News and Analysis
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.
Retailers Navigate Post-Holidays Spending Slump
As retailers head further into the month of January—typically an overlooked month—they’re seeing shoppers returning and exchanging items at a rapid pace. They’re also struggling to clear out excess inventory before closing out the fiscal year and bracing for a tough few months ahead.
Let’s Replace TV Panels with Real Data About People to Reflect Changing Demographics
Because the industry has yet to create a new replacement standard, media companies are continuing to use Nielsen panel data. But the solution might be simpler than we think: more accurate, ethically-sourced data that reflects changing demographics.
Commentary
Big-Box Stores Will Win the Reopening, but Mask Expectations Are High
New consumer insights uncovered by Resonate are painting a picture for what to expect as lockdown restrictions start to lift. According to our latest wave of consumer sentiment research, shopping behaviors are already starting to shift dramatically. But that doesn’t mean consumers are fully ready to resume their previous daily lives, particularly when it comes to venturing into stores.
Location Weekly: Mobiquity Technologies Tracks Covid-19
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers PopID and Wasserstrom releasing a facial recognition and temperature screening system, Locomizer launching its High Streets Recovery Tracker with Centre for Cities, Mobiquity Technologies releasing “hot spot” algorithms to measure Covid-19 traffic, and Moving Walls acquiring Ahoy.
States are Reopening. It’s Time to Start Thinking About OOH Again.
Ultimately, we know that people will go back outside. And they’ve already done so, with the average distance traveled amongst Americans up at least 28% since the first week of April, according to Geopath and Intermx. With more consumers back out on the roads, OOH will rebound to “become more valuable than ever.” Now is the time for agencies and brands to get ahead of competitors, revisit their OOH strategies, and smartly phase them back into plans.
Here are five things to consider.
Latest Posts
Letter From the Editor: Retail Transformation Rules
As we continue to evolve the definition of “local,” one key component of its market opportunity is offline brick-and-mortar shopping. After all, about 90% of all U.S. retail spending, to the tune of about $3.7 trillion, is completed offline in physical stores. And that’s usually in proximity to one’s home (thus, local).
This makes retail transformation a key focal point for Street Fight. And there’s a lot happening.
May Focus: Visualizing Local
Street Fight is rolling into May with the theme, Visualizing Local: a look at how marketers are using visual content to boost visibility, presence, and conversions. This includes everything from images in search results and local listings to utilizing increasingly popular social media like Instagram Stories.
Foursquare’s Location-Based Loyalty Metrics Point to Best Practices for Casual Restaurants
Brushing aside customer surveys and other imprecise measures of customer loyalty, location intelligence firm Foursquare released a location-based report this morning that evaluates best practices and practitioners in loyalty among casual restaurant chains.
Most importantly for future considerations, the report suggests that brands can improve loyalty in all four of the areas that contributed to its index.
Voice Marketing Starts with Smart SEO
How can enterprises better leverage voice search for brand marketing? To start, winning in voice search demands many of the same strategies as search engine optimization (SEO), as the goal in both cases is to get your content to rank position zero on search engine results pages (SERPs) by focusing on authority.
Report: Consumer Expectations for Brands Higher than Ever in Age of Convenience
With the omnichannel age upon us, the impact of bad customer experiences is unprecedented. The main fear for businesses should no longer be a standoff between the worker behind the customer service desk and the angry customer who failed to get his discount; it should be the rant that hits social and is shared or liked a slew of times, dragging digital reputations through the mud.
Brand Building Beyond Reviews: Is the Local Marketing Ecosystem Ready?
“I think it makes more sense for a small business to buy ‘brand building’ that includes some community events and link building than for that same business to buy SEO,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. Find out what tech tools can build a local brand and why David disagrees partly with Mike’s suggestion.
The Power of Micro-Location Technology
The location market has matured beyond push. The value of micro-location technology is now built on hyper-accurate analytics on where users go in the physical world, allowing advertisers to re-target them with a variety of omnichannel marketing efforts. Here are a few exciting use cases that highlight the power of hyper-accurate location-based marketing technology.
Walmart Tests Out the “Future of Retail” in Long Island Store
There’s no time for the future of retail like the present. That is the motto at Walmart’s Intelligent Retail Lab, a live experiment in AI-driven shopping experiences that is now open to the public at a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, NY.
Facebook Expects Record-Setting FTC Fine for Privacy Violations
Five billion would be a record for FTC punishment of a tech company and would signal harsher scrutiny to come for an industry that has accrued unparalleled wealth and power with little regulatory oversight. Facebook’s fine comes after a saga of instances in which it failed to protect user data. Most damningly, the company vowed to shore up its data protection practices in 2011 and can now be accused of failing to uphold that promise.
How Emerging Technologies Allow Businesses to Merge Their Digital and Traditional Marketing
New technologies (and new spins on old ones) are the modern company’s ally in merging digital and traditional marketing. The brands that find a sensible balance between the two are the brands that will outperform the competition. Let’s take a look at four major examples of innovation in this arena.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Why AI Is Raising the Cost of Inconsistency for MULO Brands