Case Study: Steakhouse Takes a More-Is-More Approach to Marketing
At Franklin Steakhouse, manager Frank Oliver is always on the lookout for ways to enmesh his restaurant with the local community. In addition to tried-and-true tactics like partnering with neighboring businesses and hosting fundraisers, Oliver is taking a hyperlocal approach to digital marketing through platforms like Facebook and Yelp…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Guns For Square, Groupon’s Lefkofsky Speaks
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… PayPal Debuts iPad App, Furthering Rivalry With Square (AllThingsD)… Eric Lefkofsky’s First Interview As Groupon’s CEO (Fast Company)… Study: 55 Percent Of Mobile-Search Driven Conversions Happen In One Hour Or Less (Search Engine Land)…
Why Redbeacon Founder Ethan Anderson Returned to Local
A little over a year after selling Redbeacon to Home Depot, the company’s founder is back on the scene with a new startup, MyTime. Street Fight recently caught up with Anderson to talk about life after Redbeacon, building a local marketplace, and finding a seam in a cluttered hyperlocal space…
Street Fight Daily: Verifone CEO Out, Passbook Still Disappoints
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… VeriFone’s Bergeron Out After Outlook Misses Estimates (BloombergBusinessweek)… iPhone Passbook: Six Months On and It Still Disappoints (ZDNet)… Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy (New York Times)…
6 Platforms For Booking Local Services
Platforms that allow consumers to book appointments with service-based professionals (like plumbers, electricians, and mechanics) are disrupting the way local services have traditionally been scheduled. Here are six platforms working to change the way local, service-based businesses schedule appointments with consumers…
SXSW: With Pivot, Zaarly’s Focus Shifts to Merchants
Zaarly rolled out its “storefronts” initiative last fall, and soon will completely drop the consumer-generated request model it was founded around to shift entirely to a storefront selling approach. From a hyperlocal marketing perspective, one of the most profound effects of this is the way Zaarly is now counting on sellers to bring in buyers…
Street Fight Daily: Google Delivers Same-Day, Local Search on Mobile
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Shopping Express Test Partners Include Target And Other Local SF Stores (TechCrunch)… Only 29% Of Consumers Regularly Use Mobile Devices To Find Local Businesses (Search Engine Land)… Retailer Enthusiasm for Mobile Payments Tempered by Power Struggles in Industry (Mobile Commerce Daily)…
Defining the Local Coefficient: A Conversation with Yelp
A growing chunk of physical purchases are influenced online. And the path to purchase increasingly weaves between different screens. But for conversions, it’s all about offline. The question is how long this will remain to be the case. Out of sheer curiosity, Yelp VP Mike Ghaffary ventured to quantify this…
Street Fight Daily: Zaarly Pivots, Can Hyperlocal Scale?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Zaarly Shutters Its Reverse Craigslist Marketplace, Goes All In On Virtual Storefronts As Co-Founder Exits (TechCrunch)… Hyperlocal Cooties (Buzz Machine)… NY Daily News Releases City Guide App With MyCityWay (AdWeek)…
Publishers Could Gain More Control as Browsers Curb Behavioral Ads
As limits arise on behavioral ads, endemic sites (or sites with actionable user data) can essentially become ad networks. If browser limits mean that Cars.com can no longer sell its data, then the opportunity exists for the company itself to develop a platform to sell audience extension…
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — CrowdOptic
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at Guardly’s indoor emergency services; Banjo is chosen by Google+; Qualcomm’s greatest location advertising campaign ever; Hot Wheels tweets for Cameros; Sonar introduces us to the Bing Fund; and Andrew Mason shows his character…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Feed, Plum District Founder Out
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Don’t Laugh at Zuckerberg’s Newspaper Metaphor, It’s More Accurate Than You Think (PadnoDaily)… CEO And Founder Megan Gardner Out At Mom-Centric Deals Site Plum District, Ex-Googler Susan Kim Takes Over (TechCrunch)… AOL’s CEO to Haters: Our Content Strategy Was Right After All (and Patch is Fine Too) (Paid Content)…
Deep Cuts Brought Daily Voice Back From the Brink
Faced with uneasy investors and a cash burn of $500,000 a month, the company’s founder Carll Tucker wondered last weekend: “Is this it?” But after 48 hours of number crunching, Tucker finally came up with a one-page document that he was convinced would be Daily Voice’s passport to a secure future…
Banjo Founder: ‘Emotional Connection’ Is Key for Mobile
In less than a year, social discovery app Banjo has jumped from fewer than a million users to over four million. The mobile service allows users to discover real-time data across social networks and learn more about places, and it recently launched a tablet app. Street Fight caught up with Banjo founder and CEO Damien Patton to chat about the future of mobile, making money, and the value of data…
5 Can’t-Miss SXSWi Panels for the Local-Obsessed
The annual SXSW Interactive Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Tuesday. With five days packed with a wide range of panels and presentations, the confab can be thrilling and overwhelming at the same time. Here are five sessions focused on the future of local and social that Street Fight readers will be especially interested in…
Why Local Online Publishers Should Also Be Designing Merchants’ Sites
One of the most sustainable sources of income for local digital publishers ought to be web design and hosting for their local customers. Web design and hosting has counted for 20% of my company’s total annual revenue for the last five years. It’s a natural fit for publishers in so many ways, and yet I see very few who offer it. They’re missing out big time…