News and Analysis
How Retailers Are Preparing to Stand Out on Black Friday
Black Friday and the holiday shopping rush are getting closer — and retailers are getting prepared. Inflation and economic uncertainty have the potential to make the 2022 holiday season a rocky one, putting extra pressure on retailers to beef up their marketing and advertising strategies even earlier than usual.
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Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Help You Through Covid-19
In the affiliate marketing ecosystem, brands partner with bloggers, influencers, publishers, even other brands to promote their products or services. By only paying for sales, leads, or new customers that their partners deliver, affiliate marketing allows brands to efficiently scale while optimizing their return on ad spend and cost per action (CPA).
Brands with creative and agile affiliate programs are the ones who will have loyal customers and partners long after this global crisis is over. With that in mind, here are some ways brands are adjusting their affiliate marketing strategies in the time of Covid-19.
Location Weekly: Reveal Mobile Raises Fresh Funding
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts two new guests: Denise McKenzie, director of the Benchmark Initiative at Geovation, and Walter Geer III, SVP, Group Creative Director, at TBWA/WorldHealth.
The team also covers Reveal Mobile being awarded a patent and raising fresh funding as well as EQ Works partnering with Opta Information to use location data for the insurance industry.
Can Local Commerce and Tech Work From Home?
I’ve worked from a home office since 2002. Forced into it — and initially opposed due to unfamiliarity — I didn’t like the isolation. But after acclimating, I became more productive, happier, and healthier than in any previous office job. Now, 18 years later, I may never go back.
One question is if that same realization will sink into corporate ranks now forced to #WFH. Could adjusting to working from home be a silver lining for some industries? In being forced to try new ways of doing business, could we discover habits that work better than older conventions? How might this principle play out in local businesses?
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Welcome to the New Face of Street Fight
Things are changing rapidly in the world of location-based media and commerce. As a key media and publishing entity at the center of those industries, Street Fight is likewise changing. Over the coming weeks, you’ll notice new things. Our look and feel has changed to better reflect our publishing goals and persona. You may have already noticed a cleaner and more organized layout. We’ll continue to optimize that, including topical filters and categorization for key topics of location technology.
Street Fight’s March Focus: Targeting Location
Our new year’s resolution at Street Fight is to better optimize and structure our publishing and content output. So we’ve launched monthly themes—an editorial focus that zeroes in on key subtopics of location tech and commerce. This thematic approach joins ongoing daily reporting. We’ve already started with themes for January (Beyond the Screen) and February (Word […]
Local Search Association Crowns the Best Solutions in Local
At its annual conference in Dana Point, CA, this week, the Local Search Association recognized the best solutions in location-based search and advertising with its annual Ad-to-Action awards. Award winners, who competed in a field of over 80 entries and were selected by judges representing companies such as Google, Amazon, and Walmart, included Brandify, PlaceIQ, and Vendasta.
The Inside Story on the GMB App Rebuild
Damian Rollison: Google’s Curtis Galloway, software engineering manager from the Google My Business app team, offered a fascinating peek into that team’s development process this week in a presentation at LSA19 in Dana Point, California. Galloway’s presentation revealed aspects of Google’s user-oriented focus when revising the app as well as its customer-centric orientation.
7 Delivery Trends You Should Know in 2019
Greater customer expectations and technological advancements are driving big changes in delivery. What’s more, the delivery experience has emerged as a differentiating factor for customers when choosing one retailer over another. eCommerce retailers that operate solely online and omnichannel retailers that offer a physical and digital presence are both beginning to expand their delivery options to meet customer demand. Here are seven trends that will define retail delivery during 2019.
In Age of Social Media, Brands Must Stay On Top of Reputations Capable of Changing on a Dime
A single video posted to YouTube was all it took for Chuck E. Cheese’s online reputation to go up in flames this month, at least temporarily, when an internet celebrity posted his theory about the pizza chain’s misshapen pies. As viral conspiracy theories on social media become increasingly common, brands are finding that their initial response can set the tone and create a carry-on effect that impacts customer sentiment across dozens of multimedia channels.
AR in Local Commerce: Google Shows the Way
Mike Boland: A recent and relatively understated development from Google could portend the future of augmented reality. Its previously teased “VPS” was released into the wild for a small set of users. For those unfamiliar, VPS (visual positioning service) guides users with 3D overlays on upheld smartphone screens. Sort of a cousin of AR, this type of experience could represent the sector’s eventual killer apps. Though we’ve seen the most AR success so far in gaming (Pokemon Go) and social (Snapchat AR lenses), it could be more mundane utilities like navigation that engender high-frequency use cases.
Communicating on GMB Poses Some Challenges, but the Local Ecosystem Has Answers
Google has been hard at work on local in 2018 and 2019, taking strides toward making its Google My Business app the one-stop-shop for local businesses hoping to connect with customers through digital means. Nevertheless, local is a tricky, 24-7 business, and when it comes to connecting brick-and-mortars with customers nearby, Alphabet’s core business has some room for improvement.
5 Platforms Using AI to Analyze Customer Reviews
Beyond the star ratings lies a wealth of information. Sentiment and opinions can be used to shape the way brands develop their highest-selling products. Given the volume of reviews posted each day, however, it would be impossible for most major brands to analyze every customer reaction individually. Instead, a growing number of brands are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to extract and analyze the sentiment from product reviews. Here are five examples of platforms that offer this type of AI technology for analyzing customer feedback posted online.
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation