Miss Shirley’s Foursquare Checkins Up 427%
…and hot on the heels of our last post comes a story that illustrates the potential of Foursquare for local online marketers.
If you live in Baltimore, you may know Miss Shirley’s Cafe. This popular brunch spot is particularly hard to get into – on Sundays, the wait often passes 2 hours to get a table.
Miss Shirley’s also shares the honor of having perhaps the best Foursquare Mayor incentive we’ve ever heard: If you’re the mayor at Miss Shirley’s, you get to skip the line.
(In other words, you get automatic rockstar treatment. It’s a great way to impress your friends/girlfriend/whomever, and a great way to tick off the other poor schmoes who’ve been waiting there since 8am).
Since introducing the campaign, Miss Shirley’s has seen a 427% increase in the number of people checking into their 2 locations. This gives them a better chance of showing up in the ‘What’s Hot’ pages of Foursquare, which can have a ripple effect throughout the web (provided their page is well-optimized).
They’ve also heard from several people who say they’ve been coming by more often to check in, just to try and secure a Mayorship. Proving that there’s nothing like adding a little competition to the mix to increase customer loyalty.
Although there’s no good way to correlate an increase in checkins to an increase in business, we see another benefit of being a first mover on Foursquare: the press and awareness Miss Shirley’s has gotten from this campaign has been significant. If their local small business can create this much buzz, yours could, too.
You can read more on the campaign here.
Tags: foursquare, geolocation, local internet marketing, local online advertising, local online marketing, small business online marketing, social media, social networking
