Case Study: Blimpie Closes the Loop With New Mobile Gaming App
“For a restaurant company like ours, millenials are hugely important,” says Steve Evans, vice president of marketing at Blimpie, the quick-serve restaurant with nearly 1,000 franchise locations. “They tend to be a huge customer base for years to come, and all the research that we’ve seen shows consumers make their brand choices — and their brand loyalty — early on in life. If you get people in their earlier years, they’re still open to change.”
5 Tools for Building a Community Marketplace
With their built-in audiences already in place, hyperlocal publications are able to easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting a community marketplace off the ground. However, technical challenges still remain, and building a marketplace from scratch can be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Now, a handful of vendors are offering a solution, providing publishers with the tools they need to create custom marketplaces that can be up and running in a matter of days…
5 Tools Retailers Can Use to Create Indoor Maps
Mobile navigation apps can easily direct consumers to a business’ front door, but once shoppers step foot inside — where the real action takes place — they’re usually on their own. Now, a handful of indoor mapping vendors are using hyperlocal technology to help retailers, malls and other large venues take the next step in guiding customers through the purchase funnel, with tools for developing interior maps that can be used to direct shoppers toward specific aisles or locations within an establishment…
Case Study: Lowe’s Builds On Mobile Strategy With In-Store Item Locators
As consumers get savvier in the way they use mobile technology while shopping at brick-and-mortar stores, retailers are beginning to provide their own tools to combat the showrooming effect. For Lowe’s, that means offering mobile tools that shoppers can use to locate items in-store, scan barcodes, read product reviews, check out image galleries, and manage their own loyalty program accounts…
8 Strategies for Selling Cloud-Based POS Systems to SMBs
Cloud-based point-of-sale systems are an easy sell for vendors working with small businesses without existing mechanisms in place for handling transactions, but getting an established merchant who has already invested thousands of dollars in a legacy POS system to consider making the switch to mobile is a trickier proposition. So what is the secret to onboarding more merchants, including those who already have hardware POS systems in place? To find out, we spoke with several experts from the mPOS industry…
7 Local Logistics and Delivery Platforms for Restaurants
Retailers can get away with one-day or two-day delivery timelines, but restaurants are held to a different standard. Meals need to be easy to order, easy to pay for, and they need to be delivered while they’re still hot. A number of local logistics vendors are stepping in with platforms meant to simplify the delivery process for restaurant owners, providing tools to manage and process orders digitally…
Case Study: Managing Online Reputation in a Healthcare Setting
As the healthcare industry evolves, it’s becoming increasingly common for physicians to utilize hyperlocal tools for both patient acquisition and retention. As the public relations director at Nova Medical Group, one of the largest integrative primary care practices in Northern Virginia, Melanie Schmidt is responsible for spearheading the group’s digital marketing initiatives. She works with hyperlocal vendors like Demandforce, CriticMania, and Binary Fountain on patient acquisition and retention efforts…
6 Ways Hyperlocal Publishers Can Take Advantage of Online Promotions
Local merchants are funneling an increasingly large share of their ad budgets toward online promotions, and hyperlocal publishers are well positioned to take advantage of this trend. Here are seven tips for how hyperlocal publishers and local media groups can best take advantage of the shift toward online promotions…
Case Study: Boosting Customer Retention With a Card-Based Program
Local merchants need to keep their customer base in mind when deciding which hyperlocal loyalty platform to use. After experimenting with a mobile-only loyalty platform, Alex Su, the owner of Tpumps Tea Shop in San Mateo, Calif.,was surprised to learn that his customers weren’t as interested in earning rewards through their smartphones as he had previously thought. A different kind of loyalty program from FiveStars provided an alternative…
How to Find Great Salespeople for Your Hyperlocal Business
Finding the right salespeople is one of the keys to success for any hyperlocal startup with plans to sell to local merchants, but identifying and hiring professionals with the right skillsets isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In an effort to bring some clarity to the issue, we checked in with five hyperlocal executives and asked about their strategies for finding salespeople who can effectively sell to local merchants. Here is their advice…
5 Tools for Measuring In-Store Visits Driven By Mobile Ads
Matching online ad exposure to offline visits has always been challenging for retailers, many of whom are unwilling to invest heavily in platforms that can’t show a direct ROI. Here are five platforms that merchants and CPG brands can use to get a better idea of how much in-store traffic is being generated by their mobile campaigns…
Case Study: Using Predictive Analytics to Improve Campaign Performance
In Greg Bucko’s world, data is king. As the manager of customer insights for Southern States Cooperative, a farm supply and service cooperative with $2.5 billion in revenue, Bucko is responsible for making sure his company is targeting its most profitable customers with direct mail and other marketing calls to action. His company uses predictive analytics tools to analyze variations in marketing campaigns, with the goal of being able to improve customer targeting…
5 Hyperlocal Platforms To Improve Store Operations
Using indoor positioning and navigation tools, retailers can pinpoint traffic backups, improve store layouts, and deploy additional cashiers when checkout lines have reached certain maximum thresholds. They can also boost sales with merchandising displays that have been specifically designed to combat the dreaded “showrooming” effect. Here are five tools that retailers can use to upgrade the shopping experience inside their brick-and-mortar stores…
Strategies for Overcoming Privacy Concerns With Indoor Navigation Apps
When it comes to the widespread adoption of indoor positioning and navigation tools among retailers, technology isn’t nearly as big of a barrier as consumer pushback. To help answer the question of how indoor navigation providers should help their clients deal with these issues, we reached out to experts in the industry. Here are their strategies for success…
5 Strategies for Finding Funding as an Early-Stage Startup
Although it’s a given that the founders of most early-stage hyperlocals need funding to bring their ideas to life, many entrepreneurs are still unsure of where to turn for financing during the earliest days. To answer that question, we reached out to executives who’ve founded hyperlocal companies and asked what worked for them…
7 Mobile Tools for Customer Communication
When it comes to customer service, convenience is everything. Businesses that expect customers to reach out with questions in person or via telephone are taking the wrong approach. Here are seven tools that local merchants can use to communicate with customers and answer questions about product availability, hours of operation, location, and other basic support information…
Case Study: Supermarket Chain Increases Basket Size With Card-Linked Coupons
At Lunds & Byerly’s, a chain of 22 upscale grocery stores in the Twin Cities region, marketing manager Dan O’Rourke faced certain operational limitations that made it difficult for his company to expand into the digital arena. To overcome these challenges, O’Rourke looked into vendors that offered card-linked coupons…
5 Tools Businesses Can Use for Predictive Analytics
Consumers are creatures of habit, and the behaviors they demonstrate today will oftentimes indicate the actions they’ll take tomorrow. A number of hyperlocal vendors are helping businesses create customer profiles based on in-store activities, purchase histories, and demographics. Now, predictive analytics tools are finally putting these customer profiles to use…