Using Facebook to Generate Local Store Foot Traffic

There are about 30 million small businesses in the United States with physical locations that depend on walk-in foot traffic. While foot traffic and face-to-face customer service are essential for repeat business, online engagement with those customers helps bring them back. Local shoppers enjoy telling friends about the Check-in Deals they find. Facebook Places and Check-in Deals list local businesses and their current promotions, empowering business owners to drive traffic to their locations. Individuals can share that they are at your location along with the Check-in Deals you are offering. These services are examined in detail in this chapter.

Your Local Business and Facebook

Local Check-in Deal Best Practices

Is Your Business Ready for Your Check-in Deal?

Promoting Your Check-in Campaign

Using Insights to Understand Your Campaign

Using Facebook Offers

Your Local Business and Facebook

The first few chapters of this book cover the marketing reach you can obtain by using Facebook for your small business. As I’ve mentioned, Facebook has created numerous applications that help drive people back to your website or e-commerce site. But Facebook is not limited to the Internet and a virtual association to your business. Facebook has also developed applications that help drive foot traffic to your physical business location. As much as I’ve stressed the importance of having a Facebook Page for your business and incorporating applications into your website, creating links to your physical business location is just as essential, and an amazing and economical way to market your business.

Using Facebook Places as a customer

If you have a business with a physical location, Facebook Places can be an amazing tool for you. Places is a check-in program that lets Facebook users indicate where they are so that their followers (or just friends) can join them at the location if they wish. Facebook Places is designed specifically for physical locations to connect with people using mobile devices. A Facebook Places user checks in to a place or organization that has established its Places presence in Facebook via a Place Page. Friends of the user can see the Places notification and can choose to join the user at the location or allow the notification to be a discovery of a new place to visit later (see Figure 7.1).

7.1 Each time you check in at a location, your activity appears in your News Feed for all your friends to see along with the friends of anyone you tag with you.

This Check-In feature enables you to do the following:

• Check in to a location and post an update that appears on the Place Page, your friends’ News Feeds, and your Timeline.

• Tag the friends you are with so they can be part of the update.

• Browse status updates of friends checked in nearby.

• After checking in, tap the Here Now button on the application to see who else is checked in where you are.

Finally, Facebook Places enables you to find local Check-in Deals:

• Use Facebook Places on your mobile device to find special offers everywhere. Once you check in to a location on your device, any special Check-in Deals that are offered appear under your Check-in status and are represented with the Check-in Deal logo ().

• Save at your favorite retailers, eateries, and entertainment venues.

• Check in to claim a Check-in Deal and let friends know about it.

You can use any supported mobile device to check in on Facebook and let your friends know where you are. Follow these steps:

1. When you access your mobile Facebook application, tap the icon.

2. Tap Nearby (see Figure 7.2).

3. Choose your location from the list that appears, or tap More Nearby Places to search for your location (see Figure 7.3).

7.2 Tap Nearby to find a list of locations around you and select the one where you are.

7.3 A list of locations near you appears or you can manually enter your location if it has not already been added.

4. You can choose to write a post about what you are doing, add friends you are with, or add a picture of the location and then tap Post (see Figure 7.4).

It’s that simple. Now your friends can see not only what you are doing but also where you are. When you post you can also decide who can see your location — friends, the public, or any other combination.

7.4 Once you choose your location, you can add who you are with, add pictures, and create a post, all of which appear on your Timeline and the Timeline of the location (if it has a Facebook Page).

So this is the end user, or customer, side of Facebook Places. What does this mean for your business? The Facebook Places application makes it easier to extend your marketing reach for almost no cost. Additionally, it validates your business by allowing users and their activity to be a testimonial of your business, products, and services.

Moreover, Places can provide a vital means for leveraging your interaction with people through their mobile devices because they have to come to your business to redeem a Check-in Deal. While Facebook Places is fun and engaging for individuals — your potential customers — it’s a serious business tool and local (in-person) engagement tool.

Establishing a Facebook Place Page for your business

Businesses are quickly discovering the benefit of Facebook Places. Woods Coffee, a 100-employee coffee shop chain based in Whatcom County, Washington, uses Facebook Place extensively. Jessica Stuart, the social media director for the 10-shop local chain, said in a case study that she uses the business’s Place as “a place for our customers to get the current info on what’s new, what’s happening, and lately to get their questions answered” (see Figure 7.5).

7.5 Woods Coffee does an excellent job of using its Facebook Place Page to notify customers of current happenings and Check-in Deals.

