News and Analysis
New Hires at GroundTruth, Mobivity, Uberall, and Choozle
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 GroundTruth, Mobivity, Uberall, and Choozle.
How Retailers are Using AI to Create Dynamic Return Policies
Return policies that are frictionless, transparent, and consumer-friendly have been shown to lead to dramatic increases in profitability and brand loyalty, but bridging the gap between online and offline product returns has been a longstanding challenge for multi-location retailers.
How to Organize and Maximize the Value of Customer Data
We often hear that data is the oil of the digital economy. Very well — but how do companies acquire that resource sustainably and marshal it to reach new prospects and better serve existing customers?
Commentary
Location Weekly: Uber Eats Moves into Grocery, Foursquare Merges with Factual
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Uber Eats moving into grocery delivery, Foursquare merging with Factual, Filipino super app SIF expanding services during Covid-19, and the OutStreets app pivoting to monitor store shelf levels during crisis. Gimbal’s CMO/COO Matt Russo joins for the first installment of the LBMA series “Members at Home.”
No Time to Think Small: Innovate on SMB Reputation Management
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
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.
Latest Posts
Civil’s Relaunch Will Include Can’t-Fail Second Token Sale in Early 2019
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
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
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
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
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.
6 Lead-Generation Platforms for Local Businesses
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
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
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?
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
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.
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