Using Pokemon Go for Local Business Purposes
Pokémon GO first came to my notice when a friend was live streaming on Facebook a walk with his son whilst playing the game.
There’s a great piece on Forbes today looking at the digital phenomena that it is and you may have also read the odd random scary story or two
But I’m not here to talk about those, I’m here to continue with the local business angle touched upon by Forbes.
We started a conversation on our Romney Marsh Marketing Facebook group and Al from Tepfu is bang on the money.
There really is a big potential to get in at the ground floor here and stand out from the competition, IF your local offer is compelling enough.
Where I live it’s both rural and coastal and it’s peppered with various little cafés and small eateries – tourist trade is everything and at this time of the year they really must do everything they can to earn their coin.
There’s a beach hut type place that sells teas and coffees and chips and bacon butties, it’s made of plywood and painted brilliant white – For me, it’s just aching to have a huge pokeball painted on its side along with a few strategically placed sandwich boards doing similar to this.
Such an approach would tap in to a phenomena that has kids and adults alike talking and even gain attention from the local press.
Pokemon Go has more search term interest than any of our leading news storiesin the UK and it hasn’t even launched yet
The rise in search volume is pretty stratospheric, outstripping searches for news media saturated terms recently like Theresa may, Leadsom and Corbyn. That’s some pretty stellar WOM activity right there demonstrating the power of app charts and social mentions to influence user behaviour and interest.
I tried downloading the Pokemon GO app from my iTunes, but it seems it’s not available (account is tied to UK iTunes and I can’t be bothered to switch it) so I haven’t yet had the opportunity to play it, but it does look like fun and I’d imagine that people up and down the country will get pretty hooked on it, especially in the summer months with warmer weather whereby a nice walk is just the ticket.
We’ll no doubt see a slew of topical discussion on this soon, with an explosion of stories in local and national mainstream media, augmented reality apps like these are likely to grow in use and popularity as companies and providers look for ways of utilising the power of mobile and its ability to gain new customers via innovative use of features and gameplay.
Whilst Pokemon GO may well not be a best fit for your local business, AR and VR as concepts present definite opportunities which if used creatively could well help boost passing and local interest.
Be you a small business or a large brand you should definitely get in early while you can, and think creatively around how you can use opportunities like these, to boost your brand or business!