Forrester Warns Marketers Away From Foursquare

When shopping for a sporty car, most people will settle for "good" – a new Mustang, for example – or maybe "great," in the form of a Nissan GT-R.  But folks tend not to save for Ferraris that cost more than a house, and similar to the way those cutting-edge vehicles aren’t right for the average consumer, Forrester has advised marketers not to use services like Foursquare.

Forrester doesn’t take issue with Foursquare’s premise, which is promising.  (A report’s executive summary explained if you’re not familiar, "Location-based social networks, such as foursquare and Brightkite, offer interactive marketers the promise of right-time, right-place marketing by connecting people and nearby points of sale with geotargeted media.")

The problem is that almost no one outside of tech communities actually uses services like Foursquare yet.  Indeed, only a few people out of a hundred might guess that Foursquare is something other than a children’s game.

As a result, Forrester recommended, "[M]ost marketers should wait until they can get a bigger bang for their buck, when adoption rates increase and established players emerge from the fray."

Small business owners will have to consider the makeup of their target audience in order to decide what’s right for them, though.

Ferrari has managed to do quite well for itself, after all, and free services like Foursquare are much more accessible.