News and Analysis

Report: Consumers Accept Higher Prices But Demand Better Customer Service

Share this:

According to a new report from the conversation intelligence platform Invoca, rising inflation has consumers rethinking high-value purchases, like cars and home improvement projects. However, the majority of consumers say they’re willing to pay those higher prices if it means getting better customer service from their favorite brands.

How Marketers Can Respond to Price Concerns

Share this:

Consumers are feeling price conscious after months of historic inflation and a looming recession that some say the US has already entered. What exactly are consumers feeling, and how are marketers to respond? Ted Rogers, chief revenue officer at Digital River, checked in with Street Fight to share results from the company’s latest consumer survey. 

New Hires at BlueConic, Aki Technologies, Good-Loop, and Vistar Media

Share this:

The Street Fight new hires roundup features movers and shakers in adtech, martech, e-commerce, localized marketing, location intelligence, and more. This month’s roundup features new hires at BlueConic, Aki Technologies, Good-Loop, and Vistar Media.

Commentary

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.

An Overlooked Audience for Digital Marketers: E-Sports Fans

Share this:

The most obvious way to date to engage with e-sports audiences has been through sponsorships. In a move that took the advertising world by surprise, Louis Vuitton (LVMH) partnered with Riot Games to sponsor the League of Legends World Championship trophy gear, just as it does for the FIFA World Cup and Australian Open. Coca-Cola, Intel, Mountain Dew, Comcast, Airbus and Red Bull are front and center at esports events. Major brands are clearly on board.

But what if you’re not a Fortune 500 with millions of dollars to spend on sponsorships? Just like the “meat-sports,” the Overwatch League canceled its in-person games (or “homestands”) for March and April and moved to online matches, the same way League of Legends has. And that hasn’t made a dent in its value for advertisers. And what if you, like many today who are seeing all these event cancellations, don’t want to waste dollars on unseen impressions?  

It’s time to look in your pocket — the mobile device.

Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Accurate Location Data Can Save Hassles and Even Lives

Share this:

Updating your location data management information to reflect new hours, store closures, different contact information or special announcements is important for business success in general. In the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining accurate location data can actually have vital consequences for public health.

Yet a BrandMuscle study found that less than 60% of local business owners had even claimed their online business listings, which can lead to confusion about whether businesses are open or not. 

Latest Posts

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.

LBMA Podcast: Burger King Swipes McDonald’s Customers, Target Experiments with AR

Share this:

On this week’s LBMA podcast: AdMov, Xamoom celebrates “Silent Night,” Burger King swipes McDonald’s customers, Dunkin’ fools Portland, MA, Stella Artois’ beer-serving robot, Target selling Christmas trees with AR.