Covid-19 Accelerates Online-Offline Retail Convergence
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the offline-to-online convergence in retail, leading to a huge shift in the way people shop over a short period of time. Shelter-in-place orders have forced shoppers to purchase the majority of their goods online, and it’s made retailers rethink the way they’ll operate in the post-pandemic world.
Big0-box retailers have beefed up their ecommerce divisions, and we’ve seen dozens of major chains with new curbside pickup options. Some types of retail environments have done better than others. Hardware stores, like Home Depot and Lowe’s, have found themselves categorized as “essential” businesses, and they’ve been able to remain open in many areas with little adaptation necessary. The transition has been harder for retailers in high-touch categories, like clothing, and for those independent operators that didn’t have websites with ecommerce capabilities in place before the pandemic began.
What Comes Next For Businesses After Covid-19 Shutdowns?
As states around the country begin to reopen their economies, local businesses are looking anywhere they can for guidance. County health departments are issuing advisories about proper social distancing and sanitation practices, but what about the technology upgrades businesses might need when they reopen after their pandemic shutdowns? How might business contend with changes in optimal inventory levels if shoppers continue to buy in bulk?
Location Weekly: Verve, AppLift, and PubNative Join Forces as Verve Group
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Tanner Gatlin, the senior live content creator of NFL Media.
The team also covers Spotify and Chiquita Bananas teaming for prizes and playlists, PubNative and Applift joining with Verve to form Verve Group, and Coors Light’s #CouldUseABeer campaign.
Advertising Rebound: CPMs Tell Us Now is the Time to Take the Ball and Run
While some countries are slowly easing their lockdown mandates, for many, uncertainty still remains for when business will return to “normal.” And a big question hovers: “When is the right time to take our foot off the break and apply the gas?” When you look at advertising costs as an indicator of economic recovery, it’s clear that now is the time, and social advertising is the vehicle.
The Value of Audience Intelligence Extends Beyond Media—and That’s a Good Thing for Agencies
The trend toward brand in-housing of media operations has been a growing challenge for agencies for more than a decade now. As of this time last year, 91% of brands reported having moved at least a part of their digital marketing operations in-house. Many agencies have had to address the question: How do we stay relevant in an age of direct-to-consumer strategies and increasing automation of media execution?
As we enter the next era of audience intelligence, today’s agencies have a new opportunity to refine their value proposition to clients and reclaim their roles as strategic advisors, all by leveraging the same strengths and tools that once defined their roles as invaluable media partners. Let’s look at how agencies can help brands extend the promise of audience intelligence beyond optimizing their media plans.
How Brick-and-Mortars Move Forward
The coronavirus pandemic has transformed brick-and-mortar business, possibly forever. Peter Paine, former eBay and Walmart executive and now head of retail partnerships in the Americas for Cover Genius, checked in with Street Fight to share the strategies physical businesses large and small should prioritize to prepare for the near- and long-term future.
Heard on the Street, Episode 50: Reinventing Out-of-Home Advertising
When most people hear the term “out-of-home” advertising (OOH), they think of old-school billboards and bus kiosks. Those are still staples of the category, but its growth and innovation are being defined by other approaches at the intersection of physical media and digital targeting.
“People instantaneously think billboards, but it literally can be wrapping a ferry going to a music festival for a brand and throwing a party on said ferry,” said Quan Media Group Founder & CEO Brian Rappaport on the latest episode of Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast (listen above). “If you do out-of-home the right way as a brand, you’re going to hit that audience you’re looking to hit. That’s the challenge for me: finding the right fit for so many of the unique brands I work with because really none are the same.”
Contactless Commerce Is Suddenly Mission-Critical in Every Retail Category
The phrase “by any means necessary” is fast becoming retail’s new mantra. The same industry that is typically viewed as cautious and conservative is moving really quickly. More quickly than I have seen in my 35 years in the industry. And where is the industry moving most quickly? Toward something we now call “contactless commerce.”
Shoppers around the world are afraid. They’re guarded, and they are wary of any contact with any strangers. They don’t want you to come near them. In response, retailers in every category are absolutely scrambling to remove human contact from the shopping journey.
Augmented Reality for Ecommerce: the Why and the How
According to Gartner, in 2020 100 million customers will shop in augmented reality, both online and in-store. With these numbers in mind, it’s about time to jump on the AR bandwagon and start reaping the benefits of stellar customer engagement, improved conversion rates, and wider reach.
Playing the Long-Game with Today’s Low CPMs
As companies try to strike the right advertising tone given the global pandemic, it is apparent consumers are getting hit with the same messaging over and over — albeit from completely different brands: ‘Now more than ever’… ‘In these uncertain times’…. ‘The safety and comfort of home’… ‘We’re here to help’… ‘We’ll get through this together’…
It seems the same playbook for how to engage customers during this time leaked to every team. So how can brands break away from the ‘hipster conundrum’ (trying to be genuine and unique while everyone else floods the market with the same message and approach)?
Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Help You Through Covid-19
In the affiliate marketing ecosystem, brands partner with bloggers, influencers, publishers, even other brands to promote their products or services. By only paying for sales, leads, or new customers that their partners deliver, affiliate marketing allows brands to efficiently scale while optimizing their return on ad spend and cost per action (CPA).
