News and Analysis
Apple Launches Business Connect to Give Businesses More Control of Local Presence
Apple this week announced the launch of Business Connect, a new feature that allows businesses of all sizes to control how they appear to Apple Maps users. The move comes as consumers increasingly use maps apps to discover local businesses, whether by browsing an area or searching for a specific kind of business near them.
5 Retail Communications Platforms for Multi-Location Brands
If there is one thread that runs through nearly all the challenges retailers are facing in 2023, it’s communication. Using the right enterprise communication platforms, retail brands have an opportunity to reduce staffing woes, improve customer retention, and even minimize ongoing supply chain issues.
Commentary
How Location Intelligence Benefits Businesses During Covid-19
The pandemic has changed the way businesses function, and while a lot of purchasing has moved online, many physical locations remain. Location intelligence is one factor that can help businesses perform better. Its uses include supply and inventory updates, supply-chain improvements, sales and marketing optimization, and monitoring for increased safety.
Contactless Convenience Is the Next Normal
SYKES for FinTech recently conducted a survey to assess new consumer trends and discover how Americans view the next normal. SYKES polled 3,000 adults about their experiences with contactless financial technology (FinTech), like mobile banking, as well as touch-free purchasing, curbside pickup, delivery services, and other contactless customer experiences. The survey responses offer insights into the marketplace of tomorrow.
Yes, Brands Can Boycott Facebook — and Still Work with Influencers
While you want to be safe, pausing your Influencer campaign altogether right now might not be the right move. Yes, even if you are boycotting Facebook, you can still work with Influencers.
In fact, brands need to work with influencers in order to maintain a social and online presence and remain top of mind for consumers. This is especially critical now as mobile and social media consumption is up and online shopping is increasing, while budgets are up in the air and the election year crowds the marketplace.
Latest Posts
What Retail Has Learned About AR Since Pokémon Go
Retailers are only beginning to realize the potential of AR. As a new generation of shoppers steeped in AR grows up, their expectations will exceed the novelty acts the industry has put out to date. AR features won’t just be a one-off promo or tied to a game release; they will become the basis of the in-store customer experience, one that looks nothing like the retail of today.
Heard on the Street, Episode 32: Is Messaging the Next Brand Channel?
Conversational commerce, brands’ ability to interact with customers through messaging, continues to evolve. According to Quiq CEO Mike Myer, our latest guest on Heard on the Street, this is a function of the technology but also cultural factors that deter consumers from traditional channels like email and phone.
“Waiting for email to come back is like watching paint dry,” he told us. “So, if you’re in the purchase process, you’re going to go somewhere else to buy if you’re on a brand’s website and you have to interact with them on email. And making a phone call: There’s a whole generation of people who aren’t very fond of phone calls.”
German Tech Provider Bosch Developing 3D Displays for Cars
In the long run, this technology could pave the way toward an even more connected car. That means local advertising that could collect more data on user habits and lead drivers toward local businesses when they are on the go. As autonomous vehicles grow more common and sophisticated, the 3D displays could also be used for entertainment or other yet unseen purposes to enhance the auto experience of the future.
Brick-And-Mortars Are Taking A Data-Driven Approach To The E-Commerce Challenge
Brick-and-mortar stores have contended with competition from the likes of Amazon and the steady growth of e-commerce, where testing is easily done. Yet brick-and-mortars can also take a data-driven approach to the e-commerce challenge. In-store experimentation based on advanced data science allows them to test everything from the store CX to its operations with relative ease and in a scalable way.
Real-world, science-based testing isn’t limited to product merchandising. It can be applied across a wide range of brick-and-mortar challenges, new product launches, store remodels, loyalty programs and more. A test-and-learn culture like the one described here can take a company’s research capability to the next level, helping to avoid failed ideas, fuel faster new product rollouts, maximize marketing ROI, and ultimately driving better business results.
GrubHub or GrabHub? Thoughts on the Latest Predatory Industry to Target SMBs
“Growth hacking” along these lines is enough to gag a maggot, but there is the more “benign” approach of Google that says, “Let’s add an order button to every restaurant for the ‘benefit of the customer’” that is equally reprehensible. The business is effectively paying a searcher “head tax” to the food delivery companies on brand searches where the consumer just wanted to get the restaurant phone number, and the searcher was offered a big order button that is so much more convenient to click.
In Google’s case, it would be a simple matter to provide the local restaurant the option to turn off the Order CTA in the dashboard. Instead, if a business complains to Google, they foist them on the delivery service for resolution. (Or not.)
Alexa, Draw a Line Between Convenience and Control
It’s that factor, consumer data and Amazon’s vast store of it, that stands out most in Jason Del Rey’s reporting on Recode’s new podcast series, Land of the Giants. Specifically striking is the episode on Alexa, in which Amazon employees openly speculate about a future in which smart microwaves will hook up with Amazon’s growing healthcare ambitions to tell you when it’s time to stop making popcorn and smart countertops will join the intelligent kitchen conversation. As Del Rey notes, Amazon execs talk about this future openly, dropping tidbits about customer obsession along the way and appearing truly unperturbed by the thought that such interventions into our domestic lives may go too far or generate unintended consequences. Optimism for the quality of Amazon products and a fervent belief in the company’s benefit to consumers—without due consideration for products’ risk and would-be limits—seem to pervade the corporate culture.
Communities: The Next Generation of Customer Engagement is Here to Stay
Today, it’s clear that the way businesses are communicating with customers is coming to another inflection point. Not only can end users opt out of messages from brands they don’t want to hear from, but they have become numb to the “spam” they receive on a daily basis. Now, new age technologies have opened up a plethora of avenues for organizations to push messages out to end users, and it begs the question, what can be done to find even more information about your audience?
A new mode of engagement is needed to help supplement customer communication in the next generation, but how will this manifest? My money would be on community.
FedEx Stops Ground Deliveries for Amazon, Signaling Delivery War to Come
For FedEx as for the many other companies and industries Amazon has decimated over the past 20 years, the problem in confronting Amazon may turn out to be one of margins. While FedEx needs a profitable delivery business to survive, Amazon can afford to lose money on delivery and make it up with relatively free-flowing profits from Amazon Web Services and its booming ad business.
In fact, Amazon can afford, thanks to the faith and generosity of investors, to make no profits at all. No easy task, competing with that.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Scaling Seasonal SEO Across Locations With AI Insights