You can use Facebook Places to simply encourage users to check in on their mobile devices when they visit your business. This check-in is shared with their friends, exposing your local business to the friends of any user who checks in to your business.

Setting up a Place Page

The setup begins by locating your business or organization through the Facebook application on a mobile device. You must physically be at your place of business to do this, as Facebook uses your current location to search for nearby businesses. Tap Nearby on the application and then tap Check In. Search for the name of your business or organization in the Facebook search box. If your business or organization name does not appear in the results, then you can create the Page by typing your name and tapping Add. You can then enter an optional description of the business (see Figure 7.6). Once that is done, tap the Add button in the upper right again and you can then check in to the location that you have created.

You must be at the location of your business when checking in to ensure that the proper location is saved in Facebook.

7.6 If your business does not appear in the search when you check in at your location, you can simply add it and a brief description so that it appears on Facebook.

Once the Place Page is created, the next step is to claim the Page, which you must do directly from Facebook (not on a mobile device). You will find a post in your News Feed that announces that you checked in to your business location (see Figure 7.7). Click the name of your business in that post to go to the created Page. Click on the utilities box in the upper-right corner of the Page to access the drop-down list. Click the Is this your business? link. A Claim Your Business pop-up menu appears where you can select a check box that verifies that you are the representative of the Page (see Figure 7.8). Select the check box and click Continue to advance to Verify Page Info where you can provide the business name, address, phone number, website, and additional information (see Figure 7.9). In order to claim the Page, you have to either verify through an e-mail address or documentation to complete the process.

7.7 Once you check in to your location from your mobile device, you find a notification with the business name in your News Feed that you can click to connect to.

7.8 Clicking the Is this your business? link allows you to claim your business Page and verify that you are the owner.

7.9 After you claim the Page, you can fill in all the details of your business so that future visitors can find you.

Adding details to your Place Page

Once you claim your Page, you can begin setting up the details. To have your local business listed in Facebook Places, you must be listed in the Local Business or Place category. This ensures that local visitors can indicate they are at your location. Setting up a Facebook Place Page requires steps similar to arranging a Facebook business Page. If needed, refer to Chapter 2 for more information on setting up your Facebook business Page.

To set up a Place Page, begin at the Create a Page site at www.facebook.com/pages/create and choose the Local Business or Place category.

A Place Page works similar to a personal or business Page, so a number of the tools and strategies that work on a Page are also applicable in this instance. The first step is building a Timeline, a space where all posts from admins and fans can post. The Timeline looks like any other profile T showing the latest posts, but it incorporates a significant difference. The Timeline permits a Places-participating business to show posts from everyone in a variety of settings.

You might find that you have a Facebook Page and a Facebook place. Instead of having two Facebook destinations, having one is best so that you can focus on engaging on Facebook in one place. When you create your Facebook place, Facebook might detect that you have a similar Facebook Page. You will have the option to merge an existing Page to your new Facebook place.

To set the Timeline setting to this level of interaction, click Edit Page and go to the Manage Permissions section to adjust who can post on your Timeline and set the moderation filters.

Just as with your business Page, the Like button is how users connect to your Place. When a person clicks Like, a News Feed story is shared with his or her friends (for example, Sabrina likes your Page).

The navigation links to your Pages and applications appears below your cover photo. The prepopulated links may vary depending on your Place category. Click Edit to move and delete links.

Your Place Page should contain a cover photo, just like your business Page. The process of updating is exactly the same as with your business or personal Page. Remember, the cover photo is a great place to showcase your brand and your products or services. Get creative! It’s a large piece of real estate that should be used to its fullest potential. You may want to use photos of people in your business or organization in action, from a waitress serving a meal to employees at a nonprofit using newly gained donations to make a difference in a community. Your picture should reflect what customers who come to your business or organization can expect.

I encourage you to use some of the tools covered in earlier chapters such as polls, photos, and links related to your products and services on your Place’s Wall. And don’t forget to regularly publish updates to your Wall as well as photos and videos. The content will appear on the Wall and in the News Feeds of people who like your Place, which keeps you constantly in front of your market. Moreover, if the media is interesting, people will share the posts with their friends, increasing the circle of awareness the posts generate. For example, if you post photos that include people who have liked your Place Page, they will likely be tagged by those same people. Their tags will appear in their feeds, drawing their friends and followers to look at the photos and consequently your Place Page. Those friends and followers may have decided to like your Place as well. This is the digital equivalent of word of mouth. These new followers may later come to your business. Thus, posting a photo is an initial step for branding.

