The 5 Most Important Things SMBs Can Do Online
Taking your local business online doesn’t necessarily mean you’re trying to tap into a massive network of potential new customers. Perhaps that is the endgame for some ambitious entrepreneurs, but for many businesses — especially local and service-based business — the aim is to build and maintain meaningful online and offline relationships at a local level…
When Tools Become Channels: Rethinking Local Promotion Distribution
Promotional commerce between small businesses and local consumers is undergoing a massive reconstruction. In the process, media channels are being forced to proactively adapt or wither into irrelevance. Media channels no longer enjoy the spoils of having critical mass in consumer reach and limited competition…
Local Stores Become Showrooms for Online Buying
“Showrooming” refers to the act of using local stores as showrooms for more price-competitive online purchases. Retailers can get on the right side of this trend by beating Amazon at its own data-centric game. That means launching apps — or working with those that aggregate retail feeds, such as Milo — through which personal recommendations and incentives are offered to in-store buyers…
As Facebook Readies IPO, Local Strategy Is in Focus
Considering that 70% of small businesses already use Facebook as a promotional tool through Pages, the company has a serious leg up on the competition. Transitioning these users into paying customers means cutting into Google’s massive market share of local ad spend, and potentially replacing the search giant as the de facto marketing tool for local businesses online…
One Last Round of 2012 Predictions: Deals, Photo-Sharing, and Google Killers
In the coming year, the big names in mobile local usage (i.e. Yelp, Foursquare) will start to monetize their apps for the first time; U.S. mobile ad revenues will grow 50 percent over 2011, reaching $1.6 billion in 2012; and better targeting and personalization will replace deep discounts as the user “hook” for deals companies…
How Groupon Will Expand in 2012
As Groupon matures, its path will doubtless expand beyond its core product. Perhaps that’s why I have such a hard time keeping a straight face when people say that Groupon’s model for daily deals is fundamentally broken. It’s not. If anything, their second act has the potential to be even bigger than their first…
Hyperlocal in 2012: More Consolidation and Scale, Less ‘Free’
What it comes down to is that hyperlocal companies like Foursquare and Groupon, despite their “hyperlocal” raison d’etre, need scale to bring an effective proposition to merchants and big brands. Scale helps, even if that just means a larger audience within a metro area or even a single neighborhood…
Doubling Down on SinglePlatform
Your average small business owner has a limited marketing budget and precious little time to spend on their online presence — those that do have the resources want to see short term, tangible returns on their investment. SinglePlatform, a one-stop shop for restaurants to build a digital presence, may have an inside track on finessing this elusive small business relationship…
What Works in One Local Market Won’t Necessarily Work in Another
I’ve learned, sometimes through epic failures, what works in Tracy (a suburb of Sacramento, Calif.) won’t work in Tampa. However, I’ve also learned, through epic victories, that when you harness the power of 200+ communities for a common goal great things can happen. Here are a few bits of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way.
Hyperpublic: Structuring Place Data, Redefining Hyperlocal’s Scope
What might we see spring forth from the ether when local data is properly structured? It’s easy to imagine various applications of search — i.e. “Show me all wine bars that serve croquettes.” Similarly, one can imagine that this type of data would be immensely valuable to advertisers who want to target, for example, everybody who drinks beer and is in walking distance of an establishment…
Why Hyperlocal Marketing Will Best Gamification
Hyperlocal marketing strategy and gamification both strive to accomplish the same purposes: attract new customers and drive increased customer-visit frequency. And yet one of these won’t be fueling marketing efforts just a couple years from now. In my mind, it’s hyperlocal that wins, while gamification, as defined and promoted today, disappears.
Local Stores Become Showrooms for Online Buying (Part II)
Following up on a recent column about mobile local shopping data (and the dreaded “showrooming” effect), I had the chance to catch up with eBay’s head of local, and Milo founder, Jack Abraham to talk a bit about where the space is headed…