Recently, my husband and I were strolling around downtown Chandler, AZ, as we enjoyed an evening artwalk event. We stopped at the door of a restaurant with a large sign proclaiming “4 Square Night!: Check in!”
The restaurant – Urban Tea Loft – was offering a special that night to anyone who came through the doors and “checked in” with their mobile phones to notify www.foursquare.com of their location. My husband whipped out his Android phone and instantly downloaded the foursquare app to take advantage of the special.

I went home and followed the Urban Tea Loft on Twitter to obtain more updates from the restaurant about specials.

With very minimal time and no expense required, the local restaurant obtained two customers through location based marketing.

A smart strategy, indeed.
As a Phoenix online marketing agency, ArcherSEM recommends location-based marketing options for its retailer clients that depend highly on foot traffic – such as restaurants, clubs and recreational services.
How does it work?
The latest enhancements to phones now allow people to “check in” every time they step through your doors. Geo-targeting features that can pinpoint the location of some mobile phone devices; these phones are ideal for users of these location-based marketing services. The check in announcement is flashed to everyone on their network – and onto social marketing spots like Twitter and Facebook.
Why would anyone want to do this? An opportunity for coupons, promotions and prizes. And for gadget geeks who love to play with the apps on their iPhones and Androids, these services offer a chance to play with their toys and apps.
If you check-in enough, the mobile location based marketing services will shower participants with prizes and honors. It’s amazing the lengths people will do to earn some points and badges they can display on their phones and websites!
Other Phoenix and national online marketing agencies are providing this service for large retailer chains. Here’s a tweet from Starbucks, encouraging folks to check in at a local coffee shop and grab a coupon:

Some of the biggest players now in location-based marketing services that we recommend for our Phoenix online marketing clients:

Gowalla
Four Square
BrightKite

And coming soon, Twitter and Facebook are expected to come up with geolocation features. We’ll be keeping tabs on that for our Phoenix web marketing clients as well!