News and Analysis
Influencer Marketing Moves into the Mainstream
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.
The Pitfalls and Opportunities of Screen-Free Customer Service
One vertical that has been able to integrate voice into customer service in a meaningful way is retail. National retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and REI Co-op have created skills or teamed up with technology providers to connect with customers through voice-controlled assistants. Some retailers are accepting orders via voice, and others are doling out product information and reviews. What the most successful of these companies have in common is a defined strategy and plans to measure ROI.
Leveraging Voice: A Path for Brand Marketers
It’s important that companies can see who their customers are and what transactions are associated with each customer via voice assistants. This sort of knowledge is necessary for brands to make the channel a valuable part of an overarching loyalty strategy.
Given that voice is currently owned by just a few select companies, it’s important for brands to figure out how they will leverage voice differently from company to company or device to device. Will retail brands keep the same strategy with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, or will they find unique ways to take advantage of these platforms across differences?
Commentary
Is the Camera the ‘New Search Box’ for Local Discovery?
Though still nascent, visual search builds on a few key trends. Smartphones have increasingly powerful optics; AI and machine learning support computer vision to identify items; and there’s behavioral alignment with millennials who use the smartphone camera as a communication tool.
What Happens If Facebook Gets Serious About Local?
What Google is to search, Facebook is to social. Those same local business owners know that, when it comes to social marketing, a good portion of their success depends on what they and their customers do on Facebook. So if Facebook gets serious about local, could that change the local landscape? What would it look like?
4 Ways to Track Traditional Local Media Using Digital
Digital and traditional media can work together. Traditional efforts often drive users to search engines, websites and social media platforms. If you own the SERP for your brand, you’ll be able to control what the user sees as they respond to your traditional media campaigns.
Latest Posts
Openings and New Hires at Tapclicks, GotU, Matchcraft
Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. This week’s edition includes moves and new openings at Google Ventures, Factual, Gooway Group, and Townsquare Media.
Raise Report: Fresh Funding for Townsquared, Yieldbot, Drizly
Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes recent rounds for Carvana, SiteZeus, Spot.IM, and Insert.
LBMA Podcast: Snapchat + Yext, Gimbal’s Experiences, Unacast’s Thomas Walle Jensen
Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: GoGoGrandparent, Pets At Home + GrandVisual, Macy’s + IBM’s Watson, Mentos + Posterscope, Apple iOS10, Sephora, Tinder, and Flirtey + 7Eleven.
Street Fight Daily: Brands Using Apps to Drive Revenue, Facebook Tweaks News Feed (Again)
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Three Brands Use Apps to Drive Loyalty and Revenue… Facebook Tweaks News Feed to Favor ‘Personally Informative’ Stories… How AMP Will Affect the Wider Web…
How DMN’s Speakeasy Became a Major Revenue Driver in the Digital Transition
The newspaper’s in-house digital agency has grown to 70 client businesses that provide a significant share of the estimated $40 million of annual revenue that doesn’t originate within the walls of the DMN. The division has become the centerpiece of the company’s work to to re-establish a revenue growth model.
6 Ways Brands Can Automate Updates on Local Facebook Pages
For a brand with 10, 100, or even 1,000 locations, having to create and manually update local Facebook pages can be daunting, but a number of hyperlocal vendors have stepped in with solutions to streamline the process. Here are six examples of platforms that multi-location businesses can use to automate their updates across local Facebook pages.
Street Fight Daily: Restaurants Eager for New Tech, P&G’s Facebook Experiment
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Yelp Plans to Consolidate Mobile Gains and Reach $1B in Revenue… Restaurants Would Implement Predictive Ordering, Drones if Available… Why P&G Decided Facebook Ad Targeting Often Isn’t Worth the Money…
What Local Consumers Really Want From a Loyalty Program
To dig into what consumers expect in the loyalty programs they use most frequency today, we checked in with executives at a few of the most well-known loyalty platforms. Here’s what they said consumers are looking for in loyalty programs right now.
How Local Businesses Can Survive and Thrive in the Age of RankBrain
A great site with proper titles, tags and meta descriptions alongside good and relevant ad copy, and an intelligent approach to drive the maximum number of relevant clicks, is the best defense for the local business against the self-awareness of the RankBrain machine.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s Drone Program, Location and Mobile Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Future of Retail Delivery: Amazon’s Drone Program… Mobile Programmatic Ad Growth Propelled By Geotargeting… Facebook Combats Ad Blocking By Giving Users Control Over What They See…
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