News and Analysis
Retail Embraces Omnichannel for the Holidays
Rather than focusing on one platform or tool, retail brands are embracing everything necessary to engage with customers across multiple touchpoints. That could have a major impact on the way shoppers interact with their favorite brands in the coming weeks, and depending on the results, it could lead to changes in the way retail marketing is handled in 2021.
Retailers Unpack Black Friday Spending Data
Criteo analyzed commerce data from 1,005 retailers in the U.S. and 216 million transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020. In the process, they found that sales in the first three weeks of November were up 7% year-over-year in the U.S., indicating that Black Friday sales may have been down 5% because those purchases happened earlier this year than previously.
Commentary
A Probing Look at Local News Comes to Some Disturbing Conclusions
To accurately gauge the quality of digital local news and assess its impact on communities, you would have to do what no one has wanted, or dared, to do. You would have to look at enough websites, enough stories and videos, in enough communities until you were glassy-eyed. Researchers behind a new study did just that.
Survey: Identifying Best Practices in Reputation and Review Management
Multi-location brands that use reputation and review management to manage local marketing and advertising are more likely to say that their marketing efforts are effective, according to Street Fight’s latest survey. Analysis of the survey identified several related strategies that correlated strongly with marketing effectiveness, including trying to respond to every review and working with a reputation specialist with its own technology.
Latest Posts
Report: Social Media Continues to Be a Top Marketing Tactic for Local Merchants
The fourth edition of Street Fight’s Local Merchant Report shows a continued movement to social media as a preferred marketing tactic among local merchants. They deem it their most effective tactic, so they’re increasing their spending. Analysis of the survey suggests that would-be marketing suppliers can help them integrate social with their own site and email campaigns, as well as assisting them with reputation management and reviews.
Street Fight Rolls Out Analyst Hours with Local Merchant Report
The report—a key franchise for us—has regularly served as a guidepost for vendors seeking to expand their reach into this market. What’s been missing? A way to tie the data directly to a vendor’s business. So for the first time, we’re offering time with the report’s author, Street Fight director of research, David Card, to discuss the report’s findings directly.
Location Data for Brands: ‘Alternative Facts’ No Longer
As the proximity industry grows, it’s important for brands investing in location and proximity to understand the differences between the various data points and technologies on the market. These differentiators can greatly affect how the proximity and location data is applied towards a brand’s marketing goals.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Will Train Local Journalists, Alphabet Records ‘Stunning’ Earnings
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Will Start Training Local Journalists and Newsrooms… Alphabet Made a Lot of Money on Google Advertising Despite Recent Controversy… Amazon’s Echo Look Could Snoop a Lot More Than Your Clothes…
Comcast Rolling Out a New Local Ad Service
For local businesses looking for advertising, there’ll be a new kid in town to help this summer. Better still, ad buyers will get the help for free. The service, called Stratasphere, is a new offering from Comcast-owned Strata, which already has three decades in the business of connecting ad sellers with ad buyers.
Case Study: Bake Shop Owner Finds Customers in Local Facebook Groups
What does it mean to run a local business without a local storefront? For Melissa Brogan, owner of The Bug & The Bear Bakeshoppe, it means having to use highly-targeted online marketing strategies to let people know she’s open for business, without getting the marketing benefits that come from having signage on the front of a physical storefront.
The In-Between Stage for Startups: Visions of Growth and the Value of Pivots
The stages of business growth may have no end point, but the opportunities that lie within them are more abstract than they seem. Moz CEO Sarah Bird says that Jeff Bezos’ well-known assertion that it will always be “day one” at Amazon resonates with her, but that financials can cloud the view of that goal.
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Beyond Search: AI Visibility the New Growth Lever for MULO Brands