Restaurants and location based social media: match made in heaven
Jokingly I have often said that there is some special relationship between restaurants and technology companies.
Whenever an example or a demo needs to be built to show off some new sexy feature, more often than not you will find that a restaurant, real or fake, is used.
Today I was reminded about that as I read a post on the Foursquare blog about an update to their loyalty system. Read the post, it is good stuff, showing the drive and innovation in Foursquare which after the recent cash infusion is likely to increase even further. The Next Web has also reported on it, adding their own thoughts, so I won’t bang on about it here.
What I do want to talk about though is the connection between location based social media and restaurants. Did you read the post about the update to the Foursquare loyalty program? Good. Did you notice a theme throughout the examples? Well, if you didn’t, here it is: they are all based on food outlets.
Starbucks, Monique’s Chocolates, AJ Bombers (social media and geolocation Wunderkind).
Not only are restaurants and bars places people like to talk about and hang out in, they are also inherently “hyper local” in the sense that they form an integral part of their local neighbourhood.
Using a geolocation service such as Foursquare (or Gowalla, SCVNGR, Loopt or even Yelp) to tap into the buzz in and around your venue you can gain valuable insights to how often your guests come back, who your regulars are and even what they like (or dislike) about you.
If you have never used a geolocation service, they are all built around the action of “checking in” at a venue when you arrive by looking it up in your mobile phone and announcing your presence to your friend network.
In my opinion Foursquare right now has the upper hand of all the geolocation services. Not only have they managed to create the service that seems to resonate the most with people (they recently passed the “one million check-ins a day mark“), they have also built the most interesting features from a business perspective.
Through publishing special deals, accessible by the people visiting your restaurant most often, you can reward them for their loyalty.
You can also encourage your guests to add what Foursquare call “Tips” or “To Dos” for your venue, visible to other users of the service when they are nearby. AJ Bombers for example give anyone who creates a tip at their venue a free cookie. As an example, check out the “Tips” listing for Scootercaffe, a great little coffee shop around the corner from the Livebookings Waterloo office. Hey, that’s me right at the top (at least at time of writing…)!
Restaurants seem particularly well suited for this type of marketing. Building customer insight through conversation, rewarding regulars and the ability to do small simple things as “give aways” (glass of Prosecco anyone?) comes naturally to most restaurateurs.
Working on another post with more information about how Foursquare can be used for online restaurant marketing, until then, make sure you claim your Foursquare venue page!
