Google Places Mobile: Check-In Offers

In early March, Google rolled out Check In offers as a feature for Latitude in Austin. In April the feature was additionally made available to national retailers like Radio Shack and Quiznos.

The feature was not made generally accessible to most retailers. At the time I inquired of Google when it would be available more widely and if it was free or paid. Google provided their all to frequent “We’ll let you know if and when we have more details to share” response.


Well I managed to uncover some additional Mobile Check-Ins details in this recent Google Places Help Page:

Coupons: Mobile Check-in Offers

When users for businesses using Google for mobile devices, they’ll be able to access your Google Places Offer on their phone. You can also offer special deals to visitors if they check in online when they visit your business. Instead of printing out a paper coupon, customers can simply bring in their mobile device to redeem the offer — which means it’s a great and simple way to save trees, too!

Create a Mobile Check-in Offer

All Google Places offers are created in both mobile and desktop formats, so all you have to do is create an offer. If you’d like to offer a check-in option, simply select the appropriate type of customer in the “Target customers” field when you create the offer.

Turn Off a Mobile Check-in Offer

If you don’t want to distribute your offers via mobile phones, you can turn off the mobile feature by following the instructions below:

  1. Click Offers at the top of your Google Places account.
  2. Click Edit next to the offer on the dashboard to edit an existing offer.
  3. Deactivate the mobile phone format by un-checking the mobile coupon box.

Google Adds End User Offers Signup to Google.com/Portland

Portland has been a keystone city in Google’s  Places marketing efforts. They inundated Portland businesses and individuals with high visibility ads, marketing, schwag and high profile sponsorships.

We don’t know the number of additional claimed Places listings but we do know that it lead to a dramatic uptick in their ratings and reviews, moving them to near parity with Yelp in the important restaurant industry within several months.

It makes sense that they would leverage this visibility to introduce their new 50% Offers beta. Over the weekend we started to see general purpose Offers videos, help files and end user and business sign up forms. Now they have added end user and business sign ups to Google.com/portland, the main landing page for their  Places marketing in Portland.