By Brittany Hollman
Have you ever felt when someone checks in at a specific location that it’s just plain creepy? Why would you want the World Wide Web to constantly know where you are? However, with the increasing popularity of location based apps, businesses have new tools to generate traffic and build attendance without adding expense to their marketing budget.
The key is relevance. If you give your prospective customers a reason to come to your business, they will. It’s all about marketing to them in the most effective way. And what could be better than marketing with tools that are completely accessible to anyone with a smart phone. Using programs like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook-checkin – three popular location device apps – you can connect with your audience and gain interest without spending money because the apps are completely FREE.
All throughout the world, people are checking in just about everywhere – including their own homes. Focusing on business, here are three ways to use these apps as event marketing tools:
1. Elevate presence – be sure tradeshow attendees know that your booth is there and that if they visit and check in at your location they could gain something from it.
2. Use incentives – Give consumers a reason to come to your booth and once they are there, reasons to return. This could be a gift, white paper, e-book, QR code scavenger hunts, etc.
3. Virtual Networking – Attendees have a chance to network with each other without even having to meet. Once a person checks into a tradeshow booth they can also view the hundreds of other people who have also checked in there. It provides them an opportunity to network as well as generate activity for your booth.
Tradeshow and event managers use these apps to make customer traffic at events more productive. It’s as simple as setting up your check-in app and then the rest will fall into place.
Other recent additions to the online world are virtual tradeshows and webinars, expanding the possibilities for location based apps and other new marketing tools. A topic for a future article!