If you haven’t seen the flurry of conversations the past two days, let me be the one to tell you that Forrester has just released a very insightful report on the use of Location-based Services (LBS). Specifically, the use of applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt as a means for companies to engage and interact with consumers. LBS applications, as an emerging technology, has a lot of consumers (of the people surveyed 84% had never even heard of Foursquare, Gowalla, or Loopt) and brands wondering if it is technology that is all hype — not surprising since any new technology has a period of adoption while users determine it’s stickiness.
The report contains a lot of insightful information regarding the current fragmentation of the LBS application market — currently, consumers are having to choose between Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt — where even someone like me, who considers herself a hard-core user of LBS applications has a hard time knowing what each application offers that’s unique from the other. And we haven’t even seen the impact that Google could / will have on LBS applications.
LBS Seeks Internet-Savvy Professional Male
But the takeaway that struck me the most interesting was how Forrester’s study shows that men, not women, are the majority users of LBS applications and suggests that male-oriented brands have the potential to have the largest impact.
And based on this information, Forrester’s report makes two recommendations:
- Almost 80% of location-based service users are male.
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social marketing
If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook or Twitter, you more than likely also know that I am a HUGE fan of Foursquare, a location-based social community where you check in to different venues and receive “badges” based on how your check-ins are tagged or categorized. And while many companies are now realizing the benefits of location-based marketing, I, of course, see a huge opportunity to leverage Foursquare-esque technology to engage and motivate employees.
Using Location-Based Information for External Marketing
The popularity of the Foursquare community has increased so much that mega companies are now using the newly introduced Foursquare business tools for social media marketing. For example, Starbucks recently announced a “Barista” Foursquare badge for those who visit a Starbucks five or more times and Foursquare recently partnered with 30 businesses to introduce tools that give companies real-time statistics on who checks in to their establishments. Moreover, it’s another opportunity for a company to humanize itself to its consumers. Case in point:
Shelley Bernstein, chief of technology at the Brooklyn Museum, sees promise in the Staff pages. “Basically, the new statistics tools give us the ability to promote a personal face for our staff so we’re not just seen as an institution,” she said. “We’re wrapping all of this into our Web site through Foursquare’s A.P.I.’s , and we allow people to interact with staff and have the opportunity to engage with them in new ways.”
Original Post: Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses, New York Times
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