Conference Notebook: Taking Uber Beyond Taxis, Kittens and Ice Cream
Don’t worry OpenTable. Uber isn’t going to start booking tables — at least, not yet. During an interview at the Business Insider Ignition Conference in New York on Thursday, the company’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, ruled out markets like hotels and restaurant reservations that do not involve delivery as potential areas of expansion for the on-demand service while hinting at a future beyond the taxi industry…
Digby VP: The Next Generation of Retail Apps Will Change Everything
The Austin-based Digby is trying to help retailers adapt. The company’s Localpoint product, which has worked with a number of major national retailers including Kohl’s and Cabela’s, helps retailers serve offers and discounts to customers in their homes and offices, as they approach the store and within the store. Street Fight sat down with Eric Newman, Vice President of Products and Marketing at Digby to learn more about how retailers can develop richer location aware apps to speak to consumers in a relevant way and drive in-store visits…
How To Use Location To Find Black Friday Shoppers on Mobile
Retailers in the U.S. will debut their Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving this year, in an attempt to expand the annual buying binge, which accounted for $11.1 billion in sales last year, by a few more hours. For one-time events where consumers often break habitual patterns, a consumer’s proximity to a store may not be the best indicator of intent. But a deeper look into where shoppers go in the past may tell a more compelling story for marketers, according to new research from location analytics firm Placed…
Selling Search to Small Businesses
It’s no secret that national brands are investing heavily in local marketing and small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are feeling the increased competitive pinch. After all, there are only so many people looking for a given product or service in one’s neighborhood. But while national brands will likely continue to dominate TV, print and radio advertising, digital marketing offers SMBs a rare opportunity to compete with national brands on equal footing…
Street Fight Daily: How Google Maps Lost, Groupon’s Risky Initiative
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Apple Maps: How Google Lost When Everyone Thought It Had Won (Guardian)… The Risky Groupon Initiative That Beat Back LivingSocial Perhaps Once and for All (AllThingsD)… American Express Teams Up With Mightybell To Connect Small Businesses With Each Other Locally (TechCrunch)…
Handybook Co-Founder: The Key To Scaling Local Is Great Service
Mobile bookings services are on the rise as consumers look to use their smartphones to do more than find information about local businesses. Enter Handybook, a New York-based technology company that allows users to book household services on its site and app. Street Fight recently spoke with Umang Dua, Handybook’s co-founder, to find out more about the consumer services space and Handybook’s plans to impact the way customers book household services…
6 Tools to Track the Real World Impact of Online Ads
The percentage of companies that analyze online-to-offline interactions is steadily growing — reaching 48% in 2013, according to Econsultancy. As interest grows, hyperlocal vendors are rising to the occasion and refining the metrics they provide. Here are six tools that businesses can use to track the real world impact of their online ads…
LBMA Podcast: Findery, Esri and Modev Founder Pete Erickson
On the show: Spindle brings payments to K-Cups in the office; Mozilla launches an open source location service; Tide tries to DOOH up their Halloween Vines; Aptilo launches ad-supported free WiFi in Peru; Google maps Arlington National Cemetery; and Yihaodian launches 1000 augmented reality stores…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Tests New Ratings, Google Brings Search Offline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Facebook Tests Out A New Star-Rating System That Could Hurt Yelp (Business Insider)… Google Brings Local Search To Digital Displays Across London (MarketingLand)… Yelp’s New Home Illustrates The Company’s Success (Forbes)…
Street Fight Publishes 2nd Annual ‘Local Merchant’ Research Report
Street Fight’s “2013 Report on the State of the Local Merchant,” gets up close and personal with dozens of local merchants who shared their desires, disenchantments, successes, and failures in hyperlocal marketing. In a Street Fight survey, 40% of respondents said that “ability to drive new customers” was the No. 1 reason to spend local marketing dollars. Second most important factor was “ensure the right people are being targeted”…
Explainer: How Local Data Startups Are Building Analytics for the Real World
There’s been a lot of excitement around in-store analytics recently as venture funding has begun to pour into the space. But the trend is one part of a much larger technological effort to quantify consumer activity in the real-world, bringing the same measurement about where we go, when we go there, and where we came from that Google Analytics and Comscore brought to the web years ago…
Revenue a Key Focus for ‘The Brooklyn Game’ Founder
In his much-quoted report for the FCC, Steve Waldman said that while hyperlocal news sites “do not make much money, they do not need to, because they function more as civic organizations than businesses, relying on volunteer efforts rather than cash.” But Waldman recently told us that The Brooklyn Game, for all its considerable civic presence, is, preeminently, a revenue-driven business where there are no slam dunks…
Street Fight Daily: Square Explores IPO, Google Tests Real-World Tracking
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Square Exploring 2014 IPO With Banks (Wall Street Journal)… Google Takes Its Tracking Into The Real World (Digiday)… The Cost Of Winning: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL (Business Insider)…
What Local Publishers Can Learn From Starbucks
Publishers shouldn’t think about “what thing” they should do to make money, but rather “what experience am I delivering and how can I extend that experience thoughtfully?” If something adds value for readers, adds value for advertisers, and strengthens your other efforts then you should be doing it today…
Why Local Marketers Need to Start Thinking About Their Instagram Strategy
Instagram presents an unparalleled opportunity to build and share a brand — to show a different side by leveraging this highly visual medium. Plus, the rate of customer engagement is off the charts compared to other social channels. What most marketers don’t realize, though, is that Instagram is also a local marketing channel. The reason for this knowledge gap is that, unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is very difficult to manage natively…