Local Marketing on Alexa? The Real Estate Industry Gives It a Shot
There are almost 40 real estate “skills” currently listed in Alexa’s directory. This is greater than those related to lawyers/attorneys, doctors/dentists, and a host of other SMB categories, and overall there doesn’t yet appear to be much adoption of voice technology at the local business level.
Why Carrier Data Is the Key to Unlocking Mobile Verification
Brands like P&G are placing new demands on agencies and media providers for increased transparency and accountability, which in turn has led to significant advances in areas like viewability. The next battleground is clearly verifying the data accuracy of the underlying ingredients – namely the quality of data used for targeting and measurement.
Where Local Agencies Help Brands Most
About a quarter of multi-location brands use local media agencies to help manage and evaluate their local digital advertising and marketing programs, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. There’s a modest correlation between using agencies and marketing effectiveness, and the agencies seem to help the most with TV and display advertising.
On the Various Challenges Facing European Publishers (and Some Solutions)
“As audiences age out, the number of print subscribers will plummet, and as older small business owners retire, old ways of doing business … retire with them as well,” David Mihm writes to Mike Blumenthal. “Legacy media companies that don’t evolve rapidly are going to be left with no audience and no customers.”
AR and VR — Will Local Advertisers Bite?
Local advertising is a $150 billion market, and is particularly conducive to AR, given the technology’s ability to qualify purchase decisions in the commerce-heavy offline world. There will be a land grab for this digital real estate as mobile AR gains consumer traction. There will be also questions about who “owns” that virtual space.
How Brands Determine Their Local Marketing Effectiveness
Website analytics are the most popular means of evaluating local marketing for multi-location brands. While that’s a logical tactic for analyzing digital marketing and advertising effectiveness, it hardly presents the full picture of multichannel marketing or online-to-offline attribution.
So Long Local Search — Hello Machine-Directed Discovery
Whatever you thought you knew about getting your business found online and on mobile, or whatever you are currently learning, is already obsolete. The way consumers interact with search technology today is on its way out. Why? Autonomous cars, artificial intelligence and voice commands are all transforming search into something we can only begin to imagine.
The New Local Ecosystem: An Interview With Darren Shaw
As of this year, the task of updating the Local Search Ecosystem has been handed to Darren Shaw of Whitespark, who also inherited David Mihm’s other well-known brainchild, the Local Search Ranking Factors report. Last week, Darren released Local Search Ecosystem 2017, a bold departure in visual design and a much-needed update to the last edition, from 2014.
Google Elevates Local Marketing to Prime Time
Many industry watchers and practitioners correctly perceived the GMB API as a sign of how important it is for businesses to manage their location data properly. But the progression of the API represents something even bigger: empowering businesses to elevate and measure the value of local search marketing.
Cultural Shifts Underlines Google’s Local Enterprise Play
“Google at one time talked about a suite of GMB products called the Business Builder but it got left on the cutting room floor of the forced march to Google Plus and the subsequent ugly separation,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “It’s refreshing to see a similar strategy finally coming to fruition. I think we are seeing them being slowly tied together.”
New Street Fight Report: Benchmarking and Best Practices in Enterprise Local Marketing
The report Enterprise Local Marketers 2017: Benchmarking and Best Practices examines current trends in their local marketing tactics, channels, and operations. By analyzing the survey data and correlating digital marketing effectiveness with spending, tactics, and management, Street Fight has identified key enterprise local marketing best practices.
What Happens If Facebook Gets Serious About Local?
What Google is to search, Facebook is to social. Those same local business owners know that, when it comes to social marketing, a good portion of their success depends on what they and their customers do on Facebook. So if Facebook gets serious about local, could that change the local landscape? What would it look like?
Social Media Gets the Local Spending Growth, Partly by Default
Social media is widely used — and deemed particularly effective — by SMBs. But when you dig deeper, it looks like most local marketers are using social media as substitute for display advertising (and to reach mobile audiences) rather than as a uniquely local or even “social” medium.