When there is nothing else to write about, online marketing bloggers have a few go to topics to keep their content stream alive. This year one of those topics was pronouncing the death of Foursquare and other check in apps. I just started using Foursquare a couple weeks ago, and while I’m not addicted to the premise, I do think it’s a fun little game to pass time with.
I also see possible marketing benefits if the application reach a critical mass of users, and the novelty that is sure to wear off as time passes. Foursquare is still growing, and all the articles that are calling 2011 “The Year the Check in Died” are simply random thoughts to fill dead air. Without some refinement by the network, that same article could be social canon two years from now.
Nihal Mehta, Kathy Leake and Michael Muse have developed a service that could spell disaster for Foursquare, but also has the potential to make Foursquare a mandatory app for mobile devices and to spark a check in revival. Their newest project called Local Response is a combination of search crawler, deal of the day site and check in app all rolled into one lean and actionable package.
Local Response aims to let businesses identify their best customers at the most opportune times across all social media platforms. After pin pointing a target and time, it will allow you to respond directly to them with context derived from aggregated content pulled from their publicly available information and social feeds.
With the ability to analyze tons of data quickly and put businesses in the position to respond to each potential customer within minutes, and the prevalence of wireless devices capable of connecting to the world wide web, businesses can deliver an incentive to lure you into a nearby store or entice you into trying a new product at a fast food restaurant. These responses come while you’re in the area, and also right after you’ve mentioned the business meaning you were likely going to stop by anyway. It takes a lot of guesswork out of point of sale marketing.
The cross platform operability and the context rich content offer more than just consumer tracking and automated response. Besides check-ins and other location specific information, Local Response can handle a more in depth analysis of public information and then aggregate it for businesses for use in social listening. For example if you were on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon and posted a status update saying that you are dying for a vanilla bean Frappuccino from Star Bucks, a coupon code from Star Bucks would be nothing more than spam from an application that is spying on you.
Businesses using the Local Response dashboard would also see the pictures and status updates related to the Grand Canyon, they would see the city you listed as your residence, and they would know you were heading home on Sunday. A scheduled @mention for Sunday morning listing various Starbucks locations along I-40 and wishing the customer a safe drive home would be both thoughtful and opportune, even though the research into the user’s publicly available information is more in-depth.
Local Response is not an app that has to be downloaded by users so anyone with a public profile on Twitter is fair game. At one time Foursquare was considered a competitor, but it’s looking more and more like the two companies could both benefit from working in tandem. The question that hasn’t been answered is how receptive are consumers to another invasion of their privacy? The information used by Local Response is public, but many users feel that using information about them without their knowledge is a major invasion of privacy (just look at the backlash directed at Klout lately). Even though it would dramatically shrink their pool of potential targets, it may be wise to start the service as an opt-in deal instead of something you have to opt out of after the fact.
The possibilities for tracking and responding to trends and adjusting your strategy on the fly are limitless. As global positioning technologies and wireless devices improve the service can only get better. As they integrate more information streams into their feeds and companies learn how to form their responses, the ability to connect in the instant when it’s the most important will become more valuable. Business will soon be tracking you through your mobile device, and you’ll allow it because the best discounts and coupons will only be available when they think it’s appropriate. The difference between Local Response and Groupon or Yelp! Is that you own your customer relationship.
Groupon and Living Social pretty much makes you give the product away, and then reimburse 25 percent of the sales within 90 days. Other applications and websites ask that you share your customer with them, sending that customer to fill out reviews whether they bought something from you or not. Local Response is a silent partner; you decide which leads to act on, the best course of action and how personal to make each message. Companies retain complete control over their marketing strategies through Local Response. Until now I thought trust and mobile were an oxymoron in the field of marketing, but Local Response has found the sweet spot that will extend social media marketing past Facebook without alienating the business or customer.
Great article Adam, thanks for the info.
Twitter: annehthomas
Great business concept! Thanks for sharing
Twitter: webjock
Great blog Adam, I see some others posts here that I need to read as well. I watched the comment luv video, seems cool. Are you happy with it? My problem is I don’t know how to use half that stuff.
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Well, I have saw a ton of success other users have had with it, but this is the first instance that I’ve ever operated a blog that would benefit from it (visited by other bloggers). I think it will ultimately help generate some recurring users, and expand discussion (although I’m not naive enough to think that comments = success, the medium difficulty of this blog means discussion is more important to success than normal). If people read an article like the ones in the Social Media Framework series I’ve started and can’t either take a clear understanding away from it, or add to and clarify the concepts for me and others because they have a great understanding of their implications, those types of articles don’t have the value of a list of wordpress plugins you need or directions on how to delete your Klout profile.
Adam Justice recently posted..LocalResponse Mixes Social and Mobile
Twitter: etelligence
I think this sort of location-based marketing is inevitable, though there’s likely to be considerable backlash from (justifiably) from privacy advocates.
The problem with a service like this, as you describe it, is that it requires users to actively broadcast their location via Twitter or some other social network, so it’s audience is limited to a relatively small subset of social media users. Really, even among active social media users, how often do you see most people mentioning their location? And the times when this technology is most valuable (when I’m on vacation, when I’m at the mall) are probably the times I tweet the least, because I have better things to do.
Ultimately, I expect this space will be dominated someone in the smartphone world Aapple is a likely candidate). Apple already has me carrying around a GPS receiver in my pocket all day, so they know where I am without any action on my part.
Location based services are already making their way onto the iPhone – right now it can set reminders based on my location, so it can remind me to get milk when I’m the the grocery store. It’s a very small step to also mention that the store is having a sale on eggs this week (and might even be a welcome bit of advertising). If Apple is moves in on this market (and some say they already are) the volume of passive location data they’ll have available is going to give them a huge edge over anyone trying to collect that data based on active communication like tweets and status updates.
Twitter: khenney
It’s actually an increasingly common thing for normal tech users to do – broadcast their location, either through a check in app or through the location setting on Facebook. Kids age 15-20 heavily tweet their location, and programs like Instagram ask you to tag your location. The problem they are having isn’t the lack of people tagging their location, it’s actually how to handle all the data because people are doing it so much. When it comes across Twitter or even Facebook with general Privacy ettings, it’s public data so privacy becomes the concern of the user.
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Twitter: etelligence
It’s not just the harvesting of the information, but also the short lifetime of it’s usefulness. An ad for a store at the mall might be useful to me, but only for the brief time that I’m at the mall, so anyone trying to advertise based on social sharing has to process an enormous amount of data in more-or-less realtime.
But if you control the handset, as Apple does, you get to skip this whole data processing step. They could set location based ads using essentially the same technology they’re using in location based reminders, ads which lie hidden and dormant on a user’s phone until they’re close to the trigger location. Location based apps such as FourSquare should be able to harness this same data, but they’re limited to voluntary installs, whereas Apple’s apps are preinstalled.
None of that is to say that Local Response can’t succeed in this space, it’s just that focusing on the social stream rather than the mobile device adds additional steps to the targeting process, and limits the audience to those who freely share their location publicly, a practice that may be common, but is certainly not the norm in the general population.
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Give it a chance Kevin! If you’re doing some marketing for local small businesses, it’s definitely worth a closer look. They have addressed many of your concerns already. Using node.js script and a new form of database called MongoDB, they’ve developed their application so it can handle “an enormous amount of data” in more or less real time. When it becomes feasible to use the geolocation on the device to accurately track customers who haven’t been tagged otherwise, LocalResponse will most definately have that capability. Their biggest draw is connecting an operator to the user’s social streams for a quick analyis so you can give the offer appropriate context and make it more personal. Just considering who is in this game right now, I think they’re way ahead. They have excellent leadership too.
As far as a possible competitor, you need to look no further than Google Offers. Since August 1st Google has acquired Dealmap, Zave Networks and Daily Deal. They’ve almost spent as much recently developing Google Offers as they have Google+. It’s a hot market right now. I see Google merging the concept of Deal a day websites like Groupon with the Mobile marketing concepts LocalResponse has developed. I personally don’t see Apple getting into this sector, but with the change in leadership, they may target a wider range of markets in the near future.
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Twitter: etelligence
I wasn’t familiar with Local Response and appreciated the introduction in this post!
Twitter: lindyireland
Interesting article. I think that’s a very interesting concept.
Twitter: magictrax
Hmm… I’m not sure everyone wants to know where I am and what I’m doing ALL the time. I mean how am I supposed to sneak up on Santa Clause if he’s following me on his iphone?!
Twitter: brandgraphics
Great article. Shared on G+
Twitter: gentlepoet1984
Great post~
Twitter: sallykwitt