How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business

Tristan Walker of Foursquare and Andrew Mason of Groupon gave a panel session on How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business, at the Social Media Success Summit. The session was moderated by Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief. They spoke about how it’s important for local businesses to bring local traffic to stores. These new services are designed to bring foot traffic.

Tristan Walker of Foursquare

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  Foursquare is a social application that make cities easier to use. It helps people explore the cities that they live in or visit

• To use Foursquare, you check in and share your location with your friends
• By using game mechanics, users compete with their friends in order to get more points and better deals with businesses
• There are Mayorships and other badges that people can acquire by using the system that makes it more fun
• Merchants are able to learn more about loyal customers. Things like how often they come, when they check in, etc
• Foursquare provides an open API to allow people to create their own applications through the service
• Branded badges like Starbucks help encourage customer loyalty
• People who use Foursqaure can share the information on Twitter and facebook

Andrew Mason of Groupon

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  Groupon is a service that features deals all over North America. They feature one deal a day per local market

• Customers buy the deal at the Groupon site. It only becomes effective if enough people sign in for them (a group)
• This causes a lot of people to visit merchant locations and causes a lot of foot traffic
• Groupon sends emails to hundreds of thousands of people a day about the deals. Merchants don’t need to deal with it – everything is taken care of by Groupon
• Groupon is a marketing tool that functions as the commerce layer for Twitter and facebook
• Merchants pay for customers, not exposure, which is harder to measure
• If a merchant gives a good experience, they will be rewarded with customers that evangelize those merchants on social platforms
• Customers buy Groupon and print the voucher and present them to the business

I know some people that are considering opening up a gym. There is so much potential that they can do with both of these services.

More from the Social Media Success Summit:

• Best of Social Media Success Summit Week 1
• 18 Tips for getting the Most Out of LinkedIn with Lewis Howes
• How Big Businesses are Leveraging the Power of Social Media with Whole Foods’ Marla Erwin, Best Buy’s John Bernier, and Home Depot’s Sarah Molinari
• YouTube Marketing Strategies with Greg Jarboe
• 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination with Ann Handley
• Creating Buzz with Social Media Contests with Michael Stelzner