Here are some tips for improving your Place Page:

• The number of people who like your Place appears under your cover photo.

• Likes shows a list of other Pages that your Place is affiliated with or interested in. To feature a Page you like, click the Page’s Like button when you are using Facebook as your Place. Then click Edit Page option on your own Page and select the Page in the Featured section.

• You can feature Page Administrators and link to their personal profiles from your Place. To feature a Page administrator, click Edit Page (top right of the Page) and select Admin in the Featured section.

• Be sure to answer questions, address concerns, and acknowledge when people take the time to post on your Place’s Wall.

You may feel stuck creating content updates for your Place, but there are plenty of ways to do it. Restaurants, for example, can showcase food, educate customers about the food they serve, share the press they receive, and show off their best plates. Encouraging customer comments and responding immediately to customer requests shows that you care about your relationships. Moreover, employees with a mobile app can respond on the go. Jessica Stuart of Woods Coffee mentions in a case study that the app on her mobile phone is a lifesaver. “I have found it easy updating from my iPhone wherever I am. I can update our status, reply to a Wall post, and upload a mobile picture.”

The ultimate key to creating quality Place Page content is to be informative, interesting, and consistent in maintaining your offline and online image (see Figure 7.10).

7.10 Margaritas Mexican Restaurant does a great job of showcasing its food, events, and customer comments on its Facebook Place Page.

Using Facebook Check-in Deals

So, you’ve learned about a great way to connect people to your physical location, which should get people in the door and help generate additional revenue, but there’s more! Another way to generate actual revenue from Facebook Places is to provide local Check-in Deals and incentives to your customers based on a variety of options related to their check-in status. Keep in mind that the Check-in Deals feature is in limited beta, so for the time being not all Places will be able to create Check-in Deals.

Check-in Deals are meant to augment your Place presence and are a great way to build your business. They increase customer loyalty with your most interested audience, spread the word about your business, and help attract new customers. To redeem a Check-in Deal, customers click Get Offer in the headline of the offer and send the offer to the e-mail address associated with their main Facebook account. Your customer then shows the e-mail to you (or your staff) to redeem the offer.

There are four types of Check-in Deals that you can create, each designed to reach different business objectives:

• Individual. This is a one-time Check-in Deal that you can offer to both new and existing customers. This is a great way to launch a new product, get rid of excess inventory, or just get more people into your store (see Figure 7.11).

7.11 Check-in Deals appear on the Facebook mobile application to anyone searching in your area. They are a great way to encourage foot traffic to your location.

• Loyalty. This is a Check-in Deal to reward your loyal customers. This Check-in Deal is given after your customer reaches a set amount of check-ins at your location — you choose the amount.

• Friend. Because people usually shop in groups, the Friend Check-in Deal is a great option. You can offer discounts to groups of up to eight people when they check in together. This Check-in Deal gets you even more exposure because in order to claim it, the entire group needs to check in to your Place.

• Charity. This Check-in Deal is a great way to show your customers that you care about your community and different causes and encourage them to come to your business. The Charity Check-in Deal makes a donation of an amount you choose to a charity of your choice whenever someone claims the Check-in Deal (see Figure 7.12).

7.12 Charity Check-in Deals are another great way to generate foot traffic and support a local cause.

To set up a Check-in Deal, click Edit Page on your business’s Place Page and choose Deals from the links in the left column (see Figure 7.13).

7.13 From the edit page you choose Deals from the links menu in the left column to create a Check-in Deal.

The remaining steps are easy (see Figure 7.14):

1. Choose your Check-in Deal type from one of the four types.

2. Define your offer by summarizing the details in the Deal Summary text box and how to claim the Check-in Deal in the How to Claim text box.

3. Specify run dates and restrictions and then click Save.

Always create your Check-in Deals at least 48 hours in advance, as all Check-in Deals are subject to review by Facebook. It is also recommended that you run each Check-in Deal for a minimum of a week to allow users the opportunity to take advantage of the offer.

7.14 The steps to creating a Check-in Deal are quick and simple.

Using Facebook Places and Check-in Deals for your local marketing

Thanks to the explosion of the Internet, local retailers and local service providers can be quickly and easily connected to their customers. With the added use of smartphones, customers have instant access to the local establishments they want to buy from.

Facebook Places and Check-in Deals lets you boost your local marketing and attract customers right to your door step — day after day. Your customers have lots of choices. The incentives you can offer through Facebook Check-in Deals give them a reason to come back.

