Street Fight Daily: Marketers Spend On Social, Clinkle Pivots (Again)
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
70% Of Marketers Plan to Boost Social Spending in 2015 (Marketing Land)
A large majority of marketers plan to increase their spending on social media marketing — both paid and organic — in 2015, according to a new survey. A poll of marketing professionals about their budgetary plans for digital marketing and found that 70% plan to boost spending on social media advertising this year.
How ZocDoc Grew Its Healthcare Booking Site Into a $1.6 Billion Business (Street Fight)
Street Fight recently caught up with Anna Elwood, vice president of operations at ZocDoc to talk about how the company built up its customer service, how it balances people and technology, and how it decides where to go next.
Clinkle Pivots From Its Soured Brand To “Treats” For Sharing Discounts (TechCrunch)
Not since Color has a startup been as widely laughed at as the troubled Stanford payments startup Clinkle. So it’s little surprise that the company has changed the name of its app to “Treats”, as well as its direction.
4 Reasons Location-Based Services Will Become a Thing Again in 2015 (Street Fight)
Michael Chasen: With improved technology, developers will be equipped to build apps that can truly extract relevant real-world user experience. Location will mean more than a wandering blue dot; it will mean the places we’ve traveled, the relationships we’ve developed, and the resolutions we’ve kept.
How Zomato Plans to Eat Yelp’s Lunch in America (Quartz)
The Indian start-up believes it has an edge over the American company because of its “curated content”—a complete library of menus, lists of restaurants and photos of food and restaurant interiors and exteriors that is carefully collected and posted by Zomato employees.
Attention Retailers: You Are Now a Warehouse (AdExchanger)
“Stores as we knew them are over,” said Lee Peterson, EVP of brand strategy and design at retail consultancy WD Partners at the 2015 National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City on Monday. According to research by WD Partners, in-store visits have fallen at least 5% every month for the past 30 months.
UpStart or the Business Side of Mission Local. This Week: Sales! (Mission Local)
Lydia Chavez: When UC Berkeley announced last year that it would stop year-round funding Mission Local as well as the other hyper-local news sites, I decided to spin it off. Now, I’ve just survived my first week as a saleswoman—urging local businesses to buy memberships in Mission Local and promoting the brand with readers, too. It hasn’t been pretty.
How to Get Closer to Customers with Local Marketing (AdAge)
Jon Schepke: Rest assured, there is one surefire way national marketers can build their brands — at the local level. Local is a great way to create closer connections across search, social and mobile, in the moments where and when it matters.
Uber Makes Nice With Cities, Offering Them Ride Data for Traffic Planning (ReadWrite)
Uber is offering an olive branch to the city governments it’s often clashed with by sharing some of its transportation data to help with traffic planning. Boston will be first in line, the company said Tuesday. This marks the first time Uber has opened up its data trove to anyone, but it could be argued that the company is returning a favor.
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