Brands with creative and agile affiliate programs are the ones who will have loyal customers and partners long after this global crisis is over. With that in mind, here are some ways brands are adjusting their affiliate marketing strategies in the time of Covid-19.
As States Reopen, Conversion Patterns Point to Early Programmatic Recovery
The data that Goodway Group uncovered suggests that some marketers have begun to increase spend and re-enter the programmatic marketplace. Additionally, when looking at the regional level, the Goodway Group’s Benjamin Diesbach and his team are seeing that CPMs in many of the hardest-hit states have bottomed out, and they are starting to move closer to previous levels.
The impact on certain states reopening is still being felt, and while medium-to-longer-term dynamics remain volatile, Diesbach is seeing early short-term signs of programmatic marketplace recovery.
Location Weekly: Reveal Mobile Raises Fresh Funding
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts two new guests: Denise McKenzie, director of the Benchmark Initiative at Geovation, and Walter Geer III, SVP, Group Creative Director, at TBWA/WorldHealth.
The team also covers Reveal Mobile being awarded a patent and raising fresh funding as well as EQ Works partnering with Opta Information to use location data for the insurance industry.
Can Local Commerce and Tech Work From Home?
I’ve worked from a home office since 2002. Forced into it — and initially opposed due to unfamiliarity — I didn’t like the isolation. But after acclimating, I became more productive, happier, and healthier than in any previous office job. Now, 18 years later, I may never go back.
One question is if that same realization will sink into corporate ranks now forced to #WFH. Could adjusting to working from home be a silver lining for some industries? In being forced to try new ways of doing business, could we discover habits that work better than older conventions? How might this principle play out in local businesses?
Adapting to Covid-19 Using Location Data
My personal experience getting sick during the pandemic also got me thinking about how easy it is to spread the virus just by moving around and how important it is to abide by government guidance to stay at home or at least limit your movements. As someone who works in the location data industry, I have an appreciation for the mass movement of people, and staying at home and limiting contact with other people is the right thing to do right now.
I also had the chance to think about how location data could be used to help hospitals, governments, and businesses combat the spread of the virus.
6 Live Streaming Platforms for Gyms and Fitness Studios
The fitness industry has changed overnight as Covid-19 forces gyms across the country to close their doors. While gym owners wait for the go-ahead to reopen their businesses to the public, many are moving their classes online as a way to generate revenue during the pandemic.
Local fitness studios seem to be having the most success utilizing online platforms designed specifically for their needs. Technology companies offering fitness management software and live streaming tools have stepped up to the plate with tailored offerings for fitness studios and gyms, and some are even finding ways to work together with Zoom, YouTube Live, and other popular video services.
Here are six options that are worth checking out.
Social Distancing and Gen-Z
Social distancing and self-quarantining have changed the world in a matter of weeks. How is Gen-Z responding? They are flocking to apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat to pass time and interact with family and friends. Facebook and WhatsApp have lost their reign over the competition during lockdown.
To get a better understanding of Gen-Zers’ habits, routine, and lives during the pandemic, Brainly, the world’s largest peer-to-peer learning community, surveyed over 1,700 of them.
Yelp Revamps its Business Control Center and Releases Other Pandemic-Adaptive Features
The announcement follows massive layoffs at the company as advertising plunged along with SMB revenue in the face of coronavirus-fueled lockdowns. But a recent Brandify survey showed Yelp remains a massive presence in the local digital marketing space: 64% of US consumers are somewhat or very likely to turn to Yelp when searching for restaurants, second only to the leader across verticals, Google.
Yelp’s new features will prove especially helpful for businesses in the months, if not years during which Covid-19 continues to affect everyday habits, but a number of the changes align with digital marketing best practices that will serve Yelp clients well beyond the next 12 months. Below is a rundown.
Brandify Study Shows Consumer Search Preferences for Healthcare, Restaurants, and Retail
Google in particular has made significant moves in recent months to verticalize the consumer search experience. For example, the team responsible for the relatively new Google Travel and Google Hotels sites has reported that they built a new consumer experience for hotels specifically because they noted important differences in the ways consumers searched in that category.
Brandify’s study illustrates that consumer preferences for additional verticals are similarly differentiated, both in the channels consumers prefer for each vertical and the sorts of information they seek out when searching. Already, the search experience for restaurants, retail stores, and healthcare providers varies by vertical, especially on Google, which has added prominent vertical-specific attributes as a result of Covid-19 such as dine-in, takeout, and pickup availability for restaurants.
Using Zoom During Covid-19 Lockdown Exposes Users To New Data and Privacy Cyberattacks
Phishing attempts, coronavirus-themed fraud, and cyberattacks are increasing exponentially as fraudsters pummel organizations of all sizes in their attempts to gain access to sensitive information. They know just where to find that sensitive information, thanks to the inexperienced remote workforce that has been forced to work from home at this time.
In light of the pandemic, the usage of applications that enable virtual meetings has skyrocketed. One of the worst-hit platforms has been Zoom. Relatively unknown up until a few months ago, its use has soared in ways that the developers did not foresee before the pandemic struck.
Fortunately, there are steps people can take to keep their information secure.