Getting customers

Just about every one of your customers carries a smartphone everywhere, and many of them use Check-in Deals. Using Facebook Check-in Deals, you are able to actively connect with them by showing them Check-in Deals at your location if they are signed in to Facebook and set up to be notified of Check-in Deals based on their cell phones’ GPS settings.

Spreading the word

The other nice thing about local marketing with Facebook is that when customers check in to your place or redeem a Check-in Deal, they in turn inform their friends through Facebook. Local marketing using Facebook is not only about the actual customers who visit your store and buy from you; it’s also about referral marketing, or word-of-mouth marketing, or viral marketing!

Building loyalty

Getting one customer to buy from you is relatively easy. But getting customers to buy from you over and over is much more difficult. Why do you think airlines use frequent-flyer miles? To entice passengers to fly with them over and over again. Local marketing using Facebook Check-in Deals and Check-ins is establishing your own frequent-flyer program on a very local level.

Local Check-in Deal Best Practices

Creating local Check-in Deals, like any advertising, is something you should do with strategic thought and not on a whim. You can use any of the Check-in Deal types to best attract customers and match up to your intended marketing campaign. For example, a loyalty Check-in Deal can implicitly explain to your customers that they are truly VIPs because of their commitment to your business or professional services. A charity Check-in Deal would be a great way to establish your brand and exposure in a neighborhood community.

You can summarize the Check-in Deal in the Deal Summary text box when you create your Check-in Deal. Your description should be enticing but not overdone with a hard sale. Some businesses apply old-school buy-now language in ads. Although you want a customer’s attention, moderate the language so that it entices — remember, in social media, people prefer to be engaged, not dictated to.

You can make individual Check-in Deals very personal by creating a summary that highlights the benefit the person receives in the Check-in Deal. For example, a first-time Check-in Deal does not require a heavy handed hard sell in the Check-in Deal description — just ask someone to give it a try. Remember to be direct but not overwhelming.

Here are some other best practices to consider when issuing Check-in Deals for your customers:

• Offer your customers a lot of value. Customers take advantage of Check-in Deals when they are enticing and appealing.

• Write simple copy. Don’t be too complex. Make it simple to understand (see Figure 7.15). You don’t want customers spending all day figuring out what your Check-in Deal means. Instead you want them buying from you.

7.15 This Check-in Deal is clear and concise so users know exactly what they are getting and are enticed by the great value.

Is Your Business Ready for Your Check-in Deal?

So you’ve spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (or just some time and money) to create your first Check-in Deal. You come around the block on Tuesday morning (the day of the Check-in Deal) and realize you have lines out the door, frustrated customers, and frustrated staff. What went wrong?

Check out the following tips to ensure you’re prepared for the day of the Check-in Deal.

Be proactive

Do a dry run of your Check-in Deal and Check-in to ensure it runs smoothly and that your staff knows how to handle a variety of situations that might come up. You can’t anticipate every situation, but you can help your staff plan scenarios. For example, someone who heard about the Check-in Deal but might not have the Check-in Deal to show on her phone. What will you do?

Build your Facebook Place or Page content

Check-in Deals are great, but they’re better when you have great content on your Facebook Page to give the customer all the information he needs to take advantage of the Check-in Deal. This information includes business hours, photos, address, and more.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes

Before you market your Check-in Deal, familiarize your staff with mobile phones and Facebook if they are not familiar with these tools and services. Many of your customers might not be familiar with new technology, and your staff’s help will be great customer service.

Staff appropriately

Anticipate the customer demand for your Check-in Deal. If you have a well-trafficked store on normal days you can bet that you’ll have even more traffic with your Check-in Deal. Make sure you have enough staff (even temporary help) to staff your store.

If you have hundreds of store locations, inquire with your account manager and he or she may be able to help you run Check-in Deals more widely. If you have just a few store locations, create each Check-in Deal individually on each store location’s Facebook Place. To contact a Facebook account manager, visit www.facebook.com/business/contact.php.

Promoting Your Check-in Campaign

You can promote Check-in Deals in a number of ways. For example, you can share Check-in Deals in your other social media accounts such as Twitter and LinkedIn or on your business’s blog posts. Check-in Deals can also be promoted in a Facebook ad if you want to bring awareness within a short period. Using a combination of channels will help spread awareness of the Check-in Deal beyond your initial cadre of customers.

