News and Analysis
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?
What Does Customer Experience Mean in a Voice-First World?
The trend of moving customer experience beyond the screen has been dubbed “conversational customer care.” It’s still unclear just how many channels are included under this umbrella or how the future of conversational customer care will look. Brands that are dealing with demanding customers can’t afford to sit back and wait for this to play out. Screen-free customer experiences could be the future. They could be just a single touchpoint in the broader context of customer experience strategy. Or, they could just be a passing fad.
But the chances that voice-first customer experiences are a fad seem to be shrinking.
5 Ways to Reduce Errors in Voice Ordering
Restaurant chains like Wingstop, Domino’s, Panera, and Round Table have created their own skills to make it easier for people to place orders through voice assistants like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home. But before voice ordering can truly disrupt the restaurant industry, restaurants have to find ways to reduce the friction and eliminate the kinds of errors that lead to the wrong orders being delivered.
Here’s how some of the country’s top restaurant chains are overcoming the challenges associated with voice ordering and developing more frictionless customer experiences.
Commentary
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.
Survey: Enterprise Marketers Are Increasing Local Digital Mix
As enterprise local marketers become experienced with digital tactics they originally used to promote their corporate sites, they are getting more savvy about digital marketing. Today, most of them spend less than a third of their digital budgets on local campaigns and programs, but 40% say they are increasing the local mix.
Latest Posts
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…
Moz Targets Duplicate Listings With Revamped Dashboard for Businesses
Multiple business listings can be a serious problem, according to Moz Local’s GM Dudley Carr: “When a business is not where it’s supposed to be or the phone isn’t answered, it has significant brand impact for the business. And typically the customer will blame the brand, and not Google or Bing or Apple for the information.”
5 Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store Platforms for Retailers
Roughly 61% of retailers with online and physical outposts offer a way for shoppers to pick up their online purchases in-store, and the trickle down effect means more small and mid-size businesses are adopting the technology to make buy online, pick up in-store a reality.
Street Fight Daily: Lyft Adds Multi-Stop Feature, Search Attribution Elusive for SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Lyft Riders Can Now Add More Than One Stop to Their Routes… Moz Targets Duplicate Listings with Revamped Dashboard for Businesses… Most Retailers Offer Mobile Coupons, Payments, But Implementation Not Always Easy…
As Local’s Complexity Grows, What Does It Take to Build a Sustainable Agency Business?
“There are two paths for consultants or small agencies today,” writes David Mihm. “Either be a generalist who’s aware of all the major channels, and the kinds of businesses that are good fits for those channels, or develop an incredibly deep focus in a particular channel, and make a name for yourself as the go-to resource within that channel.”
6 Ways Mobile Shopping Apps Are Targeting In-Store Customers
More retailers are attempting to utilize the data breadcrumbs that shoppers leave behind when they use mobile devices in and around physical stores. Mobile shopping companion apps that add contextual intelligence layers — and target consumers in the moments when they’re most persuadable — are catching on among national retailers.
Street Fight Daily: Retailers Use Snapchat to Target Millennials, Walmart Buys Jet.com
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart is Buying Jet.com for $3 Billion and Will Announce the Deal Monday… With Hype Faded, Foursquare Tries Reinvention as a Data Business… Some Retailers Ignore Snapchat, While Others Capitalize with Lens and Geofilter Ads…
How ‘Moment-based’ Targeting Will Impact Local Advertising
We are now onto the second phase of moment-based targeting, focusing on the combination of multiple factors in a moment to determine when a consumer will be most receptive. To find these receptive moments, an advertiser can identify and tap into many signals that will provide info about the end recipient’s state of mind.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem