Commentary | Street Fight

Commentary

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

June 27, 2016June 30, 2016 by Mike Boland

Share this:

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.

Commentary

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

June 15, 2016 by Manpreet Singh

Share this:

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?

Commentary

Why Attributes and Identities Matter in Local Search

June 14, 2016June 24, 2016 by Gib Olander

Share this:

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.

Commentary

Bypassing the Hurdles to Bring Programmatic to SMB Advertisers

June 13, 2016 by Lynn Tornabene

Share this:

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

Share this:

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.

Commentary

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

June 7, 2016July 18, 2016 by David Card

Share this:

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.

Commentary

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

May 31, 2016June 3, 2016 by Mike Boland

Share this:

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.

Commentary

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

May 24, 2016May 23, 2016 by Matt Matergia

Share this:

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

Share this:

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.

Commentary

In Google/Facebook Duel, SMBs Are the Real Winners

May 11, 2016May 25, 2016 by Len Short

Share this:

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.

Commentary

The Real Problem With Duplicate Data

May 9, 2016May 25, 2016 by Gib Olander

Share this:

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.

Commentary

Will Phone Calls Survive the Chatbot Apocalypse?

May 3, 2016May 5, 2016 by Mike Boland

Share this:

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

Share this:

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.

Commentary

What Designing an ‘OS for Restaurants’ Really Requires

April 29, 2016 by Deap Ubhi

Share this:

When you look at the restaurant tech stack, there are clearly solutions, software, applications that should play nicely with each other, but the larger players have purposefully walled off their gardens. The next multi-billion-dollar company in this space will identify the mission-critical pieces of technology in the stack, and own them.

Commentary

Can Facebook Messenger Become an Effective Local Marketing Platform?

April 28, 2016April 27, 2016 by Greg Sterling

Share this:

The pieces are in place for Messenger to become a major new marketing platform. Indeed, the various (mostly mobile) use cases range from customer service to e-commerce. So far, none of my experiences has been great. But there’s huge potential over time.

Commentary

Why Online Locations Matter Even More in the New Retail Landscape

April 21, 2016April 28, 2016 by Andre Tiwari

Share this:

In order to compete in the the new information-rich environment, businesses have been presented with a new and complex challenge: to win the battle for consumer attention they have to appear wherever customers are looking.

Commentary

Displacement and Measuring the Unknown in Multi-Device, Multi-Channel Marketing Attribution

April 20, 2016April 28, 2016 by Manpreet Singh

Share this:

Now more than ever, conversions are the metric used to measure the value of every pit stop along the customer journey as it moved across multiple devices and channels. Displacement-based attribution strategies help marketers stay in step with consumers.

Commentary

Survey: Many National-to-Local Marketers Use Home-Grown Management and Analytics Tools

April 19, 2016July 18, 2016 by David Card

Share this:

Relatively few of these sophisticated companies make use of a common tool for managing and coordinating campaigns. That’s the case even though a third of respondents said various local programs were centralized at headquarters.

Commentary

The Rise of Text Messages as a Political Ad Medium

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016 by Dan Slavin

Share this:

The 2016 election will be remembered for many things, but for marketers it will be the emergence of text messages as a medium. Text messaging has become an essential tool in running a political campaign and every candidate now uses SMS/MMS to get the word out.

Commentary

Survey: How National-to-Local Marketers Plan to Grow Their Digital Budgets

April 13, 2016July 18, 2016 by David Card

Share this:

Street Fight recently surveyed decision makers at over 200 national-to-local marketers and found nearly half of them spend a third or more of their digital marketing budget in support of their franchises, branch offices, and distributors.