News and Analysis
Tinuiti Sees Real Bright Spots in the Digital Ad Landscape
Tinuiti, the largest independent performance-marketing firm that measures across Streaming TV as well as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, has published “Q1 2023 Digital Ads Benchmark Report”. This report looks at trends across the digital ad landscape of paid search, paid social, digital marketplaces, and video and display advertising. Tinuiti has nearly $4 billion in digital […]
Survey – Consumer Buying Behavior Heavily Influenced by In-Store Digital Ads
Is the digitization of physical stores the next mega-trend in retail? That’s certainly the hope of Cooler Screens, the software technology company that powers in-store digital media and merchandising for retail. On the heels of an Insider Intelligence report showing that in-store retail media audiences are an average of 70% larger than digital audiences […]
Sleep on This! Mattress Firm sells for $4B
In a cash ($2.7B) and stock ($1.3B) transaction, Tempur Sealy International, Inc. just bought Mattress Firm, the largest multi-location retailer in the U.S. Despite massive changes in the sleep category, Mattress Firm still operates 2,300 brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S. According to a press statement, “[The acquisition will result in] 3,000 retail stores, 30 e-commerce […]
Commentary
Will 2020 Be the Year to End Black Friday?
Black Friday this year will probably look a lot like it would’ve been in about a decade; we’ve just accelerated the online shift. 2020 will be the year that Black Friday and Cyber Monday stop being shopping ‘days.’ They’ll be turned completely upside down for years to come as retailers embrace a holiday shopping season of deals, strategized and targeted based on insights from online data.
Locating Holiday Success for Small Businesses
Because of the enormous spike in online transactions, there are more ways for customers to shop than ever before, creating new opportunities for small businesses to connect with core segments and personalize messaging with data-based insights grounded in historical trends and real-time behaviors. The ability to target individuals based on where they have previously been is tremendously valuable as consumer behavior has been required to adjust to ever-changing guidelines at the state/city and local level.
Location Weekly: Grocery Store Lidl Deploys WhatsApp Chatbot
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers GameStop activating with a Pokémon Go partnership, Lidl’s WhatsApp Chatbot helping you plan ahead, Amazon going after the office supply market with Smart Dash Shelf, and Powell’s Books launching a book-scented fragrance.
Latest Posts
Street Fight’s March Theme: Word of Mouth
One of the oldest and still most influential drivers of local commerce is word of mouth. Though that’s sustained at a high level, the delivery vessel for local chatter has evolved. Social channels like Facebook and Yelp now shape the reputations of brick-and-mortar businesses, not to mention the kingmaker authority of Google.
This month, we will delve into the latest trends and insights driving reputation management, taking Word of Mouth as our theme.
Consumers Split on Personalized Ads
In the year of the California Consumer Privacy Act, the data privacy movement is ascendant, and marketers are likely more aware of consumer concerns about tracking than ever before. But a fresh survey of 993 Internet users from audience intelligence firm DISQO suggests that marketers will need to continue navigating the trade-off between providing consumers the only type of ads they widely welcome — personalized ones matched to their interests — and transparently requesting consent for the kinds of tracking that make personalized ads possible.
Creating and Maintaining a Cohesive Digital Brand Image
Visual consistency is about perception. It’s the ability to pick out, recognize, and immediately understand something you see. Coca-Cola is a great example. You can instantly recognize the simple, iconic red and white colors paired with its cursive font anywhere and in any language. Even for its holiday campaign, Coca-Cola used its colors to its advantage. Remember the famously adorable polar bears wearing red scarves that stood out from its soft, white fur and snowy background? Classic.
This goes to show the power of strong, cohesive branding. Customizing the language, photography, color palette, layout, and written content of your brand’s digital marketing materials can go a long way. In fact, a recent study by LucidPress discovered that consistent brand presentation increases overall revenue and growth by 33%.
Influencer Marketing Moves into the Mainstream
Influencer marketing is working its way into the toolboxes of major corporations, and I’m not just talking about Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg’s meme squad. Household brands including McDonald’s, Walmart, and Anheuser-Busch have turned to Linqia to test the practice.
The Pitfalls and Opportunities of Screen-Free Customer Service
One vertical that has been able to integrate voice into customer service in a meaningful way is retail. National retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and REI Co-op have created skills or teamed up with technology providers to connect with customers through voice-controlled assistants. Some retailers are accepting orders via voice, and others are doling out product information and reviews. What the most successful of these companies have in common is a defined strategy and plans to measure ROI.
Location Weekly: Puma Brings Hologram Ads to Car Tops
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Pearl Jam releasing a new single via AR over the Moon, Outfront’s Valentine’s campaign that blends Instagram AR and OOH, Puma bringing hologram ads to car tops at the NBA All-Star game, Uber letting seniors use their phones, Dwise partnering with Digital Element for ad targeting, and IKEA letting customers use time as currency.
4 Ways to Retain Customers with Event Marketing
Customer retention is usually faster and costs a lot less than acquiring new customers. By putting your customers through the funnel, you’ve already done the hard part. To keep the momentum going, it’s important to create a set of initiatives that increases customer value, encourages further purchases, and fosters brand ambassadors to promote your company.
Experiential marketing through events helps brands achieve these goals. The aim is to create memorable experiences that engender high degrees of loyalty. Here are four ways you can leverage event marketing to retain your customers.
Leveraging Voice: A Path for Brand Marketers
It’s important that companies can see who their customers are and what transactions are associated with each customer via voice assistants. This sort of knowledge is necessary for brands to make the channel a valuable part of an overarching loyalty strategy.
Given that voice is currently owned by just a few select companies, it’s important for brands to figure out how they will leverage voice differently from company to company or device to device. Will retail brands keep the same strategy with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, or will they find unique ways to take advantage of these platforms across differences?
What Does Customer Experience Mean in a Voice-First World?
The trend of moving customer experience beyond the screen has been dubbed “conversational customer care.” It’s still unclear just how many channels are included under this umbrella or how the future of conversational customer care will look. Brands that are dealing with demanding customers can’t afford to sit back and wait for this to play out. Screen-free customer experiences could be the future. They could be just a single touchpoint in the broader context of customer experience strategy. Or, they could just be a passing fad.
But the chances that voice-first customer experiences are a fad seem to be shrinking.
This Election Season, Candidates Should Take Voter Data Privacy Concerns into Account
In the wake of Cambridge Analytica and privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, the advertising landscape has changed, as have consumers’ perceptions about data collection and privacy. Candidates still need ways to reach their target audience effectively, and they should do so while being mindful of compliance issues and Americans’ privacy concerns.
The 2019-2020 advertising cycle will generate an estimated $6 billion in political media spending, $1.6 billion of which will be spent on digital video, according to Politico’s spending projections. This is up from $0.74 billion on digital video in 2018, so we are talking exponential growth. Many candidates will wash their hands of marketing decisions, entrusting their staff and partners to decide how to best use their campaign dollars. But candidates should use their advertising strategies to make a political statement—to show voters they care about ethical data practices.
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