Hyperlocals and Scale: How a ‘No-No’ Can Be Turned Into a Win-Win
“Local doesn’t scale” is the mantra of many independent community news sites. Based on the recent wrenching experiences of some major corporate hyperlocal networks, that may be the case on some level. But what about the view from other end of the telescope — of advertisers everywhere seeking to target consumers down to the neighborhood level?
How Hyperlocal Publishers Can Strengthen Relationships With Advertisers
One of the key takeaways from the Street Fight Summit in New York was that the future of local lies in partnerships. Forging relationships with local businesses is absolutely necessary for any hyperlocal publisher hoping for long-term success. The question that remains is how, exactly, publishers should go about strengthening the relationships they’ve built with small business advertisers and other organizations in their communities…
Do Small Businesses Really Need a Website?
The website is the richest online repository of compelling information about a business, but it probably isn’t its primary means of attracting customers. Rather, customers who find you via Google Maps or Facebook may need to refer to your website in the event a third party search doesn’t provide enough information to make a buying decision. The website serves as a last stage effort to win business that hasn’t already been secured via local search…
Case Study: Udi’s Pushes Targeted Messages Using Hyperlocal App
Getting customers to participate in Udi’s Food’s paper-based loyalty program was never a challenge for Angie Hoagland, director of brand development for the Colorado-based company. But as the years went by, it was the lack of data that Hoagland was able to collect from the punch card program that led her to start looking for mobile alternatives…
Street Fight Daily: NextDoor Raises $60 Million, First Data Acquires Perka
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Nextdoor Raises $60 million In Funding To Bring Neighbors Together (GigaOm)… First Data Acquires Cardless Customer Loyalty Startup Perka (AllThingsD)… Yelp Loss Widens, With Costs Eclipsing Revenue (Wall Street Journal)…
Here’s What Twitter Needs To Do To Win Over Local Businesses
As Twitter hits the road to sell its stock to the public, the company’s monetization plans will take center stage. For Twitter’s stock to perform, the company will have to focus on growing its active user base, monetize its international users, grow mobile offerings and make money off initiatives like #music and Vine. But it will also have to crack one of the great white whales of consumer tech: the local market…
6 On-Demand Home Service Marketplaces
By going beyond basic business listings and customer reviews, and allowing consumers to actually schedule and pay for their home service providers online, hyperlocal vendors are closing the loop and converting more online prospects into paying customers. Here are six examples of hyperlocal marketplaces that consumers can use to research, reserve, and even pay for home service professionals…
Street Fight Daily: Inside Google Shopping, The Value Of A Yelp Review
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Meet the Exec Crafting Google’s Vision for the Future of Shopping (AllThingsD)… How Much Is Your Yelp Review Worth (Fast Company)… How Do You Build A Thriving Local Marketplace? Slowly (VentureBeat)…
How Early Stage Hyperlocals Can Determine Their Ideal Customers
Defining the ideal customer should be one of the first steps a startup takes during its earliest days, since the needs of that ideal customer will play a major role in the features and tools included in a particular hyperlocal platform. Here are five ways that early-stage hyperlocal startups can go about defining their ideal customers.
Schumer Urges Retailers, Location Tech Companies To Address Privacy Issues
During a speech at the Street Fight Summit in New York Friday, Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) spoke about his role in developing a privacy code of conduct for the location analytics industry, and the need for consumer advocates, technology companies and retailers to come together and pro-actively address the issue….
Why Partnerships Are Key to the Future of Local
The future of local lies in partnerships. That was the topic of a wide-ranging discussion between Ohad Tzur, North America Lead for Google’s Wildfire partnership program, Delivery.com CEO Jed Kleckner, and Leaf CEO Aron Schwarzkopf, during a panel at Street Fight Summit on Friday morning…
Mobile Payments Startup Flint Raises $6 Million in Series B Round
Flint wants to tap into local commerce by bringing payment processing, and basic marketing capabilities, to mobile — without a dongle. The Redwood-based company announced a $6 million series B round of funding at Street Fight Summit this morning to expand its solution, led by Digicel Group with additional funding from SVG Venture…
LBMA Podcast: Zumigo, Mobiquity, and the Explosion of Wearables
On the show: Zumigo uses location to combat payment fraud from the phone; Mobiquity Networks brings proximity marketing to broadway; Shazam breaks into bricks and mortar; Trafi helps map the unmapped; Google gets deeper into NSA territory; and Asda brings 3D printing to the grocery store…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Regulator Fight Continues, Google’s New Take On Self-Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Why Is Uber Fighting a Regulatory Battle That It Already Won? (AllThingsD)… Google Updates Its Self-Service Offers Tool (TheNextWeb)… Square’s Credit Card Payments Are Great, But Here’s What The Company Actually Does Best (Business Insider)…
For Groupon, Resurgence Is In The Numbers
Even as investors interest in daily deals company has waned, the game is not over for Groupon, and others in the deals space. After a calamitous 2012 , the company has bounced backed in 2013 thanks, in part, to a rise in the number of merchants offering longer-running, recurring campaigns instead of one-off deals, according to Jim Moran, co-founder at Yipit, who gave the afternoon keynote at Street Fight Summit in New York on Thursday…
Focus Turns to Attribution in Mobile Local Ad Tech
The promise of mobile local advertising continues to invoke the “closed loop” idea. The device’s portability and location awareness means that it goes to the store with you – enabling all new ad performance tracking opportunities. Nothing terribly new there. But it seems like the tech and media worlds are finally acknowledging that 93% U.S. retail spending happens offline. And an increasing share of that — to the tune of about $1.5 trillion — is influenced online and on mobile. So connecting those dots is the name of the game…