News and Analysis
Opportunity In the Metaverse Isn’t Just About NFTs — It’s About Interactions
While there is certainly opportunity for brands to sell additional product in the metaverse—fashion retailers like Nike and Gucci are already working on developing pricing strategies for digital goods and services—branding experts believe the greatest long-term gains will be won through marketing approaches that focus on quality interactions and engagement.
Report: Retail Lags in Omnichannel Customer Service
Retailers around the globe learned to adapt during the pandemic, quickly pivoting to offer curbside pickup, mobile payments, and online storefronts. Despite making strides in digital adoption, a new report finds that many retailers are still missing the mark on omnichannel customer service.
Commentary
Impending Brand Safety Woes: Nasty and Misleading Political Ads Hit Facebook
If brand safety in the 2020 election season does not immediately seem concerning, consider the following: You’re an advertiser hoping to run digital ads for your advertising tech solution. You pay a publisher with huge traffic big money to score impressions on its platform. But as soon as a Democratic voter navigates to the site and sees your ad, along with it pops up a big Trump ad making inflammatory claims about Biden. The web surfer navigates away from the site. Who wins?
Last-Minute Shoppers Help Small Retailers Compete with Amazon for Holiday Sales
During the holiday shopping season, it’s Amazon’s world — or is it?
Outside the digital sphere, brick-and-mortar holiday sales at big-box shops like Walmart and Best Buy continue to be buoyed by bullish shoppers willing to hit the streets in search of timely deals during consumer-focused quasi-holidays like Black Friday. As a result, shoppers are spending more during the holidays than ever before.
And then there’s the independent, local retailer. How is a small shop supposed to compete with the ease of mobile e-commerce or the allure of big-box doorbuster deals? Turns out, they have an ace in the hole: last-minute shoppers.
Technology Planning: What Retailers Should Do Now to Prep for the Holiday Rush
Retailers will need to think differently when it comes to technology planning. With the holiday season looming, now is the best moment to develop a long-term technology strategy geared toward capturing more holiday sales in addition to driving revenue growth all year long.
Understanding a few key areas can help get the planning process started. This includes: exceeding consumers’ holiday shopping expectations, making holiday shopping more convenient, and enabling a holistic holiday shopping journey.
Latest Posts
Street Culture: Techstars Co-CEO on Coaching Startups to Define Culture
“I think that culture is one of the few problems that you have to address before they’re problems,” says TechStars co-founder and co-CEO David Brown. “If you’re struggling to figure out how to grow sales, you can wait until sales are in trouble and still turn it around. But if you wait until you’re in trouble with culture, it’s really hard to turn that boat.”
What Happens When Knowledge Panels Aren’t Actually Knowledgeable?
In the latest of their biweekly columns, David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal explore what they find to be a troubling practice on Google’s part: granting select platforms the power to insert themselves into a local business’ knowledge panel without any recourse for the business or verifying that the information is accurate.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Services to Marketplace, Sketchy Google Knowledge Panel Practices
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Marketplace Launches New Services Feature in Partnership with On-Demand Startups… A Fifth of Amazon Merchants Sell More Than $1 Million a Year, Double Last Year’s Share… How the Washington Post Is Building Its Tech Platform, Arc…
Heard on the Street, Episode 4: Growing the SMB Pie with Ilir Sela
What are the nuances and tactical imperatives of selling pizza locally? For one, it compels a highly verticalized approach: It’s all about focus and specialization on the sector’s unique operational challenges, according to Slice Founder and CEO Ilir Sela, our latest guest on Heard on the Street.
How Savvy Restaurateurs Make the Most of Online Ordering
“What increasingly separates top-performing restaurants from the pack is their ability to transform insights from data into strategies to grow,” says Liam Oliver, director of products for Valassis Local Solutions. “Savvy restaurateurs drive incremental revenue by designing promotions that raise the average order value.”
Street Fight Daily: Google to Follow IAB’s GDPR Approach, How Restaurants Can Crush Digital
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In Significant Move for Publishers, Google Plans to Commit to IAB’s GDPR Approach… How Savvy Restaurateurs Make the Most of Online Ordering… Banned from Amazon: The Shoppers Who Make Too Many Returns…
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation