Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Round, Apple’s New Patent
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Investors Cool on Foursquare (The Wall Street Journal)… Apple Patents A System-Wide Event-Tracking And Geotagging System For iOS Devices (TechCrunch)… Three-way Tie-up Promises to Re-Invent Local News (Paid Content)…
USA Today Publisher Larry Kramer Looks to a Local Future
“This whole company is hyperlocal,” Kramer says when asked about Gannett’s locally targeted news. “We’ve got 81 newspapers and 23 TV stations, all with local news operations.” At the new multipurpose “breaking news” desk he is developing, editors from the flagship paper will work face to face with representatives from local papers and other Gannett media properties…
Black Friday’s Local Opportunity: Taking Preprints Digital
Publishers across the country give thanks for the fantastic single copy sales they get on Thanksgiving due to the bundle of preprint circulars that come with the paper ahead of Black Friday. But for quite some time people inside and outside of the newspaper industry have been discussing the fact that the preprint business is declining — and might go away altogether…
Google’s Local Offerings Have Gotten Too Complicated
The extended Google+ Local rollout has been more troublesome than most. Usually when Google has experimented with social services in the past, such as Google Buzz and Google Wave, it has done so in a tangential way that does not threaten core functionality. With Google+, the gamble is to make social the center of all search activity, and yet the full realization of a social context for Google’s local search tools has yet to appear…
Case Study: Mattress Retailer Uses Targeting to Boost In-Store Sales
At Innovative Mattress Solutions, online marketing director Brett Morris relies on display ads that work in tandem with his company’s print and television campaigns to promote holiday sales and in-store events. He uses geo-targeting to reach consumers living within a 15-mile radius of his company’s stores, and relies on different ad sets based on the demographics of the consumers he’s trying to hit…
Street Fight Daily: NYC Gets Local Discovery, Tiger Takes Stake in Groupon
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… New York City Replaces 250 Public Pay Phones with iPad-like Screens (GigaOm)… The World’s Hottest Hedge Fund Manager Thinks Groupon Stock Is A Good Deal (Forbes)… Basing Hotel Choice on Web Reviews May Be Bad Move (LA Times)…
Groupon ‘Goods’ Shows Ecommerce Isn’t an Answer to Deals Fatigue
Part of what makes the margin for Groupon’s local commerce business so high is that the marketplace already exists. The supply networks, fulfillment methods, and customer base needed to keep a market running are already in place. Groupon was merely an accelerant — a facilitator of commerce within a given structure. Goods pushed the company into the marketplace business, and the variable risks and liabilities associated with the upkeep of a market…
7 Tools Restaurants Can Use to Post Menus Online
Menus are among the first things that a customer looks at when trying to decide which restaurant to visit, and restaurants with outdated menus on their websites — or even worse, no menus at all — are likely to be passed over by consumers. A number of marketing platforms have stepped in with solutions that make it easier for busy restaurateurs to publish and update their menus online. Here are seven popular options…
Street Fight Daily: Advance Buys Streetwise, Could Groupon Go Bankrupt?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Local Content Consolidation: Advance Publications’ Bizjournals Division Buys Streetwise Media Sites (TechCrunch)… Could Groupon Go Bankrupt? (Seeking Alpha)… Glocal, Local Video News Aggregator, Launches Out Of Beta With A Bang (TechCrunch)…
Daily Deals vs. Happy Hours: The Impact of Internal Marketing Promos
To get a sense of how happy hour compares to daily deals, Copilot Labs analyzed the point of sale data from a restaurant that has consistently run both happy hour and daily deals for more than a year and half. From April 2011 to October 2012 this business ran three deals and has had an active deal and happy hour every month…
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Blippar, Shopkick
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan ask: Do we need another coupon platform? Retailmenot thinks so. Product launches by SpotBros, Pretzil and Busbud PLUS Blippar shows us augmented reality’s potential, the greatest mobile payments info graphic ever and special guest Alexis Rask from Shopkick.
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Rolls Out Search, Google Preps Maps for Apple
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Goodbye to Daily Deals? Groupon Emphasizes Always-On Deals (AllThingsD)… Google Preps Maps App for Apple Devices (The Wall Street Journal)… Daily Deals Dead? Zulily Says No, Raises $85M from Andreessen (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Poll: Peers and Company Websites Are Go-tos for Local Biz Info
In a poll conducted in early November by Street Fight, 500 U.S. consumers were asked who or what sources they are most likely to consult before visiting a local business. The survey found that 37% say they ask a friend or colleague about their opinion of the business; 36% visit that merchant’s website; 16% examine the merchant’s reputation on review sites; and just 11% conduct local searches for information about that business and/or nearby competitors…
Street Fight Daily: AOL’s MapQuest Buys Everlater, Groupon Hires COO Again
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… AOL’s MapQuest ‘Discovers’ Everlater (Seeking Alpha)… Groupon Tries Out Having a COO Again, Promotes Kal Raman (AllThingsD)… PayPal Tests QR Codes In Shop Windows; Mobile Check-Ins At Stores For Personalized Service (TechCrunch)…
Hyperlocal Video Finally Comes of Age
Hyperlocal video has, until now, been basically an oxymoron. The local television stations push out a decent amount of video but it has a metro rather than a hyperlocal focus. Patch.com and other hyperlocal news networks have done a bit of video, but it remains expensive to produce and comparatively hard to monetize at lower traffic levels. This is why a platform like Glocal looks really, really interesting…