Brick & Mortar social media marketing is the next frontier in the marketing and advertising space and the next step in marketing for traditional small businesses that have previously used less effective methods of advertising such as print or television ads.
Instead of relying on these outdated and expensive marketing strategies, using foursquare for business promotion is the next step for small entrepreneurs such as restaurants and retail locations.
What do I mean by Brick & Mortar social media marketing? I mean old school "mom and pop" businesses starting to use social media and more specifically location based marketing to promote their businesses.
I think that the next step for social media marketing and location based marketing specifically is for more mainstream adoption by traditional brick and mortar or mom and pop type businesses.
Social media is currently the playing field for big national brands and tech startups - but a space largely ignored by smaller businesses.
Smaller businesses in the restaurant and retail industry specifically will be the next people to start really getting involved more actively in social media marketing.
As customers become more familiar with services like Foursquare.
These marketing strategies for small businesses offer a great return on investment and provide a much more effective marketing strategy than traditional small business marketing.
Using software like Foursquare for business advertising offers a great way for these small businesses to take advantage of social media.
Instead of spending several thousand dollars on an expensive print or TV ad campaign, a simple coupon or promotional marketing campaign using location based marketing can yield huge dividends for a small business for tens of dollars.
The key to this transition is location based marketing.
Why is that? Because location marketing is a way for those businesses who may have previously had no interest in social media, twitter follows, or Facebook (as an aside - I think every small business that faces consumers should have a Facebook page) can now use location services to drive customers physically into their store and to track those visits with check-ins.
This is a very compelling value proposition for small restaurant and retail locations - one that I think smart business owners will be jumping on sooner rather than later.
Businesses that take advantage of the benefits of location based marketing will have a leg up on their competitors by attracting new customers and keeping their advertising costs down.
In this tough economy, these are huge advantages.