Covid-19 Will Make the Workplace a Privacy Hotspot
More than a third of the 2,600 respondents in the survey said they want no relaxation of privacy laws due to the pandemic, 43% don’t want employers conducting medical checks and requesting health information, and nearly two-thirds don’t support disclosing information about infected individuals. While everyone wants to get back to business as usual, employers need to be careful that their efforts to monitor the health of employees and prevent the spread of the virus remain respectful of employee privacy and aren’t intrusive.
Have Generational Shopping Habits Changed for Good?
During the pandemic, we took a fresh look into generational shopping habits, surveying 2,000 UK and 2,000 US consumers to find out if and how Covid-19 and the measures taken to fight it had permanently altered shopping behavior. These findings reveal that shopping behaviors are converging across generations.
This E-commerce Startup Is Helping DTC Brands Navigate the Pandemic
While other firms in the retail infrastructure and logistics space are struggling, Whitebox is closing on a Series B funding round of $18 million. CEO Marcus Startzel says timing has played a key role in his company’s success. Whitebox was focused on solving e-commerce challenges for brands before the pandemic began, but the opportunities to work with major brands to improve and automate the e-commerce process have only grown over the past few months.
Why Marketers Must Invest in Localized Media Strategies
We’re seeing uneven recoveries in both localized Covid-19 outbreaks and economies across the nation. This unpredictability, coupled with new essential needs, supply chain disruptions, and business realities (stores closing, competition rising), have rendered previously effective marketing tactics virtually irrelevant. A ground-up, local approach can help brands and marketers solve for all these new challenges by reducing waste and delivering on those essentials that consumers need during these atypical times.
The World Outside is Frightful—Drive Holiday Sales with Social Media Instead
The challenges of driving holiday sales in 2020 do not signify the end of retail, as many sensationalized headlines would have you believe. This e-commerce-focused season is, however, a siren call to local retailers who have yet to take social media marketing seriously.
In the absence of typical frantic holiday shopping foot traffic, social media is a necessary part of holiday marking to effectively reach consumers who opt to stay inside.
What First-Party Data Can and Can’t Do For Agencies
Make no mistake, first-party data will play a critical role in the future of marketing, as it always has. But agencies as trusted advisors, and the industry overall, need to be realistic about what first-party data can and can’t do for clients, especially in the face of a global pandemic that has upended everything we thought we knew about consumer behavior.
Managing a Remote Team: 3 Tips From a Cool Manager
Striving to be a cool manager in the workplace is one thing, but managing a remote team in a global pandemic presents a whole new set of challenges that none of us had ever experienced before. Your team may face distractions when working from home, technical difficulties with video calls, a poor internet connection, among other unusual challenges.
When confronted with these issues, it can be hard to hold your team accountable and maintain positive relationships in the same ways you did previously. But as a manager, it’s your time to step up to the challenge, reassess your leadership strategy, and keep your cool while navigating the new normal.
Has Covid Killed the Single-Day Sale?
Limited-time offers and one-day sales are a mainstay of the holiday shopping season. But this year is unlike any other, and retailers are taking a different approach.
With Covid-19 restrictions limiting the number of customers who can be inside a store at any given time, retailers are looking at extending the shopping season to accommodate socially distant crowds.
Brands Are Struggling with Customer Loyalty in 2020. Here’s Why
The pandemic has sparked changes in consumer behavior. Some changes are predictable, like people stocking up on toilet paper when lockdown orders first went into effect.
But other changes occurring over the past seven months have been more slight and easier to miss. Now, with the holiday shopping season getting into full swing, brands are discovering that these minor shifts in consumer behavior have the potential to wreak havoc on their seasonal marketing strategies.
Location Weekly: Realworld Launches Adfindr for Local Ads
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Merrell using voice and location to highlight nearby trails, Burger King’s Scary Places, Foursquare’s Marsbot for AirPods, Realworld launching Adfindr, and a new case study from Oriient on indoor positioning.
3 Reasons Why Marketers Should Care About False App Reviews
Most apps live on Apple’s App Store — home to nearly two million apps and access to 100 million iPhone users. Once a brand joins these ranks, there’s one goal: Drive positive ratings that entice more users to download and try the app. High ratings are critical for app visibility, as a higher rating has a strong correlation to trial, and Apple ranks those with more positive ratings and reviews higher than apps with negative ones.
But this ratings system can be manipulated to create false app ratings and skew scores, and that’s a bigger problem for marketers than they may realize.
Accelerated Digital Transformation Levels Playing Field for Local Businesses
As local businesses and SMBs adjust to their new realities, digital transformation initiatives have surged — namely in the form of pivoting to e-commerce selling and delivery models. Why? It’s no secret that online sales have taken the lead across the business landscape during Covid-19, and that is likely to continue.
How Consumer Behavior Toward Auto Ads Changed During Covid-19
As one of the largest spenders on digital advertising in the U.S., the automotive industry is a bellwether. Prior to the pandemic, the automotive industry had consistent double-digit growth in digital ad spending. That growth was forecast to continue through the end of 2020 — then, in March, everything changed.
Why Your Local Pages Might Be Happier on a Subdomain
Whether to build local pages on a subdomain or within a subfolder has long been a topic of heated debate. I’ve never sought to sway anyone’s religious conviction, nor do I intend to begin doing so. If you’re a devout subfolder-er, then I’m sure you have your reasons, and I look forward to hearing them. I’ll add that I haven’t yet thought of any other instances wherein I’d argue in favor of a subdomain, but I believe local pages are an exception. So, for those of you still open to opportunity, prepare to be opportune.
Prop 24 Could Majorly Impact California Data Privacy. Will Businesses Comply?
All eyes are focused on the presidential election today, but for businesses, a ballot initiative in California could have major implications. Proposition 24, known as the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA), is seen by many as an even more stringent version of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). That has some businesses rethinking how they collect user data and questioning whether they might be vulnerable to lawsuits if the proposition passes.
Street Fight’s November Theme: Google’s World
Google’s World is shorthand for the fully fleshed-out concept: “It’s Google’s world… we’re all just living in it.” The main thrust is that Google’s search dominance gives it enormous control in impacting the fate of businesses everywhere who rely on search for traffic and customer acquisition.
Google’s ongoing updates to the search algorithm, ranking factors, and SERPs continue to have ripple effects on marketers everywhere. It’s becoming more challenging to follow the moving target of SEO effectiveness. This game has its own set of rules when it comes to local search.
How L’Oréal and Other Innovative Brands Are Reinventing the Store Locator
It’s true that most consumer searches originate with Google and other search engines and that consumers often find the information they need in third-party properties like Google Maps, Yelp, and TripAdvisor without the need to turn to the business website. But these sites and apps have limitations, only making certain fields and features available and generally presenting a uniform, abbreviated view of businesses.
Store locators, along with their companion properties, local store landing pages, offer a far greater degree of freedom for introducing features that differentiate a brand from the competition.
How to Create an Engaging Mobile Ads Strategy in 2020
The median clickthrough rate for ads on Google Display Network has decreased 32% since the last quarter and is 41% lower than this time last year. These figures indicate that audiences just aren’t receptive to mobile ads despite companies’ attempts to target ad messaging to specific groups.
Mobile advertising is not going to go away — the industry is expected to surpass $240 billion by 2022. However, companies need to take a dramatically new approach to see positive returns on their investment. Here’s how to stand out from the crowd and secure better conversions with mobile ads.
Location Weekly: Verizon Deploying Voice-Activated Digital Signage in Store
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Amazon giving customers money to purchase their data, Verizon deploying voice-activated digital signage in stores, Eight O’Clock Coffee hosting Java Parties, and Telluride converting old gondola cars into dining cabins for winter.
Getting the Most Out of Email This Holiday Season
Email, whether for acquiring or engaging with current customers, still remains one of the most effective and important ways to drive ROI — if marketers do it right. Consumers are already being inundated with email messages, sometimes multiple in a given day from the same vendors, so the more relevant the message, the better the return.
Here are some ways marketers can ensure that their email messages get to the right people at the right time to deliver the most revenue and build loyalty.