News and Analysis

Text Marketing Delivers Massive Lift for Restaurants in 2021

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New data from the customer relationship management platform Mobivity shows that text message marketing subscribers visit businesses 44% more frequently than non-subscribers, and once a consumer joins a restaurant’s text messaging program, the guest’s spend increases by 23%. Measured over six months, a single text subscriber can be valued at $12.15 on average in incremental revenue.

Buy Now, Pay Later BNPL

BNPL Firms Spend Big in Battle for Market Share

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Digital ad spend from Affirm, Klarna, AfterPay, and PayPal as a collective group increased by 130% in the past year, totalling more than $52 million, according to new research by the advertising intelligence firm MediaRadar.

Digital Ads Are Getting Much More Expensive as E-Commerce Booms

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The cost of digital advertising has skyrocketed over the past 18 months, climbing along with e-commerce spending. That’s according to a report by digital marketing firm Merkle.

Commentary

Low-Hanging Technical SEO Fruit for Local Ranking

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Local SEO is powerful. If you run an ice cream shop out of Wichita, Kansas, then you’d probably want to show up on Google when a person there searches for ice cream. Search engines have become crucial for existing and potential customers to connect with businesses. 

Some business owners unintentionally set up obstacles to appearing on local search by improper site structure. Here are some low-hanging fruits to help your business appear for local searches.

Phone-as-a-Service?

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It’s becoming clear that we’re headed toward a new vision for our devices: the Phone as a Service (PaaS). Yes, sounds crazy, but look at the parallels between your phone and how/why other “X”s have become services:

X-as-a-service (XaaS) is delivery of X directly via the internet, eliminating the need to use and manage multiple and independent solutions on locally hosted devices, right? So, PaaS is the delivery of personalized media via the phone, eliminating the need to use and manage multiple and independent, locally hosted apps. We’re already seeing that happen.

Consulting Firms and Agencies Are the Perfect Complement for Data-as-a-Service

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External data is incredibly hard to use and make sense of. After all, it is just data. It is usually delivered via a big CSV dump or API call.  Most data companies just hand off the data to their customers and say “good luck.” In fact, a decent amount of purchased data just sits on the shelf and is never used.  

This is where the forward-thinking consulting firms and agencies come in. They have a massive opportunity to help organizations make use of external data.  

Latest Posts

SMB OS Operators: Part II: Slice

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Having raised $15 million in funding just last year, Slice is a prime example of what we call SMB OS operators: companies helping SMBs compete in today’s digital economy with a full suite of solutions beyond core advertising and marketing.

Street Fight Daily: Google Monetizes Product Searches, Amazon’s Next Whole Foods Move

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Partners with Retail Giants to Monetize Online Product Searches… Amazon Accidentally Revealed Its Next Plan for Whole Foods in a Job Posting… 10% Own an AI Device, 32% Plan to Get One, 58% Don’t Want Any…

Street Culture: Invoca’s Lessons for Active, Engaged Growth

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Based a mile from the beach in Santa Barbara, Invoca aims to maintain a culture in which employees know their ideas are important. The company sponsors softball games and ocean-side volleyball and boasts its own band.

AR Cloud: The Linchpin for Local AR

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What about the non-Googles of the world? How will they create AR and visual search apps that can map environments reliably and return the correct info or graphics? The answer is the still-theoretical but critical AR Cloud.

LBMA Podcast: Placed, CityMapper, WeWork

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On this week’s LBMA podcast: BAG Networks, Placed, Citymapper, Robomart, REI, BMW acquires Parkmobile, Universal + Amazon Alexa, and WeWork buys Conductor.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Launches Local Hotspots, Media Companies Shift to YouTube

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Launches Express WiFi App for Its Local Business-Operated Hotspots… Why Media Companies Are Shifting Their Attention to YouTube… Why Publishers Are Eliminating Programmatic Silos…

How Patch Has Quietly ‘Bootstrapped’ Itself Into 36 NYC Neighborhoods

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Patch CEO Warren St. John tells our columnist Tom Grubisich why he decided to bet big on hyperlocal news in New York City while other local publishers were shutting down or threatening to do so, retrenching or selling out.

Using Location Data to Engage Consumers on St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patrick’s Day is the most popular day of the year at most Irish pubs and restaurants in the U.S., but the biggest crowds might not come together in the cities you would expect.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Courts Ad Buyers, B2B Marketers Unprepared for GDPR

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Triopoly Time? Amazon Preps New Attribution Tool and Courts Ad Buyers… Forrester Says Only 15% of B2B Marketers Are Fully Compliant with GDPR… Google Will Prioritize Stories for Paying News Subscribers…

SurePath Capital Breaks Down Last Year’s Money Moves in SMB Software

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Last week, my firm SurePath Capital Partners released its annual State of SMB Software Report, which looks at fundraising and exit activity in the SMB software space in North America.