April 16, 2010 was a pretty monumental day for McDonald's, the famous fast food giant. For that single day, the company rolled out a marketing incentive that managed to increase foot traffic to its locations by 33%. How, you ask? With the location-based social network known as Foursquare.
The contest was set up extremely user-friendly: as a member of Foursquare's online community (which is free to join), customers were asked to "check-in" at any McDonald's location. The budget for the marketing campaign was set at $1,000, which was divvied up into 100 gift cards which were offered to participants. This ingenious plan was great for profits because remember, the marketing platform that they utilized, Foursquare, is free.
McDonald's little social experiment back in April garnered positive results that exceed that day's financial gain. McDonald's also earned 50 blog/articles written about the event, an additional 600,000 fans and followers, and 99% positive feedback.
For a day's effort, those are some pretty impressive numbers.
