Report: Brands Can Save Big by Centralizing Local Marketing
With 99% of co-op dollars spent offline, national brands are missing a massive opportunity to reduce marketing costs and generate leads for local affiliates, according to a new report by Marchex. The study, which analyzed data from past campaigns on the platform, found that by centralizing local marketing campaigns traditionally left to less-savvy local affiliates brands can dramatically improve the impact of their local efforts….
LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’
“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”
Case Study: Promoting Loyalty With Outrageous Rewards
At Vino Vidi Vici, an Italian restaurant in Massena, N.Y., owner Crista Makdouli wanted to offer something extra to help her program stand out. “For 50 [purchases] you can get your name engraved on one of our tables, so you’ll have your own table,” said Makdouli. “For a million [purchases], we will deliver a free Ferrari with a large pizza.”
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…
5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs
As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….
Street Fight Daily: Phone Firms Sell Data, A Day in Court for Yelp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers (Wall Street Journal)… Another Day in Court for Yelp (New York Times)… Hyper-Local: Not A Behavioral Disease (Medium)…
Swipely Raises $12M to Expand Push Into SMB Payment Analytics
The payments space is starting to settle down. The flow of seed funding has slowed, and a handful companies have separated from the pack, raising meaningful capital over the past year. Add Providence-based Swipely to that list. The payments processing and analytics play has raised $12 million in new funding in a series B round led by Shasta Ventures…
Waze Builds Out Traffic Maps to Add Context in Location
Andy Ellwood, the company’s senior director of business development, will be appearing on a panel at Street Fight Summit West in a couple of weeks in San Francisco to talk about how the future of mapping tech plays into hyperlocal marketing. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about how Waze makes money, the vitality of context, and fighting off Google…
5 Tips For Optimizing Hyperlocal Sites For Tablets
The real question for hyperlocal publishers isn’t how important tablet readers are, but how best to cater to this group. The publishing standards that work on PC browsers don’t always translate to tablet screens. Here are five strategies that hyperlocal publishers should consider when creating content for readers on tablet devices…
Street Fight Daily: Seamless GrubHub Merge, Wanderful Media Raises $9M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… GrubHub, Seamless, and the Importance of the Purchase (Bloomberg Businessweek)… Newspaper Companies Invest Another $9M In Local Deal Startup Wanderful Media (TechCrunch)… What Patch Employees Were Told During the Friday Evening Conference Call (Romenesko)…
VP Ghaffary: Yelp Is the ‘Local Layer’ of the Internet
Mike Ghaffary, a grad school friend of CEO Jeremy Stoppelman who helped to write one of Yelp’s first advertiser contracts, now serves as the company’s vice president of business development (and will give a keynote address at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco next month). Street Fight caught up with Ghaffary recently to discuss the relationship between content and data in local discovery, and why competitors will have a hard time “killing Yelp.”
Moving Upstream, PayPal and Square Make a Play for the Local Merchant’s POS
There’s a not-too-quiet rivalry brewing between Square and PayPal over offline payments, and this week saw the unofficial opening of an important new theatre: the SMB point of sale (POS). It’s perhaps the stickiest problem for both companies to solve in order to make payments work, and their respective announcements demonstrate a strategic skism similar to what we’ve seen in desktop computers and mobile phones..
5 Ways Brands Can Leverage Place-Based Mobile Targeting
The ability to target consumers based on location is no longer an emerging element of mobile technology — it is the standard on which all other strategies are based. The growing demand for this type of mobile advertising has brought on the development of new and effective location targeting strategies, the most popular being place-based mobile ad targeting. Want in? Here are five place-based mobile targeting strategies to try.
LBMA PODCAST: Square, BlockAvenue, and PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan talk about rumors that Facebook is looking to purchase Waze for $1 billion. Meanwhile, Square is set to check in to Foursquare’s neighborhood; BlockAvenue launches to give your city a grade; and Unilever goes hyperlocal with its rewards program. Plus special guest Duncan McCall, CEO of PlaceIQ.
Street Fight Daily: Mason Moves On, Aruba Buys In-Door GPS Firm Meridian
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Ex-Groupon CEO Mason Moving to San Francisco to Start New Company (Reuters)… Aruba Buys Meridian Apps, Eyes ‘Indoor GPS’ Services (ZDNet)… How Google Made Maps Human, Savvy, and Monetizable (Fast Company)…
Why Local Media Should Build Search Products to Take on the PurePlays
In order to appear competitive, most local media companies have formed digital divisions that offer services for local businesses that are available only through deals with pure-play companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which guarantees that a certain portion of the business we generate will always end up in their hands. There simply has to be a better way…