River Conservancy. Maybe Absolut or the store could throw in a 10% discount on a second purchase as an added bonus.
This would work great at Starbucks where Foursquare could remind members that five cents from every coffee sold goes to Product RED to fight AIDS in Africa.
6. I can’t wait for the Foursquare charity shopping event! A nonprofit could recruit businesses to offer generous shoppers a one-day discount when they show their Foursquare check-in. Imagine a bunch of Boston stores on Newbury Street hosting a weekend charity event. Donors/Shoppers donate $100 for discounts at some of Boston’s swankiest shops. When customers are ready to buy they flash their Foursquare check-in at the register, which confirms their discount, and then they move on to the next participating store.
The shopping fundraiser would be good for Foursquare too because shoppers would need to sign-up for the service to see all the great discounts right on their mobile device.
Foursquare is social media, but it’s also a game. And games are best played with others. Today’s game is how best to use Foursquare for cause marketing, and I think I deserve to be the mayor of this one. Sorry, Gradon.
But the games only begun and you can earn points in my book with your own ideas. You have the mayor’s ear.
Understanding that anyone worth their salt in social media has an iPhone or similar mobile phone/Internet device, I still think this is about ease of use for the greatest number of people possible.
Whether Foursquare invests in a voice-recognition program that people can simply call in to and their voice-message becomes the text, 'I'm at blow-blah-blee', or something to that effect, I think that will help get people in, but may also end up enticing them to go on to the next iPhone stage (seeing that as one of the piling up reasons to have such a device).
It's interesting: the creator of twitter invested in Foursquare; those who don't have an iPhone need to text from their cellphone, teens & early 20-yr olds text the most, and that same group tweet the least (as least that goes for the teens).
I do think Foursquare, by extension, partnership, or direct connect may pull in more teen tweeters eventually, but I also think that there are many casual 30-50 yr old tweeters that could use a no-heavy-lifting way to engage in Foursquare.
Got this comment from Don Martelli (aka @bigguyd) via email. Reprinted with his permission. (When a guy is 6'3" you always get his permission.)
Hey, I think 4SQ has big potential, especially for cause event related pushes. On the surface, it's just another location based social network, but the point system actually has people competing for titles at certain locations, i.e. mayor of Downtown Crossing. It's still relatively in its infancy stages, but has big potential for consumer social media programs and as a result, cause-marketing.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by frank barry and changefeed. changefeed said: Selfish Giving: Foursquare: Social Media for Cause Marketing http://bit.ly/2DcIzU [...]
It's an interesting concept, Joe. Here in NH, I think it may be a little slower to catch on as we don't have the busy downtown metropolis like Boston to support the app (altho I would drive to iParty in Manchester just to play the game with you!).
I agree, that one of the largest demographics (Gen Y), doesn't Tweet, so FourSquare would need to develop an iPhone app or some other way to capture that lucrative market. I'll be interested to see how this concept spreads outside the pearly gates of bigger cities and into more urban environments.
Yeah, Renee I think Foursquare works best in urban areas. They are just going live with their newest destination, London (which really isn't Nashua).____They already have an iPhone app. As well one for those with Androids and are working on a BB app.____Besides the discounts and incentives 4SQ can offer right on your iPhone when you check-in to a business, young people will like it because they can see who's where. Kind of a GPS for friends. That's pretty cool and may encourage young folks to use the app.____Speaking of having a GPS for friends, I think 4SQ would be a great tool for a sales manager. They could keep track of their outside sales team, their pace on the road and who they are visiting with!
As well as extending points to a sales team for internal reward systems
Good stuff Joe and thanks for the props. I think 4SQ has potential, but like other social media services, while cool, still is finding it's way to usefulness. Yea, being the mayor of downtown crossing – while sound cool – really doesn't add any value to my network, sell widgets nor make me money.
Hey there –
Just wanted to weigh in on this… we LOVE this idea and have had already conversations with some folks on how we can make this happen sooner rather than later within foursquare.
My two favs are #1 (points translate into charitable donations) and #4 (badges for do-gooders), problem is we've had a hard time finding corporate sponsors that would be willing to donate / participate We'd be open to doing some kind of sponsorship program with foursquare – e.g. in exchange for sponsorship / brand placement, the sponsor would donates $$$ for every checkin to a charitable cause).
If there's anyone out there in BlogLand who knows of corporate folks who's be interested in making this happen across one, or more (or all?) of our foursquare cities, please put us in touch: specials[at]foursquare[dotcom]
Thanks (and we'll make this happen eventually!)
