Commentary | Street Fight

Commentary

Lessons for Mobile Marketers From Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends Report

July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Dan Slavin

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The report focuses on several trends that should be of interest to retail marketers and their mobile marketing strategies. For starters, there is less differentiation between products, brands, and retailers. These days, products evolve into brands, brands become retailers, and retailers become products.

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5 Steps to Identifying the Channel Partners That Will Grow Your Business

July 7, 2016 by Eric Groves

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It’s no surprise they call the golden rule of channel sales the 90/10 rule where 90% of the sales are going to come from 10% of your partners. The best approach to this problem is to come up with frameworks you can use to focus on those most likely to end up in the winner bucket.

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Super Retailers Face Super Location Data Problems

July 6, 2016 by Gib Olander

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Managing location data across hundreds and thousands of locations requires dedicated resources to scale the data and change it. Just as importantly, a business must treat location data as a competitive asset, organized and managed like inventory.

Streets Ahead

Is Google Shrinking the Local Pack?

July 5, 2016March 6, 2019 by Damian Rollison

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The reduction of local search real estate represents a huge challenge to marketers, who must work even harder to ensure their clients’ listings can compete in a shrinking field. It also suggests that a strategy combining organic and paid efforts is becoming ever more important.

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As Gannett Acquires ReachLocal, Some Lessons From Its U.K. Exit

June 30, 2016June 29, 2016 by Charlie Flora

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As news filtered out earlier this week that media giant Gannett had bought ReachLocal for $156 million, it capped off several years of speculation in the local marketing industry about where the public company would end up. As a former ReachLocal employee (2010-2014) now living in Norway, I’ve watched the company as it has faced steep challenges […]

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Are Community Networks the Final Frontier for Local Publishers?

June 29, 2016June 30, 2016 by Scott Barnett

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What if local publishers changed their strategy to focus exclusively on engaging and connecting their community at large? It still requires the great content that they create daily, but also a powerful and relevant search experience for users, more calls to action, and a more native and engaging mobile experience.

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How Businesses Can Take Advantage of the Massive Opportunity in Local Data

June 28, 2016June 30, 2016 by Eli Portnoy

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The difficulty of accessing local data has been changing with the rise of smartphones. We no longer have to guess and approximate where consumers go, because mobile phones can provide data that paints a much richer picture of where, when, and why users visit the world around them.

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Online-to-Offline: Is Local’s Holy Grail Within Reach?

June 27, 2016June 30, 2016 by Mike Boland

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The outcome could be the biggest step towards local ad attribution we’ve seen yet. And Facebook’s sheer scale will force more advertisers’ hands — especially those still not doing more to measure activity where $7 trillion in U.S. consumer spending happens.

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How Local Publishers Can Make the Most of Non-Local Traffic Surges

June 15, 2016 by Manpreet Singh

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When local stories go viral, the often do so at the expense of local advertisers who see no added value in this influx of poorly targeted leads. So how do local publishers benefit from the periodic bonanza of visiting traffic without alienating their base?

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Why Attributes and Identities Matter in Local Search

June 14, 2016June 24, 2016 by Gib Olander

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Google continues to remind businesses that location data is the foundation of their brands. The question is whether your business is taking advantage of the opportunities Google is creating to use location data to build your brand.

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Bypassing the Hurdles to Bring Programmatic to SMB Advertisers

June 13, 2016 by Lynn Tornabene

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SMB advertisers care about reaching consumers, not the nitty gritty of technology covered in the ad trades. Local media companies and smaller agencies should focus on how programmatic technology helps them sell that outcome, rather than get stuck selling the technology itself.

Streets Ahead

Scaling the Neighborhood: A Community Focus for Local Services

June 9, 2016March 6, 2019 by Damian Rollison

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So far, digital services, even those focused on local, have done more to atomize local communities than unite them, training us to rely on anonymous resources for the information and recommendations we used to get from our friends and neighbors.

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Survey: Some National-to-Local Marketers Still Need Convincing on Digital Effectiveness

June 7, 2016July 18, 2016 by David Card

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Street Fight surveyed over 200 managers and decision makers at big companies in retail, financial services, and other industries. We asked them about spending patterns, perceived effectiveness, pain points, etc., around their local marketing and advertising efforts.

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Sussing Out Google’s Master Plan in the Post-App Era

May 31, 2016June 3, 2016 by Mike Boland

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Google’s counter-attack to the world of apps can be seen in several places. In fact most Google moves are to drive mobile behavior through its front door. This principle underpinned nearly every announcement at Google I/O.

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As Google Doubles Down on Mobile, How Can SMBs Keep Pace?

May 24, 2016May 23, 2016 by Matt Matergia

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Google has been refocusing its efforts to create a “better web” by not only increasing the importance of mobile-friendly websites and better mobile browsing experiences but by fundamentally redefining what the mobile web experience is altogether.

Streets Ahead

Weighing the Local Promise of Bots and Conversational Commerce

May 17, 2016March 7, 2019 by Damian Rollison

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Are bots the future of the internet? Maybe, maybe not; like the buzz around Google Glass in 2013, we’re in the midst of a moment when it’s hard to tell the difference between hype and technological breakthrough.

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In Google/Facebook Duel, SMBs Are the Real Winners

May 11, 2016May 25, 2016 by Len Short

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With Google’s recent changes, Facebook may now offer small business advertisers a better way to reach low-funnel shoppers — those currently in-market for a product or service, not just those vaguely searching for the category. Google’s move could drive many businesses into Facebook’s arms.

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The Real Problem With Duplicate Data

May 9, 2016May 25, 2016 by Gib Olander

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Duplicate information — or information that is exactly like something else — isn’t the problem. The problem is publishing inconsistent data (or publishing two different listings) that are referencing the same location.

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Will Phone Calls Survive the Chatbot Apocalypse?

May 3, 2016May 5, 2016 by Mike Boland

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The trillion dollar question is if this emerging chatbot technology will annihilate the phone call. Though I’m bullish on messaging and chatbots, the answer to that question is likely no.

Streets Ahead

Understanding the Local Search Marketing Funnel

May 2, 2016March 7, 2019 by Damian Rollison

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According to the funnel metaphor, customers travel in stages from awareness to purchase, the funnel getting narrower at each stage as some customers drop off and do not move to the next stage.