Most advantageously, Facebook makes it possible for potential customers who are nearby to discover the Check-in Deal. Facebook users who use their mobile phone app regularly can opt in to be notified of offers in a neighborhood where they regularly spend time. This means your Check-in Deal will appear if their neighborhood happens to be yours! The Check-in Deal notification arrives in the form of a text message to their phones. If the Check-in Deal piques their interest, customers will come to your business. This makes a Check-in Deal a great new customer acquisition tool, particularly for retail franchises, shops, and restaurants that have a considerable amount of neighborhood foot traffic.

Make sure your store staff is aware of Check-in Deals. Doing so creates a consistent customer service experience by ensuring new customers receive the Check-in Deal they arrived for. Nothing is more annoying for a customer than expecting a Check-in Deal that no one in your business knows about. The experience comes across as a bait-and-switch and results in a lost customer opportunity.

If your Check-in Deal is for a product with a lot of features, such as a mountain bike or a computer, be sure that your employees are knowledgeable about the product. Similar to expecting employees to be knowledgeable about the Check-in Deal, customers want employees to know about the product being sold. If your business offers Check-in Deals regularly, call a short awareness meeting to make sure employees know what is potentially expected. Reviewing the offered Check-in Deals can help prevent employees from going into autopilot and instead provide the initial experiences that lead to long-term customers.

Using Insights to Understand Your Campaign

After you launch a check-in campaign, you can use Facebook Insights to understand how well a campaign is increasing engagement on your Page. This analysis can be helpful if your business objective for operating a Page is to increase awareness of your services and products or to attract people to a special event at your organization.

To view the results in Facebook Insights, click Insights on the left side of your Page to learn who your audience is and how people interact with your Place Page. Facebook Insights can help measure your engagement on the Place Page. It does so by displaying demographic and geographic information on the people connected to your Page. If you are the administrator of several Place Pages, you can switch between each to understand the engagement metrics.

To learn more about specific features of Facebook Insights, read Chapter 4.

Using Facebook Offers

Facebook Check-in Deals are a great way for local customers to visit your business’s retail location. Facebook Offers are similar to Facebook Check-in Deals, except you don’t have to check in — you get the offer online, like a digital coupon.

Say you’re a law firm and it’s tax season. You might want to have a Facebook Offer for procrastinating tax filers that offers 50 percent off your rush tax service. Anyone visiting your Facebook Page can claim this offer, bring it to you, and get 50 percent off your rush tax service.

Offers are a great way to delight visitors on your Facebook Page and encourage them to come to your retail location to redeem. Businesses with franchise locations or national chains might want to leverage Facebook Offers to drive traffic from the mouse to the street.

Like just about everything on Facebook, creating Facebook Offers is not hard to do:

1. From the Sharing tool on your Facebook Page, right next to where you can update your status, click Offer, Event+.

2. Create a compelling headline, as you would with any offer.

3. Select how many people can claim this offer. Two? Twenty-seven?

4. Decide when this offer should expire.

5. Continue through the remaining few options and selections.

As of this writing, Facebook Offers is not available on all Pages. It’s in a limited rollout. But I expect that by the time this book is published it will be more widely available.

Your offer is now online for the world to see — especially prospective customers or current customers.

If you want to increase the visibility of your Facebook Offer, consider promoting it through an advertisement or a Sponsored Story.

While it’s very easy to create a Facebook Offer, it takes a bit more work to make an offer successful. Here are some things you can do:

• Give meaningful discounts. If you’re taking the time to make a Facebook Offer, don’t make it for 1 percent off or an offer that people can easily get somewhere else. Make it big enough so people care and take the time to take advantage of it. Facebook suggests that 20 percent off is a good starting point, or even buy one, get one free.

• Use a great image. Photos are a great way to further engage people to use your offer. Your photo should be clear (not grainy or out of focus) and show how people are using your product. People like seeing your product in action.

• Don’t get fancy with your text. When making an offer, be clear and to the point. Make sure your headline clearly states the offer right from the beginning.

• Train your staff. It’s critical that you prepare your staff for the offers that people will bring in to your location. Make sure your staff is aware of the offer and is ready to handle increased traffic as a result.

It’s easy for customers to claim an offer: They just click Get Offer below the offer’s headline when they see the Offer on your Facebook Page. The offer is then sent to the primary e-mail address associated with the customer’s Facebook account. Pretty simple.

Customers can also claim offers from a mobile device. They can tap Get Offer to have the discount sent to the primary e-mail address associated with their Facebook account.