News and Analysis

Street Fight’s March Theme: Word of Mouth

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One of the oldest and still most influential drivers of local commerce is word of mouth. Though that’s sustained at a high level, the delivery vessel for local chatter has evolved. Social channels like Facebook and Yelp now shape the reputations of brick-and-mortar businesses, not to mention the kingmaker authority of Google.

This month, we will delve into the latest trends and insights driving reputation management, taking Word of Mouth as our theme.

Ad Tech and Privacy

Consumers Split on Personalized Ads

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In the year of the California Consumer Privacy Act, the data privacy movement is ascendant, and marketers are likely more aware of consumer concerns about tracking than ever before. But a fresh survey of 993 Internet users from audience intelligence firm DISQO suggests that marketers will need to continue navigating the trade-off between providing consumers the only type of ads they widely welcome — personalized ones matched to their interests — and transparently requesting consent for the kinds of tracking that make personalized ads possible.

Influencer Marketing Moves into the Mainstream

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Influencer marketing is working its way into the toolboxes of major corporations, and I’m not just talking about Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg’s meme squad. Household brands including McDonald’s, Walmart, and Anheuser-Busch have turned to Linqia to test the practice.

Commentary

National Brands Must Take Advantage of Tech and Reap Benefits of Going Local

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The marketplace is now offering media inventory that can be localized even in channels like national magazine titles. Advances in data management platforms, programmatic exchanges, and ad operations workflows allow national brands to go local at scale in order to reach customized audience segments.

How Augmented Reality Will Change Local SEO

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Ultimately, local SEO is all about engagement, and AR helps brands engage customers. Incorporating AR also shows that your brand is not just up on trends but actually ahead of the curve.

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.

Latest Posts

#SFSNYC: Street Fight Announces Winners of the 2016 Local Visionary Awards

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The 13-category competition honors the very best campaigns, companies, ideas, and individuals working in the local marketing and commerce ecosystem. Nearly 200 submissions were received in the competition, and they were judged by a group of innovators and local experts.

#SFSNYC: Finding the Next Billion-Dollar Local Startup

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Having a great idea for a new product to launch in the local space is exciting. However, taking an idea and turning it into the next great local company takes money. And sometimes, it takes a lot of money to go from idea to a billion dollar product.

Selling to SMBs: AIDA and The Conversion Zone

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I’m often asked by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike to talk about what changes throughout the course of the “bell curve ride” in selling to small and medium-sized businesses — and how organizations need to adapt at each stage in order to ensure continued success. Here’s the best way I can explain how it all works.

#SFSNYC: Why Location Data Management Needs Technology and Agency Services

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At Street Fight Summit in New York on Tuesday, Brett Fritz, VP of business development at digital performance marketing company DAC Group, spoke about why marketing and location data management should be done by a mix of agency work and technology.

Street Fight Daily: Google Gets Lift from Maps Ads, Facebook’s E-Commerce Strategy

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Sees Lift from Maps Ads, Local Mobile Clicks… Facebook Puts Off Monetization of E-Commerce Efforts to Boost their Popularity… BloomReach Acquires Hippo to Create, Personalize, and Measure Every Digital Experience…

#SFSNYC: Soleo Announces Version 2.0 of Local Search API

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The local search company announced the launch of its new Local Search API at Street Fight Summit 2016, opening it up to developers to start using in their own projects. This new version brings together natural language processing and its database of over 20 million business listings.

#SFSNYC: How Marketers Are Closing in on the Holy Grail of Mobile Attribution

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“What’s super interesting is the fact that we now have a bridge between the digital and physical world,” said Foursquare’s Steven Rosenblatt, talking about how this new rise in data makes it much easier to see what’s going on down to the hyperlocal level.

#SFSNYC: How Local Tech Companies Can Reach Scale in the SMB Ecosystem

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Creating new technology for the SMB space is one thing; trying to achieve any sort of scale is something entirely different. Companies either need to bring on a large sales force to go door to door or they need to partner with one of the much larger companies in the space.

The Increasing Impact of Reviews and Google+ (?!) on Local SEO

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Some new data has given us some “big time insight” into how Google is using authoritative local sites to inform local search rankings, says David Mihm. Mike Blumenthal agrees, saying that the prominence of local review pages and appears to be “transferring prominence directly to the local entity in a way that is totally independent of links.”

Local Listings Get a Real-Time Update from Brandify

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The company’s new digital marketing platform combines the power of tech with the authority of the human brain. Brandify’s Nip Zalavadia, says the platform has the capability to access and analyze huge amounts of data, but also uses real people to address details that often fall through the cracks of automated software solutions.