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What are the latest tactics in localized marketing, and how do they map to retail strategies as we enter the holiday season? This was the topic we batted around in a Street Fight roundtable for the latest episode of the Heard on the Street podcast.
Building from a webinar he put together recently, Brandify VP of product Damian Rollison first led us through a discussion of the top 10 tactics for retailers. They span everything from “blocking & tackling” fundamentals (think: correct hours of operation listed in Google), to more advanced tools. The latter can include things like integrating the Uber API so you can easily let customers get to your store when taking an Uber.
With his finger on the pulse of all of the Street Fight inbound news alerts, Managing Editor Joe Zappa then led us through an overview of how various retailers are innovating. And the proof points can already be seen, such as WalMart’s continued financial performance. This comes after several innovations and integrations such as Walmart’s new in-aisle AR features to inform shoppers with graphical overlays.
There are also things like in-aisle payments that are growing in use as innovators like Amazon Go pioneer the cashier-less store. And with all of the above, a trend is emerging: the retail as a service (RaaS) movement. Like SaaS did over the last decade, it lowers the adoption barrier for retailers to do things like AR and cashier-less stores and handles all of the heavy lifting for a monthly service fee (see Standard Cognition).
Check out the full episode above to hear us bat around these key topics, and stay tuned for more episodes like this, which we’ll phase into the podcast’s editorial calendar. Contact us if you’d like to sponsor an episode, find out more about Heard on the Street here, and look out for episodes every two weeks.
Mike Boland is Street Fight’s lead analyst, author of the Road Map column, and producer of the Heard on the Street podcast. He covers AR & VR as chief analyst of ARtillry Intelligence and SF President of the VR/AR Association. He has been an analyst in the local space since 2005, covering mobile, social, and emerging tech.
