By Justin Bowser

Location based services are nothing new. Whether you’ve just received an advert for a nearby coffee shop via your mobile phone, you’re looking up directions to get from A to B or have just spotted that one of your friends has checked into a nearby restaurant, location based services are becoming an integral part of everyday life – but what about a case for business? How can companies, particularly small and medium sized businesses, use this kind of data in a way which will truly benefit them?

Enter Foursquare. With around 10 million users, over 1 billion check-ins and 35,000 new users a day, people are checking in every second of every day across the world. This kind of information is a gold mine to small businesses looking to entice, reward and engage with both existing and new customers. And although running the account and establishing appropriate rewards and specials may be costly in terms of man hours, if managed correctly, Foursquare can offer an extremely cost effective method of successfully drawing in business. A huge plus point for any business, but even better for small businesses looking to cap their spending in the current economic climate.

But what does success look like?

More and more small businesses are beginning to recognise the benefits of Foursquare – whether it’s a local coffee shop rewarding customer loyalty by offering its mayor a free coffee, or an independent restaurant looking to entice new custom with a lunch special. The potential for fostering existing relationships and encouraging new custom is huge, and with the recent release of Foursquare’s Real-Time APIs, has become even bigger.

With the new real-time API, businesses are now equipped with three key ingredients – social, location and notification. By receiving a real-time notification whenever a potential customer checks-in, businesses are able to react immediately with a targeted response, e.g. a special offer.

This kind of visibility and awareness of your customer footfall will prove invaluable for small businesses looking to enhance brand awareness and encourage loyalty in a difficult market.

For example, an retailer may use this data to identify “slow periods” throughout the day and introduce specials on items purchased within these time frames. A simple reactive method, but one which could really help small businesses to encourage new custom at the point of purchase, and gain an advantage over their competitors. Especially as that kind of information may only be obvious to larger organisations with specialist information systems.

And not only that, but by the very nature of Foursquare, small businesses are automatically opening themselves up to a wider market and higher walk-in traffic – particularly when customers start leaving positive tips and sharing their location on wider social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Another newly launched feature that small businesses can look to take advantage of is Foursquare Radar. Released to coincide with the Apple iPhone iOS 5 and powered by Foursquare’s “explore algorithm”, Radar essentially detects where you are and tells you if you are near somewhere that you have checked-in to previously. More usefully for businesses however, is the ability for Foursquare users to subscribe to location lists. For example, if a user subscribes to the Time Out New York list of Best Dishes and Drinks 2011 they will be notified whenever they are near to a venue on the list – as such, businesses would do well to get included or even create such lists to enhance their visibility.

And the benefits of location based services on brand loyalty aren’t just restricted to Foursquare. With the likes of Gowalla, Brightkite and Facebook all vying for the location crown and location technology becoming an integral part of most, if not all, smart phones – it’s time for small businesses to put themselves on the map.

About the author and HTK

Justin Bowser leads the ‘online’ business division within HTK, with responsibility for all web-based sales of HTK’s leading SAAS platform, Horizon. HTK is a leading provider of cloud software for digital marketing and customer experience management. A SAAS platform, HTK Horizon, changes the way that businesses sell to and serve their prospects and customers. Horizon’s industry leading CRM data segmentation capabilities and one-stop integration of email, social, SMS and voice comms enable the creation of more effective marketing campaigns, a higher adoption of customer self-service and greater customer satisfaction, with the ROI and cost benefits of a true SaaS solution. Horizon is used by small businesses, government departments and large enterprises including BT, Specsavers, O2 UK and over half of UK Police forces.

http://htkhorizon.com/