- @dens
co-founder, foursquare
Thanks for commenting, Dens. One thing we could do in the Boston market is integrate Foursquare into our pinup programs with corporate sponsors. That means that Foursquare would get the added promotion these partners offer in their stores along with special promotions unique to Foursquare. Like say a special discount if you are the mayor of a particular location on a certain date.
This could work really well for you, especially when we work with local TV shows like Phantom Gourmet, which reviews local restaurants (see post on this site). In addition to selling pinups at iParty, Ocean State Job Lots, Upper Crust, etc. that raises my nonprofit money, we could promote the check-in feature on Foursquare via Phantom and have some fun with it.
I don't see building Foursquare into our existing programs as a big challenge. As a matter of fact I see it as a great asset because the companies we work with want social media right now and Foursquare is a perfect fit for us and them. An added benefit is that we wouldn't be selling it as a standalone tool for retailers. We mixing it with other offline items.
The timing is actually very good for us because as you might have seen on my blog we're launching Six Figure Cause Marketing and taking our services to other nonprofits and companies across the country. So there's the opportunity to bring Foursquare with us.
Where cause marketing is Foursquare should be the online platform of choice.
Joe & @dens…might be worth connecting 4Sq with some of our (MS&L) consumer/cause type clients that are willing to leverage social media apps as a tie-in to their campaigns. I'll alert my team about this thread and see what they think.
As a founding director of a VERY small non-profit, I'd be very interested in seeing some of these ideas get rolled out. I've been using FourSquare for a short period of time, but I can see the potential for these add-ons can be enormous! Points/check-ins that allow a user to support a cause are very creative. Low cost to implement coupled with greater exposure can only lead to good things for the small guys.
First, I'd like to commend @stales for testing 4Sq in her non-profit. A new social network w/ "big boy backers" like 4Sq would definitely help smaller non-profits in areas such as marketing, customer satisfaction, customer retention, etc.
Joe gave 6 *solid* ideas on the potential of 4sq for cause mktg, especially #3 and #6. He and @leadsinger are definitely right – 4sq will work best in *urban* areas. As someone who runs a biz in *rural* America, I know what of I speak.
Although the rural market is a huge market, it's still largely one which is internet-illiterate. For example, my biz was the first in its' industry to have a website (waaaaaaaay back, back, back in '94) yet every week there are at least 2-3 callers who ask if I have a website. So what do they do with their iphones then? Well, they sure won't be visiting 4sq anytime soon
Hey Joe,
Thanks for bring 4SQ to light. I think 4SQ has enormous potential for nonprofits and businesses to work hand-in-hand to get people off their rear to make a difference.
There are a few people who say "I volunteer at such-and-such," or "I spend this many hours with X nonprofit." That's great but do they really? In a time when "doing good" and volunteering is the new black, 4SQ has the potential of tracking volunteer service time by your 4SQ status. Plus, the person will have bragging rights in their 4SQ community.
I'm starting a new business, Bcausemedia, which will help small businesses connect with small nonprofits in a local area. Part of our model is "Service4Service." For every hour the business owner volunteers at their partnered nonprofit, they get an hour of free service from Bcausemedia, and so forth. 4SQ and Service4Service will help me track the business owner's volunteer time and they will have bragging rights to show their customers that they practice with they preach.
I'm very excited and look forward to the growth and popularity of FourSquare because I think it will get people moving and become active socially face-to-face, rather than behind a computer all day (sorry iPhone we're breaking up).
Noland Hoshino
Great idea, Noland. Hadn’t thought of using 4SQ for volunteering! But break up with your eye phone??? Wow!
[...] It’s hopefully the beginning of a long line of cause marketing initiatives using Foursquare, something I’ve written about before. [...]
[...] the idea of using social media for good is not a novel one and even Foursquare is no stranger to doing good. Back in March at SXSW, the good people of StudioGood, Microsoft, and Paypal partnered to donate [...]
[...] is hitting the sweet spot of mobile commerce, mobile marketing and cause marketing, a place where Foursquare and other geo-location programs have visited, but haven’t fully yet [...]
[...] Partner with local venues (restaurants, sports bars, coffee shops, athletic stores, gym’s, yoga studios, etc…) and incentivizing your event participants to check-in to those establishments. Checking in XX times to a business that supports your cause could earn the supporter a discount or special office (Joe Waters has some great thoughts about using Foursquare for Cause Marketing) [...]