Facebook Places rolled out - social mobile marketing is here!

Facebook Places rolled out - social mobile marketing is here! - article content

Facebook Places are an important part of the location based eco system. This week, Facebook Places rolled out everywhere in the world. They didnt/dont have the data in most countries, but it does work. We also learnt in the last few months, that Facebook Places beat Foursquare in the US. Some great and exciting news, and if you add Facebook Deals on top of everything, you get a wonderful location based mix, that even Google would wish to have.

But what about marketing using Facebook Places?
 

For SMBs, this is quite clear. Check in my location to get a discount (using Facebook Deals). For brands, this is an entire new league. You don`t have to be a retail brand to utilize Facebook Places. You can be P&G and not own any retail stores, but knowing where your customers buy products, and as well how and where they use them, this can be a great signal to create a loyalty program based around Facebook Places, and of course can be directly connected to products.

I would call this area social mobile marketing, because:

• it will always be social
• it will always be mobile

#socialmobile­marketing – I do hope this naming will catch up.

So how to use social mobile marketing, if you are a brand?

1. Loyalty programs and using Facebook Places
2. Create an entire social experience around consuming your product
3. Using Facebook Places at sport events, multiple checkins, special points
4. Event activities – any music events – duh… :-)

I believe social mobile marketing will be much bigger then mobile marketing, and heck, probably as big or even bigger then social media marketing in the near future.

And now a poll: We will give a free license (Multi 7) for Socialbakers Analytics, who can guess what Facebook Place is the most checked-in in the world?

Update: Someone who wrote us figured out the correct place is the Los Angeles (LAX) airport, with 200 000 checkins! Cool, right? Slighlty less then on Foursquare, for now :)

Jan Rezab
CEO, Socialbakers