News and Analysis

Buy Now, Pay Later BNPL

Report: Brand Loyalty at Stake, as More Consumers Prioritize Affordability

Share this:

According to the Q2 Consumer Trends Report released by Jungle Scout, the desire to save money is driving brand, product, and e-commerce preferences more than any other factor. 

5 Customer Learning Platforms for Brands and Agencies

Share this:

A new class of customer learning platforms is supplying marketers with the information they need to create compelling digital content and target the social media users most likely to convert in the nascent age of discovery commerce.

Wyng Launches Tools to Help Brands Collect and Manage Zero-Party Data

Share this:

The zero-party data provider Wyng launched new tools designed to make it easier for brands to collect, manage, and use zero-party data.

Commentary

No Time to Think Small: Innovate on SMB Reputation Management

Share this:

A small business’ reputation is the company’s most valuable intangible asset. During this current climate, we are seeing successful brands adapting quickly to their customers’ change in lifestyle and priorities. They’re catering for their isolation with services that make their lives not only easier but also more entertaining. By remaining engaged and keeping conversations fluid, small businesses will be able to weather the storm as well as keep and attract new customers.

A trustworthy and actionable understanding of local communities is now more important than ever.

Here are a few ways small businesses can build and sustain a healthy reputation.

The Upside of Being Down: How to Market Your Small Business During Coronavirus

Share this:

Studies show that eliminating advertising during tough times can lead to a decrease in sales. Business owners may view marketing as a discretionary cost and forgo it because they are bringing in less. But consumer and advertising spend are significant drivers of revenue, even in the midst of a downturn.    

Coming out of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, marketers learned a valuable lesson: Going dark can have long-term consequences. Instead, business owners should adjust their marketing approach to reach audiences in thoughtful new ways. Here are some tips.

Location Weekly: Unacast, Krowdthink, Inpixon Tackle Coronavirus

Share this:

In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Unacast releasing a “Social Distancing Dashboard” to share how Americans are complying, Inpixon offering LBS tech to help hospitals with COVID-19, McDonald’s separating its Golden Arches in Brazil, and Yelp offering $25M in free ads to bars and restaurants. The show also features Geoff Revill, the co-founder and CEO of LBMA member company Krowdthink, who discusses the use of Community Krowd to assist the UK Home Office in the coronavirus crisis.

Latest Posts

Civil’s Relaunch Will Include Can’t-Fail Second Token Sale in Early 2019

Share this:

In this Q&A, Civil co-founder and CEO Matthew Iles, Vivian Schiller, CEO of the Civil Foundation, and Matt Coolidge, co-founder and head of marketing at Civil, detail how their decentralized and community-owned journalism network can be a realistic answer to the “duopoly” of the giant Google and Facebook search and social platforms.

The Location Angle on Another Bombshell Privacy Exposé from the New York Times

Share this:

What exactly did Facebook do wrong, and what do its supposed wrongs portend for the future of data-driven, and especially location data-driven, marketing? Here are some major takeaways pertaining to future legislation, likely consumer reactions, and the distinction between data selling and sharing.

Google Testing Restaurant Booking, Foreshadowing Ever Tighter Grip on Local Commerce

Share this:

The news is an important signal that local-commerce options like Reserve with Google will get sleeker and more dominant in the years to come. And it calls to mind a crucial local-search debate: Will Google SERPs and the many options for engagement with local brick-and-mortars on them effectively supplant the local business website as the crucial interface for interacting with customers?

Local Advertising’s Next Sleeping Giant: Uber

Share this:

Mike Boland: Given the attribution possibilities, its scale, recent delivery partnership with Starbucks, and existing Uber Eats infrastructure, Uber’s move into advertising looks pretty inevitable. Of course, it would have to gain internal competency as an ad company, so look for acquisitions or talent hires (or both) in 2019. And look for more rhetoric about the latest company to challenge the duopoly, this time in a very local way. 

Cannabis Retailer Uses Tech to Boost Employee Morale

Share this:

Old-school companies hosted picnics and holiday parties to keep their employees happy, but tech-focused startups in the cannabis industry are taking a decidedly more sophisticated approach.

home services

6 Lead-Generation Platforms for Local Businesses

Share this:

More than a quarter of consumers say they use the internet to find local businesses every day, and yet a whopping 29% of small businesses still don’t have websites. Here are six examples of lead-generation platforms that small businesses are using right now.

GMB App Adds Support for Service-Area Businesses

Share this:

As of late last week, Google is offering an update to the Google My Business app that adds support for service-area businesses. Earlier in November, a Local Search Forum blog post indicated that Google would be adding features to help such businesses with local customers.

Starbucks Partners with Uber to Launch On-Demand Delivery at 2,000 Locations

Share this:

Starbucks announced on Friday that it’s partnering with Uber to launch on-demand delivery at 2,000 locations. The partnership is a sign of the “near me” local search era for retail, one in which proximity and convenience have become paramount, outweighing even loyalty.

Will Consumer Privacy Be the Defining Issue of 2019?

Share this:

Though their terms are not identical, in essence both GDPR and CCPA are designed to give consumers the power to stop companies from collecting personal data, to review all personal data a company may have collected, and to request deletion of any stored data. Both regulations strike a major blow in favor of the concept that ownership of personal data ultimately resides with the individual and not with companies who may profit from it.

Efficacy of Google Posts Drops Following Relegation to Bottom of Knowledge Panel

Share this:

Following a seemingly arbitrary choice on Google’s part to move Posts to the bottom of the Knowledge Panel, their efficacy in boosting businesses’ local search presence seems to be dropping.