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The case for Facebook Places

March 2, 2011 by TommyWalker 8 Comments

This is post number six in a series of posts from Online Marketing Strategist Tommy Walker. If you have questions, leave a comment here or visit with Tommy on Twitter at@tommyismyname.

Are you a brick and mortar business owner?

Have you claimed your Place on Facebook yet?

If you answered no, I would like to take the next few minutes to give you a crash course education on one of the biggest free opportunities that you’re missing out on.

Mobile Facebook users are doing the heavy lifting for you.

There are plenty of reasons why you should be on Facebook, but if you’re a local business owner, Facebook Places should be number one.

Why?

People are already using it. Where 50% of Facebook’s users are mobile, a good percentage of them are creating and checking themselves and their friends into places in the real world.

Most businesses have to do virtually nothing to get themselves started.

When a user “checks-in” to your location, a story is automatically uploaded to theirs and their friend’s walls saying they at your business. If your Place isn’t already in Facebook’s database, most users will create the place just so they can check in. A check in gives your business that social proof that is so vital in today’s economy (more on that in a minute)

Most users will “Like” the Place Pages they check into, giving that  Place Page permission publish updates to that person’s News Feed. If you know how to stand out in the News Feed, you will have a great chance at getting people to interact with you not just online, but in your store as well. Note: You can only publish to fans News Feed if the Place Page is linked to your Fan Page. Fortunately claiming a Place Page takes about 5 minutes.

If you haven’t claimed your Place Page, you’re neglecting interaction with your most valuable customers- people “checking in” are physically at your location and promoting you to their friends. Don’t you think they might want to hear from you on a regular basis?

Facebook Places makes Deal delivery brainless.

If you aren’t familiar with Facebook Deals, Deals is an extension of Places that allows businesses to reward people for “checking in”, offering a number of “reward” systems, such as a loyalty program that acts as a virtual punch card, leaving a punch every time a user “checks in” and issuing a reward (such as a coupon) by the company. No punch cards to remember, just check in and that’s it.

This sort of hyper local, mobile experience can do some really incredible things for a business. Not only is the user getting rewarded for “checking in” but that checkin also gets published to their friends News Feed, offering that social proof that businesses are so desperately looking for in today’s online landscape.

Are you missing the two critical pieces of marketing?

If you’re running a brick and mortar business and you’re not rewarding people for “checking in” you’re easily missing two critical pieces of your marketing, customer acquisition and customer retention.

The acquisition comes from the ever increasingly important “Social proof” element we talked about earlier. Your customer’s friends seeing “John Smith checked in at (insert your business here)” lets people know that your business is a cool place to spend money. That check in acts as a vote and shows others that your business has value and it’s ok to spend money with you. Where people have become so acutely aware of their financial situations, that check in could mean the difference between gaining a new customer or experiencing another missed opportunity.

Likewise rewarding people for “checking in” gives people a reason to come back and ultimately continue to promoting your business. By saying “buy 5 crepes, get 1 half off” you’re giving a customer a reason to come back. You’re also further solidifying your chances of getting those 5 “check ins”, which should not be taken lightly.

The average user on Facebook has 180 friends, a good majority of them being people they went to high school with and other people whom they are locally connected. By rewarding that person to “check in” multiple times, you’re significantly increasing your chances of being seen by those 180 new people.

And that’s only by encouraging only 1 person to check in.

So what are you waiting for?

Stop neglecting your customers, and start rewarding those who willingly promote you.

Even if you don’t link your Place Page to your Fan Page, you can still reward people for doing something they’re already doing by hooking them up with Deals.

As a side note, By using Deals you’re also saving a couple of trees and a few orders of punch cards.

Look at you making people happy and saving the Earth and stuff.

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Raul Colon says

    March 2, 2011 at 10:16 am

    Tommy,

    Once again thanks for the insight on Facebook Places I know of many business owners that don’t know that Facebook Places exist.

    I will use this post and share it with them so they can see the value of it.

    Reply
    • TommyWalker says

      March 2, 2011 at 10:27 am

      Thank you Raul 🙂 I’m glad you’re getting a lot out of these posts!

      Reply
  2. Sam Beamond says

    March 2, 2011 at 11:52 am

    About to have a FaceBook Places improvement meeting with my group. This post will come in handy!

    Reply
    • TommyWalker says

      March 2, 2011 at 11:57 am

      Cool! I’m glad I could help 🙂

      Reply
  3. Sam Beamond says

    March 2, 2011 at 11:58 am

    One thing I wouldn’t agree with though, is that the claim process doesn’t take 5 minutes. It took a while for us to gather the documentation that proves you’re the business owner then about 2 weeks to receive an approval response from FaceBook. First time round they denied it because we had used an email address associated with another places page (naturally since we have more than one places location). Anyway, thought these bits might help your readers some.

    Reply
    • TommyWalker says

      March 2, 2011 at 1:40 pm

      Good heads up there, yeah the info here is really more for a single location, in which case their automated system calls your phone number to verify the phone number. But should have included info for all types!

      Reply
  4. Lilith Grant says

    March 4, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    Thanks for a great post Tommy. I was just at a marketing event for a mobile role play product and it still amazes me that businesses are slow to make the jump to using tools like Facebook and Twitter. There is so much value to be gained by this new technology. And businesses that are slow to respond to this market shift to Facebook, Twitter, Tablets, Smart Phones are going to be left in the dust.

    Yes, the shift continues to happen… and you can either look for an opportunity and ride this tremendous wave, or you can let the wave pass you by.

    I read a really interesting blog entry that you might find supportive of your efforts. Adam Hartung writes a blog for Forbes (http://bit.ly/g44sjq) and his most recent entry is quite in line with your blog entry about businesses needing to see Facebook as critical. It is all about reminding businesses to not always use the tools that they used to use. Familiarity is fine until you are using it to hide from the changing market. And so many companies seem to treat Facebook and Twitter as though they are just fads. Just like the big newspapers refused to see Craig’s List as a serious competitor for Classified Ad space. And it didn’t turn out too well for the newspapers. I mean, they generated a lot of revenue that way.

    Thanks again for your entry and thank you for letting me share my thoughts.

    L

    Reply
  5. Frases Romanticas says

    February 17, 2012 at 1:39 am

    http://www.frasesdeamor9.org/

    Reply

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