In the year or so since the launch of location-based Facebook Places, businesses have come up with some pretty creative marketing campaigns.
The check-in service allows brands to build their fan base while engaging and rewarding customers. Facebook Places provides viral marketing for a company since every check-in shows up in the news feed of the user’s friends. It allows businesses to create incentives for those who come to their physical location or events.
Unlike Groupon and Living Social, Facebook Places lets you choose exactly how to structure your offer with no fee. You can build money-off vouchers or both individual and group discounts. You can choose how discounts are claimed (as in checking in a certain number of times) and how many times by it can be claimed. Charity offers can be created where donations are made based on the number of people checking in.
Here are eight Places campaigns that we think are worth highlighting.
Promoting Events
Electronic Arts U.K. hosted a “Play4Xmas” tour at six different shopping malls across the UK in November and December. Those who checked in at each event had a chance to win up to 10 games per day.
Discounts For Check-Ins
Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, Calif. has given away coupons like 25 percent off any single item at Sports Authority or 20 percent off full-priced items at Ann Taylor for checking in at the shopping center.
Co-Branding
Nike teamed up with a Portland-based Korean taco truck to give away “Destroyer Burritos,” or fake burritos stuffed with branded athletic jackets, to those who checked in.
Event-Specific Places
Onitsuka Tiger Australia was a sponsor of the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival and created a check-in point at each of 10 events. Festival attendees then checked in at their points instead of the actual venue because if they checked in at least three events and answered a question on their Facebook page, they had a chance to win a custom bike and Onitsuka Tiger gear. More than 50 percent of attendees checked in at the first event.
Daily Check-Ins
The University of Kentucky installed big, wooden Facebook icons on its campus to encourage students to check in at different locations around the school every day. Students used them to check in while on campus and at sporting events and the college is hoping it will help boost recruiting efforts for the students’ friends who are still in high school.
Ambush Marketing
Instead of paying an arm and a leg for an exhibition table at the ITB Berlin (the world’s largest travel tradeshow), Germanwings used Facebook Places to create check-ins at each one of its competitors at the fair. When someone checked in at an airline’s booth, their status update would read something like “Air France: France for a bargain price is only available from Germanwings” thanks to their hidden messages.
Leaderboards
VisitBritain is a U.K. tourism promotion agency that has a “Top 50 U.K. Places” leaderboard on its fan page based on Facebook Places check-ins for the country’s landmarks.
Check In For Charity
Southwest Airlines did a holiday charity campaign last year where they made a $1 donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation per check-in at any Southwest airport, capped off at $300,000.
We just finished a 300-location FB Deal for a client, and I have to say the process ranged from "annoying" to "unworkable." We fielded constant complaints about the Deal not working (we had roughly one Deal successfully claimed for every 10 check-ins). In many locations, we had hundreds of check-ins with no Deal claimed. I still feel there's a lot of potential there, but I wouldn't recommend it to another client until substantial improvements have been made to the reliability of Places and Deals.
Comment by David Griner — August 2, 2011 @ 9:41 am
Social media marketing is changing how we do business. These are great suggestions, especially a small business just starting up without an advertising budget.
Comment by Ugly Dog Media — August 2, 2011 @ 4:41 pm
I am all about local marketing and this is some pretty creative marketing ideas. You can cross some of this over to Foursquare as well.
Comment by @Thos003 — August 3, 2011 @ 12:13 pm
[...] do you get when you combine geolocation-based applications, like Facebook Places and foursquare, with services that offer special deals, like Groupon and LivingSocial? If you’re [...]
Pingback by Facebook Places + Available Deals = DealBurner App — August 3, 2011 @ 3:30 pm
Very informative and fantastic article and very clearly explained. I really needed this kind of useful information.
Comment by Reliable Marketer — August 4, 2011 @ 1:46 am
Love google places. How would you use it as an innovative marketing tool?
Comment by @NormanWrightJr — August 7, 2011 @ 5:33 pm
Our organization has been trying to use Facebook places, but the trouble is that we can't figure out who has checked in. Has anyone else encounter this issue?
Comment by Sharon — August 8, 2011 @ 12:52 am
My two cents on this matter would be that using Facebook Places can be a great social media marketing tool for businesses if used properly. I strongly believe in offering a small discount (even 5%off a purchase) to people for checking in. If your company is based in the US, you could possibly do a tax included promotion for checking in. The social media exposure is more than worth it considering the average person on facebook has 500 friends and checking in is a personal endorsement that you visit and do business with a particular company. There is so much advertising clutter currently in society and almost everyone would agree that word of mouth marketing is the best type of endorsement for businesses. Facebook Places is great for getting a little extra online exposure for your business but I still believe that businesses should consider running a daily deal promotion if they are looking for a dramatic increase in foot traffic, website traffic, and social media exposure. More info here: http://www.ideabuffet.ca
Comment by Kyle Gordon — August 9, 2011 @ 1:30 pm
That´s exactly the same question I was going to ask! How do you know who has checked in on your business- Facebook- Page??
Comment by Jacqueline — August 9, 2011 @ 2:10 pm
I felt the ideas shared here are fresh. Any tested proven strategies would be appreciated.
Comment by Henry Louis — August 10, 2011 @ 1:04 am
How on earth is a check-in service supposed to allow us to build a fan base while rewarding customers now that facebook has disabled the feature that allowed business owners to merge their fan page with their check in page? Having a separate page for people to check in to and a separate page for fans is BAD FOR BUSINESS! Facebook please fix this!!
Comment by K CatZen — August 10, 2011 @ 1:46 am
Sharon, I am having the same issue. I did a little bit more research and found out that Electronic Arts U.K. had some kind of special app made. Check out the directions they have listed on their page. Anyone else have any luck running a promo like Electronic Arts U.K's?
Comment by DSSK — August 10, 2011 @ 5:03 pm
[...] check in to a hotel with the new Facebook app released by buuteeq Tuesday — other than with Facebook Places or foursquare — but you can do just about everything [...]
Pingback by App Helps Hotels Create Four-Star Facebook Pages — October 11, 2011 @ 4:51 pm
"Electronic Arts U.K. hosted a “Play4Xmas” tour at six different shopping malls across the UK in November and December. Those who checked in at each event had a chance to win up to 10 games per day." –
Hi, how do you run a facebook check-in competition at a trade show event? I want people to check in to our stand to win a prize, but I need to be able to see all the people that have checked in, to give the prize away, any suggestions? How did EA do it?
Comment by Oliver — October 22, 2011 @ 5:23 pm
[...] Make-A-Wish Foundation is going old-school for its holiday campaign on [...]
Pingback by Make-A-Wish Facebook Campaign Tells Stories — December 21, 2011 @ 1:02 pm
Hi David. Our agency has a Facebook rep who has been totally unresponsive. She promises she'll circle back and then she doesn't get back to us. Do you have a contact there that could help with a Facebook Places campaign for a large produce client of ours? jenn@sitelab.com Thanks so much!
Comment by Jenn — January 9, 2012 @ 7:44 pm