News and Analysis

Contact Center Should Be the Marketing Engine

6 Omnichannel Loyalty Platforms for Multi-Location Retailers

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In 2022, shoppers want more. The most effective loyalty platforms are going beyond transactional rewards to create unique cross-channel experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

Influencers Struggle with Measurement as Channel Evolves

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Many marketers still think of influencers as nascent affiliate partners. But as the channel evolves, influencers are seeking more sophisticated tools to assess their value and substantiate their impact as a marketing channel. 

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Retailers Shift Back-to-School Strategies

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The marketing promotions most likely to win over back-to-school shoppers in 2022 differ from those of the past two years. Competitive pricing is an area where retailers can stand out.

Commentary

How to Move Your Classes or Programs Online – Tips for Small Businesses

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A week before it ran several online classes, Practical Martial Arts didn’t have a video strategy or an online conferencing platform, and the couple was terrified about what the stay-at-home order meant for their beloved business, their customers, and their employees. But in a couple days they were able to pivot. And you can, too.

If you’re looking to offer online versions of your in-person business or are simply looking to connect online while we ride this out, below are some tips and resources to help you go virtual, too.

Location Weekly: Mark Michael, Warren Zenna, Pinterest Adds Shop Tabs Feature

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In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Mark Michael of DevHub and Warren Zenna of Zenna Consulting. Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez also discuss Pinterest adding a new Shop tabs feature and Burger King encouraging kids to do math for free.

How Agencies and Advertisers Can Target Relevant Audiences During Covid-19

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Since establishments have limited services to take-out, pick-up or delivery, advertisers are creating geofences where they know consumers are still going. Rather than using the actual footprint of a restaurant, advertisers can use custom polygons to include the pick-up area in the parking lot or the QSR’s drive-through area.

Getting creative to find restaurant audiences is just the tip of the iceberg, however. Even when large portions of the population are staying home, there are ways to find and advertise to audiences that are high-intent in a range of consumer categories. There are several commercial and public locations that you can target to help find audiences that are relevant to your clients and your campaigns. Below I detail optimal strategies for major categories of brick-and-mortar physical businesses.

Latest Posts

While Sales Growth Rate Slows, Amazon Marketplace, Cloud, and Ad Businesses Point to Long-Term Prosperity

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For brands hoping to compete with Amazon (and potentially looking on with relief at a sign of fallibility from their digital rival), the company’s earnings report brings the news that Amazon Marketplace, where third-party sellers can reach customers, is doing more than twice as much in sales as Amazon’s first-party retail platform. Marketplace is troubled by bad practices and fake reviews, and its prosperity suggests the growing challenge for brands to get customers to even go to their sites at a time when Amazon is essentially the homepage of the commerce-oriented Internet.

LBMA Vidcast: Urgent.ly Gets $21M, Adobe to Measure OOH

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Urgent.ly gets $21M, AisleLabs adds payments, Ahold Delhaize deploys 500 robots, TomTom sells telematics for $1B, Adobe to measure OOH, Walgreens tailors ads on coolers.

As Voice Gets Established, Brands Grapple with Implementation

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Consumer demand for voice technology has never been greater, and industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon are gearing up for a platform war as they work to integrate voice assistants into virtually every area of the connected consumer’s life. But behind the scenes, many brand marketers are struggling to connect the dots and design campaigns around a technology they don’t fully understand.

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Apple Takes Advantage of Facebook’s Foul Play to Make a Privacy Statement

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Not only did Facebook’s “Research” app, which paid 13- to 35-year-old users $20/month to access their search history, emails, and private messages, set off every imaginable alarm on the this-will-look-bad-when-the-exposé-comes-out PR radar (one of the world’s most powerful corporations must be lacking one of those), but the app also blatantly violated the terms of Apple’s Enterprise Developer Program, which proscribes distributing apps to consumers. It probably didn’t help that Facebook was searching tweens’ data for dirt on its competitors. 

Privacy, Poor Management, and Sex Scandals Can’t Touch the Duopoly’s Ad Growth—Yet

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It will likely take a significant downturn in spending or overall economic well-being for Big Tech to feel some major financial pain. And while great for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, that’s got to be concerning for industry watchdogs wondering whether these businesses are too entrenched in digital search, advertising, and commerce to be challenged—because the past year was not hot for Silicon Valley, and yet the presses keep printing dollars.

Building the Location Layer: A Conversation with Foursquare

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Last week, location technology company Foursquare announced its new Pinpoint audience segments product. Building from its large corpus of data on places, spatial movements and behavioral patterns, Pinpoint represents the latest in Foursquare’s evolution as the “location layer,” for the internet. We got the chance to sit down with Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck in San Francisco to find out more. Here is the full interview. 

Williams-Sonoma Sues Amazon, Underscoring War Over E-Commerce Monopolization

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Foreshadowing a battle over Amazon’s overwhelming control of e-commerce, Williams-Sonoma filed a lawsuit against Amazon in the final days of 2018, charging that the retail juggernaut used its market power to copy the furniture maker’s products and squeeze it out of the market.

Choice: The Ingredient That Drives Higher Mobile Engagement Across All Marketing Use Cases

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Dan Slavin: To appeal to all consumers, you must use a mix of mobile channels, such as text, mobile wallet, and apps. Your consumers have a specific preference when it comes to receiving retailer promotional messages. Your mobile marketing strategy must cater to this preference.

Inform Your Multichannel Customer Experience Strategy

Facebook to Integrate Technical Infrastructure of WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger

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While the move indeed indicates that Facebook’s chief executives are looking to centralize acquired properties that once operated with relative autonomy, the integration also marks a response to growing concerns over user privacy. Under this new technical configuration, all the messaging platforms will be endowed with end-to-end encryption, warding off the possibility that people other than those taking part in conversations will ever read messages sent on the platforms.

How 6 Brands Are Using AR to Drive Experience Marketing

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Worldwide spending on AR is expected to reach $215 billion by 2021, as new hardware ships and AR moves further into the mainstream. Acceleration in the AR market is also being boosted by brands’ growing frustration over the limitations in display advertising. With AR, brands can bypass ad blockers and unleash their creativity in a bid to capture the attention of consumers. Let’s take a look at how six top brands are using AR for experience marketing right now.