News and Analysis

Foursquare’s New Audio Assistant is a Peek into the Future of Local Tech

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Dubbed Marsbot for Airpods, Foursquare’s virtual assistant will whisper insights to users about their surroundings, unprompted, as they move throughout the world. This may be a recommendation for a local coffee shop or a fun fact about a landmark.

For brick-and-mortar businesses and the technology providers that help them connect with customers, the marketing possibilities are tantalizing.

Google’s Latest Privacy Play Has Big Implications for the Open Web

Connecting the Dots on Google’s Visual Road Map

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Google continues to double down on visual search and navigation. Its latest move came last week with updates to its Live View visual navigation to help users identify and qualify local businesses. This follows soon after its Earth Cloud Anchors that will let users create digital content on physical places.

Both developments tell us something about what may well be the future of local search: augmented reality-enhanced visuals.

How Brands Can Rise, Retain, and Return Stronger Than Ever this Holiday Season

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Prior to Covid-19, traditional demographics still directed many brands’ targeting strategies. However, the pandemic has laid bare just how flawed this method can be. We believe that the best measure of what someone will purchase in the future is looking at what they’ve purchased in the past. This holds true even in an uncertain market and is invaluable for retailers as the holidays approach. 

Commentary

3 Tips for Managing Local Services Ads

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Google expanded Local Services ads to the San Diego area in November 2016 and has been rapidly expanding this platform across different verticals and markets in the USA over the last two years. If you’re considering running Local Services ads, here are three things to know before getting started.

How to Build a Quality SMS Subscriber List, Bridging the Gap Between Text and CRM

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Imagine a marketing tool that is available to you that nine out of 10 targeted people will read within three seconds. For retailers and marketers to take full advantage of SMS marketing, plans must start with building quality contacts. This is the starting point to build an effective bridge between text and CRM.

Marketers Need to Know the Truth About GPS

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The imperfections of location-tracking tech do not mean that all location data derived from GPS satellites is inaccurate or useless as a marketing tool. It just means that marketers need to better set their expectations, know the data they are buying, and factor the limitations into their partnership agreements and marketing plans.

Latest Posts

GoDaddy Balances Tech and Self-Service in a Fragmented Marketplace

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“The way that you cut through the noise is to build products and services that are loved by the people who use them so much that they proactively tell their neighbor next to them, or proactively tell the business group they are a part of,” says the company’s product chief, Steven Aldrich.

Report: Beacons Making Sizable Impact on Retail

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The Proximity.Directory Q1 2017 Report shows that 75% of retailers in the U.S. are integrating proximity technologies into their marketing mix to increase operating profit. By using beacon technology, retailers can improve their position and increase operating profit by nearly 9% with an ROI of 175%, according to the report.

Street Fight Daily: Snap Launches New Ad Buying Tools, Facebook’s Mobile Bump Evens Out

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Is Opening Itself Up to Advertisers of All Sizes with New Buying Tools… Facebook’s Days of Easy Growth from the Shift to Mobile May Be Over… Consumers Can Stomach Ads in News Feeds, Research Shows…

If the Gym Fits, Reserve It — Startup Makes It Easy to Never Miss a Workout

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A bloom of new companies are aggregating gyms and offering single subscriptions to all of them with one “membership.” FitReserve saw the simplicity and convenience in such a program back in 2015 when three co-founders launched to fill what CEO and co-founder Megan Smyth calls a void in the market.

Street Fight Daily: Retailers Test Personalization, Facebook Drives Biz Engagement with Messenger

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Tipping Point: Teens Spend More Time on Mobile than Desktop… mParticle Launches Peer-to-Peer Audience Sharing to Make Marketing with Partners Easier… eBay Incorporates Machine Learning to Overhaul Email Marketing Platform…

Facebook Looking for More Consumers to Chat With Businesses on Messenger

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At the Collision conference in New Orleans on Tuesday, Facebook’s head of product for Messenger, Stan Chudnovsky, spoke with Recode’s Kurt Wagner about how the company is trying to unite the messaging app’s 1.2 billion users with the 60 million businesses in the Facebook ecosystem.

How Harman Takes Electronics Marketing to the Local Level

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Having the customer’s ear is literally what Harman International wants, but getting their attention at the local level takes more than a few steps for a consumer electronics maker. Shobhit Kapoor, Harman’s vice president of global brand marketing, caught up with Street Fight recently to talk about how the company thinks about connecting with local consumers.

Street Culture: Pointy Focusing on People and Product, Not Process

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Dublin-based digital search platform startup Pointy is still at that point where the culture is just what it is, without special definitions or structure. “The number of people on our team now is small, almost painfully small,” says co-founder Mark Cummins. “There’s not a lot of structure. Well, there is structure, but there’s not a lot of process around it.”

Street Fight Daily: Angie’s List Acquired by HomeAdvisor, News Orgs Experiment with Amazon Echo

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Angie’s List Acquired by IAC’s HomeAdvisor in Deal Valued at More than $500 Million… NPR, the AP, and Local Newspapers Are Experimenting with Amazon Echo… Google is Testing a Job-Search Feature that Could Rival LinkedIn — And Facebook…

Constructing the Enterprise Priority List for Local Search

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“I think some local managers in corporations are getting pushback as to why their local traffic is falling, and if it is why should they maintain local pages? What is hard to explain is that those pages DO feed Google,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “But these locations need to be not just well structured, but easily found and crawled by Google, not hidden behind some opaque code.”