Where are Twitter and Facebook’s Geolocation Features?
Here’s how a solution like that would operate: imagine you’re a local pub – with an AdWords like platform for geo-based ads, you could buy ads – on your own via the Web – that run from 6-10pm, promoting a drink special, that broadcasts only to people within a 5 mile radius of your location. That’s powerful, and for companies on the scale of the top social networks, a huge potential revenue driver, even in a bad economy.
I could not help but to think there is a multifamily application here. To think we could position our communities such that we could target anyone shopping properties within a five mile radius of ours, is simply awesome. Creepy – but awesome. I wonder what the 30 lines of the world are thinking about this platform.
Your multifamily fellow manic,
M
[Update]: Techcrunch put out the follow on 11.28.9: Watch Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo We have taken a wait and see approach to the Foursquare model as it relates to renting apartments. It seems to me that over time people will settle on one to three major apps where they will spend the lions share of their time. Renting apartments as it relates to Foursquare, Loopt Gowalla, Simple Geo, GeoAPI and others will be a function that aggregates to Facebook or other major players. My question is will the numbers be big enough to warrant creating a full out apartment marketing idea using the Foursquare like applications? It will be interesting to see.
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Mike, Good Morning
@30Lines and I are working on a somewhat similar campaign over at Urbane with the Urbane VIP Program. We did not set out for this to be a revenue stream. We discovered that the various participating vendors were willing to pay us to participate. The interesting thing about this model is that the more VIP Cards we sell, (Urbane Residents get them for Free) the more the participating vendors benefit. It is early in the entire program, but it appears that by doing this, we have created enough of a revenue stream to fund ALL of our marketing expenses for our apartment management company
I think this is an amazing idea whose time has come. We kicked this around a number of times at EQR but never pulled it off. Many times we had revenue share agreements with national players that would have caused conflicts of interest with our hyper-local efforts.
I do recall a company in Lubbock, TX that pulled this off back in the 90’s – McDougal Properties. Mike and Mark McDougal are great guys and I am sure they would be happy to share their trials and successes – if you need some feedback along the way. I got on their website this morning and it does not appear that they do it anymore.
Nevertheless, I love the way you think and more importantly execute cool ideas.
Have a compelling day! M
Mike, It’s a great idea with all kinds of possibilities…
Let me throw another twist at you:
1. Put similar screens up in your parking garage, elevators, mail room, vestibules, etc. (anywhere you have a captive audience) Make sure they’re networked.
2. Post ads from local restaurants, bars and retailers on a rotating basis.
3. Include a SMS short code so your residents can immediately request a coupon or VIP code on the spot.
You could easily add the geo-specific option later (which would be an outstanding tool for larger portfolios), but you wouldn’t need it to start. A program like this shows the local retailers you’re interested in their success (and it’s more creative than lame door hangers), and it gives both you and the advertisers almost real-time data about the success of each ad. There are a lot of great software tools out there that would make the program fairly easy to manage, too.
Chew on that for a bit, and let me know if you think it could work on your properties.