News and Analysis
This E-commerce Startup Is Helping DTC Brands Navigate the Pandemic
While other firms in the retail infrastructure and logistics space are struggling, Whitebox is closing on a Series B funding round of $18 million. CEO Marcus Startzel says timing has played a key role in his company’s success. Whitebox was focused on solving e-commerce challenges for brands before the pandemic began, but the opportunities to work with major brands to improve and automate the e-commerce process have only grown over the past few months.
Has Covid Killed the Single-Day Sale?
Limited-time offers and one-day sales are a mainstay of the holiday shopping season. But this year is unlike any other, and retailers are taking a different approach.
With Covid-19 restrictions limiting the number of customers who can be inside a store at any given time, retailers are looking at extending the shopping season to accommodate socially distant crowds.
Brands Are Struggling with Customer Loyalty in 2020. Here’s Why
The pandemic has sparked changes in consumer behavior. Some changes are predictable, like people stocking up on toilet paper when lockdown orders first went into effect.
But other changes occurring over the past seven months have been more slight and easier to miss. Now, with the holiday shopping season getting into full swing, brands are discovering that these minor shifts in consumer behavior have the potential to wreak havoc on their seasonal marketing strategies.
Commentary
How Giant GateHouse Media Performed in Harsh Duke Study of Local News Sites
I went to Bill Church, senior vice president of news at GateHouse Media—the biggest publisher of newspapers in the U.S.—with questions about the quality of GateHouse sites that were put under the microscope in a 100-community study from Duke University that painted a critical picture of news deserts across the country.
How Brands Can Create Personalized Experiences for Each Local Market
Digital properties must not only gather information about people but also use it to help consumers meet their goals in a contextual and timely manner. With changes such as the GDPR going into effect, the onus is on brands to deliver a connected experience that will leave customers feeling as though brands’ use of their data is justified.
Latest Posts
Get Ready for The New SMB Software Market
The SMB market is less homogenous than the consumer market, which makes it difficult to reach and serve the majority of customers with a single software product. Luckily for SMB, that won’t always be the case. Now is the time to get ready for a new SMB software market that will experience more growth than enterprise or consumer.
After Fits and Starts, Collaborative News Is Finally Making Headlines
For years, there’s been a lot of earnest talk about digital news sites collaborating to produce editorial content that had more value for users — and to help the collaborators make their often-precarious operations sustainable. But the talk produced as many fits as starts. That’s changing, and for the better.
Street Fight Daily: Updates from Google I/O, Walmart’s Online Sales Jump Sharply
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… I/O 2017: Everything Coming to Google Assistant… Following Jet Acquisition, Walmart’s Online Sales Soar as It Pursues Amazon… Twitter’s New Privacy Tools Let Users Control How Advertisers Target Them…
How SMB Networking is Driving More Referral Marketing
Many small businesses have picked up on referral marketing options, but word-of-mouth referrals are an ancillary benefit of networking with other local business owners. “The entire business community needs a way to connect and have ongoing dialogue,” says Ro Prakash, co-founder of Townsquared.
Street Fight Daily: D.C. Taxis to Replace Meters with Square, Instagram May Allow Search by Location
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square Will Replace Meters in D.C. Taxis, Potentially Fueling Data Collection and Local Commerce… Instagram May Allow Users to Search Publicly Shared Stories by Location… Web-Retail Startups Turn to Bricks and Mortar for Growth…
Why TGI Fridays Is Thinking About Marketing Like a Startup
While marketers always try to understand trending topics among customers, for a national restaurant chain it also means finding ways to listen and react quickly at the local level. Sherif Mityas, who will speak at Street Fight Summit, says his company is working to connect more personally with the chain’s customers.
Charting Google’s Shifting Priorities in the New Local Search Survey
For many years, Physical Address in City of Search was the most important ranking factor, but it has now been overtaken by Proximity of Address to the Point of Search (Searcher-Business Distance). As such, the canonical local search use case has become a mobile user searching for a business nearby his or her current location.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Suffers Data Collection Setback Abroad, Pitfalls of Location Tech for Brands
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Gets Slap on the Wrist from 2 European Privacy Regulators… Brands: Prioritizing Location-Based KPIs Can Have Its Drawbacks… Uber Won’t Be Forced to Stop Developing Self-Driving Cars During Its Lawsuit with Alphabet…
The Current State of Google Maps — Fake News, Fake Reviews
“It’s incredible to me that given all of Google’s focus on new local products that they are still getting some of the basics wrong,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “People who rely on Google more and more to find local businesses need to know that the fundamental metric of the business quality, reviews, is fair and well policed.”
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation