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

The Impending HTTPstrophe — And What it Means for Local Businesses

“Google is rapidly moving towards a time when HTTPS will be an absolute necessity for websites,” writes David Mihm to Mike Blumenthal. “As soon as this month if an http:// website contains any input field, users will start getting scary security messages.”

The ABCs of Reputation Management for Brands

Every multilocation brand today has a social media agency or department, and most, though not all, are running some type of local listings management program, whether internally or with a partner. But plenty of brands are neglecting to do anything about online reviews of local stores.

Understanding How Google Measures Store Visits

Even though ecommerce is growing and brick-and-mortar retail is arguably in the midst of a slow decline, 90% of consumer dollars are still spent in physical stores, and the intent of Google’s store visits data is to help demonstrate the efficacy of multiple online touchpoints that might drive consumers into a store.

Latest Posts

LBMA Podcast: Qualia + Ninth Decimal, Zagat, Euclid Analytics, and Yext

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: Beco battery free beacons, Localytics +DoubleClick, New York & Company + Shopkick, MobileXCo + GreenP, Redbox + 7Eleven, RoamingAround, and Gravy.

Street Fight Daily: Brands See Success with Kik Chatbots, Facebook Demotes Clickbait

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Kik Users Have Now Sent Branded Chatbots Nearly 2 Billion Messages… On Track to Bring in $850,000 This Year, Charlotte Agenda Says Its Model Works… Jet.com Has Been Trying to Beat Amazon at the Wrong Game,,,

Bloom Geolocation Puts Users Where News Is — And Can Guide Them to Nearby Advertisers

The plugin “empowers the user to pinpoint where they are and then the stories are brought to them. It’s like Pokémon Go for journalism,” says founder Stephen Jefferson. “Users can now walk around to different locations and see what events, what news or crime stories have been reported around them.”

New Report Identifies Enterprise Customer Types & Needs

In our latest analysis, we discovered that the integration needs of enterprise marketers reveal some clear correlations in terms of attitude, behavior and installed technologies. For example, the companies that found local store sites to be most effective were also doing well with local print, and planned to increase their social, mobile, and digital display advertising.

DevHub Launches ‘TXT a Restaurant,’ Enabling More Interaction With Consumers

The website-building platform can manage hundreds of local sites for a single agency or brand. This week, the company is launching DevHub Labs and is announcing the group’s first experiment, “TXT a Restaurant” — which will allow local businesses to try out a new digital tool: click-to-text, a new way to connect with consumers who may be hesitant to use the more traditional click-to-call.

Street Fight Daily: Wal-Mart May Buy Jet.com, MasterCard Teams Up with PlaceIQ

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Looking at Amazon, Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com… New Report Identifies Enterprise Customer Types and Needs… MasterCard Hooks Up With PlaceIQ for Location-Based Insights…

Why Local Businesses Should Treat Their Store Locator Like a Shopping Cart

For businesses that operate multiple store fronts, store locators are critical revenue-generating assets. But too often, the locators are treated like a forgotten tool sitting on the shelf, collecting dust and rust. Instead, they need to make the discovery process and conversion to offline visits as easy and personal as Amazon does.

6 DIY Tools Merchants Can Use to Make Video Ads

The opportunities for businesses that take advantage of video advertising are immense. Pre-roll video ads can familiarize audiences with lesser-known brands, and spots that coincide with PPC campaigns have been shown to increase ad recall and lift brand awareness.

Street Fight Daily: Google Expands AMP, Instagram Debuts ‘Stories’

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Lyft Hit a Record of 14 Million Rides Last Month… Google Expands AMP in Search Results as Retailers Join Push for Faster Mobile Web… Instagram Takes a Page From Snapchat, and Takes Aim At It, Too…

Chef’d CEO: Meal Kits Will ‘Dominate Grocery-Style Shopping Over Time’

Few verticals have been as significantly disrupted by hyperlocal technological innovation as the food industry, and meal-kit delivery is becoming a big part of that. We caught up with Chef’d CEO Kyle Ransford to discuss the technologies underpinning the disruption of grocery retail.