Your customers are online using social media to share information and connect with others, and the increasingly savvy are using social media to find great deals and discounts on their favorite brands. Smart retailers are taking note, using various social media tools to provide limited time and/or geo-specific coupons and sales offers.
How can your business tap in? Here are just a few examples of how you can reward customers by delivering offers through social media.
1. Geo-location services - Services like Foursquare allow you serve up deals by targeting customers who are close by to your venue. With Foursquare users earn points, unlock "badges" and earn mayorships by visiting and revisiting venues. The service's iPhone and mobile_web app can be used to instantly notify users in the immediate vicinity of special deals and rewards exclusive to Foursquare users.
The service enables businesses to reward customer loyalty based on Foursquare data usage. For example, a restaurant may give a free appetizer to the next Foursquare "mayor" that walks in. As Foursquare explains on its site:
We've seen venues promote their involvement with Foursquare via Twitter, signs at cash registers and sidewalk blackboards. We're just starting to make these specials "official" by including them in our mobile apps and on our website.
Check out our previous posts on Foursquare, location based services and how its relevancy to businesses offers potential for driving cross channel traffic.
2. Reward your Facebook fans - If you are actively engaging your customers via Facebook, reward them for their loyalty by offering coupon codes, deals, and contests not available anywhere else. Then encourage your fans to share these deals through their profiles or encourage them to leave a comment on your page about what they bought and why.
3. Offer "Tweet" deals - Use Twitter to tweet exclusive, limited-time rewards, but be sure to use hashtags such as #deal, #save or #coupon to increase findability. Another option is CheapTweet which allows you to promote your Twitter deal via their search engine service. You simply tweet your deal with the #cheaptweet hashtag. CheapTweet also offers advertising opportunities and the ability to create a CheapTweet store to create a deal destination devoted entirely to your brand.
4. Tap into community buying trends - Sites like LivingSocialand Groupon allow you to target their members with one-day only, super-discounted deals. The idea is that through word of mouth, users will share your deal with their online community on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, providing increased exposure for your brand.
Using social channels to offer rewards to customers provides opportunities to extend brand reach. Social media users typically enjoy sharing news and information with one another, and for many of your customers, being one of the first people to share a secret deal with friends and followers can be a reward within itself.
This post was inspired by the recent Mashable.com article 6 Easy Ways to Score the Best Deals with Social Media.