Small Businesses Can Now Promote Themselves on Foursquare

Foursquare recently announced a new feature that will bring even greater benefits to small businesses: self-serve ads. This means that small businesses that pay for the service will rank higher in the search results for potential customers who are in the area. Self-serve ads are a piece of Foursquare’s larger strategy to become more of a local search engine, geared toward helping small businesses gain customers with more relevant advertising.

Self-Serve Ads

Self-serve ads are enabling Foursquare to become the best advertising strategy for small businesses looking to attract more customers. The premise of self-serve ads is that a business using the service will only receive priority in the search results of users who are actually likely to become customers, meaning those who are nearby. In addition, they will only pay if people visit their listing or check-in at their business on Foursquare. This means that small businesses will have the benefit of spending money only if they are in turn receiving profits.

Foursquare as a Local Search Engine

Along with self-serve ads, Foursquare has been implementing other features driven toward the goal of becoming primarily a local search engine. They launched a new website last October with an improved search box, and they have been adding important details to listings such as ratings, hours, and prices. Furthermore, Foursquare introduced promoted updates over a year ago and recently launched targeted ads following check-ins at certain locations.

How This Impacts You

In studies of user interaction, Foursquare has found that 78% of individuals who make local searches also make purchases. This number is very significant in showing how great an opportunity Foursquare is for small businesses in terms of marketing. Additionally, Foursquare’s data is very thorough, coming from 3 billion check-ins and additional analytics. This means that ads on Foursquare are more likely to be relevant to users, leading to actual profits.

Foursquare currently lists 1.4 million small businesses, and this new feature will at first be limited to a few thousand with expansion soon to follow. Small businesses can contact Foursquare to reserve a spot as one of the first in line for self-serve ads.

How has Foursquare helped your small business?

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