News and Analysis

Snap Scan Shines New Light on the Company’s Local Discovery Ambitions

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Snapchat’s ambition to become a socially fueled local discovery engine recently got a boost with Snap Scan, a visual search tool that makes the world searchable and shoppable. Connecting dots over several years, Snap’s geo-local efforts include Geofilters, Snap Map, Local Place Promote, and Local Lenses. 

5 User-Generated Content Platforms for SMBs

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As Google expands the local search experience to encompass more aspects of the customer journey, user-generated content is coming into play as one of the most important ranking factors for small and mid-size businesses.

Brands Rethink Return Policies to Build Customer Loyalty

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If generous return policies aren’t sustainable from a financial perspective, and restrictive return policies lead to high rates of customer churn, what’s the solution?

Commentary

What’s a Cloud Kitchen? Amazon’s Next Move to Revolutionize a Major Shopping Sector

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Jeff Bezos likes to say, “Your margin is my opportunity.” Like with Whole Foods and grocery, Amazon moves into new verticals and applies its logistics-first approach to carve out margins, then undercut competitors. It is even getting into shipping, in a move to own its delivery infrastructure.

The next local conquest could be restaurants. For Amazon, it’s not just about serving food, but doing so in a way that aligns with its forte: delivering things to your home. The biggest clues and synergies lie in its established delivery and logistics playbook as well as its recent $575 million investment in Deliveroo.

Enter the cloud kitchen.

Embracing Hyperlocal Creative at Scale

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The challenge of authentic content is doing it at scale, in a way that is brand safe, across all markets. While creating custom content could seem like a feasible task for international companies with endless resources at their fingertips, even legacy brands all too often struggle with personalized, custom, local content at scale. It’s equally as challenging for local businesses like franchises, small agencies, and Mom-and-Pop shops who are charged with many business tasks outside of content creation. One of the pivotal concerns in digital marketing as it applies to content and content creation is having an efficient process to scale content production. 

So, how can franchises, local businesses, and brands scale their creative marketing content to better reach local markets?

How Long Will Google’s “Calculative PR” Playbook Work in Local Search?

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Mihm: The engineering mindset that millions of spammy listings in a corpus of hundreds of millions of legitimate listings worldwide, or a (hundred million?) spam reviews in a corpus of billions of legitimate reviews worldwide, are simply “edge cases” that are beneath Google to prioritize reflects a profound lack of empathy for how their technology impacts fellow human beings — both consumers and especially small business owners and their employees.

Blumenthal: Absolutely agree. And a related problem is that they see customer service in the same context: as an engineering/cost-benefit problem to solve, not as a way to improve their product. As such they see the last 5, 10 or 15% errors in their big data solutions as just a cost of doing business that they have no responsibility to solve. 

Latest Posts

LBMA Podcast: GroundTruth, SOCi, Uber, Walmart

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This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan, Rob Woodbridge & Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Walmart acquires Spatialand, Indola, Quebec City Magic Festival, and Coke.

Street Fight Daily: AMP Sends Pubs More Traffic, New York Times Launches Ad Analytics Team

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Is Replacing Facebook’s Traffic to Publishers… New York Times Adapts Data Science Tools for Advertisers… Why Your Grocery Store Wants to Be Like a Startup…

Toward a Better Definition of AI in Internet Communications

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Under broad scrutiny, AI stands for “that thing we do with computer data manipulation that is somehow more complicated than layering algorithms on to data structures. But neither do we agree that the current state of AI represents actual computer or machine learning.

From DNAinfo’s Ashes, Three News Vets Are Launching Their Phoenix in Chicago

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The site’s non-billionaire founders aim to succeed with a radically different revenue strategy from their DNAinfo alma mater — their plan for domination does not include advertising. In this Q & A, director of strategy Jen Sabella tells how she and her partners are mapping a new way to make local news work.

Street Fight Daily: How to Spark Engagement on Instagram, DNAinfo Vets Launch New Pub

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Guardian’s Instagram Strategy is Winning New Readers… Ad Agencies Expect to Stand By Facebook As It Loses Younger Users… Snap Finally Gives Influencers Data on Their Followers’ Engagement…

Snap Opens Its API to All Brands, Agencies, and Tech Firms

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The company is providing open access to its marketing API, a move that will allow brands, agencies, and marketing technology firms to explore advertising on the social platform more freely.

Case Study: Crayola Overcomes Facebook Algorithm with Co-Created Content

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Partnering with the in-product consumer sharing platform Vivoom, Crayola launched a holiday-focused campaign in the fourth-quarter of 2017. Consumers were encouraged to record videos of themselves, using a Crayola-branded filter, and then share those videos across social media as personalized holiday cards.

VIDEO: PlaceIQ on Location Data’s Expanding Role for Brands

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Location data continues to evolve. And it’s not just tactics for data collection and deployment, but the changing ways it’s being used by brand advertisers. We spoke with PlaceIQ’s Duncan McCall backstage at Street Fight Summit West about this evolution.

Street Fight Daily: Snap Opens Up Its API, Google Expands AMP

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snap Opens Its API to All Brands, Agencies, and Tech Firms… Google Takes AMP Beyond Basic Posts with Its New Story Format… Uber Posts Q4 Losses of $1.1 Billion on Higher Sales…

How Marketers Must Prepare for the Voice-Connected Consumer

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As digital media surpasses traditional, marketers must prepare for the changes that will result from connected devices becoming a common source of customer experience. Local search will be of paramount importance as consumers turn to their voice devices, and eventually their connected cars and appliances