News and Analysis
Which Emerging Social Platforms Will Win Big This Holiday Season?
Retailers looking for an edge this holiday season are testing the waters with newer, emerging social platforms in a bid to generate awareness and market their products to huge audiences of tech-savvy teens and twenty-somethings.
On TikTok, a mobile app for creating and sharing short videos, retailers are poised to connect with a base of more than 500 million users.
With GatherUp Acquisition, ASG Expands Into Reviews Space
Mike Blumenthal says the acquisition by ASG gives GatherUp greater access to organizational value, helping the company build better products and processes faster and more robustly. He expects there to be virtually no change in GatherUp’s day-to-day activities. All of the company’s teams—including sales, customer success, engineering, and management—will remain intact following the acquisition. Aaron Weiche will stay on as CEO. Although GatherUp was founded in San Jose, the company employs a distributed team that is now focused in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
US Businesses Lead on Reputation Management
Loyalty to local businesses may never cease to be an important factor in brick-and-mortar commerce, but the boom of “near me” searches and the emphasis on convenience in the age of mobile search make a prime online presence for the quick-querying passerby more important than it has ever been. This latest Uberall data indicate that responding to reviews can provide the slight 5-star rating bump that guides an unfamiliar customer into a store she may otherwise pass up for a higher-ranked competitor.
Commentary
SMB Content Marketing: Avoid the Backward Approach
Whether a business is local or not, content drives the bulk of digital marketing. A successful content marketing campaign involves topics that resonate with the intended audience, creates buzz on social media and attracts high quality links. Yet, the approach that many people take to content marketing is backward.
Get Ready for The New SMB Software Market
The SMB market is less homogenous than the consumer market, which makes it difficult to reach and serve the majority of customers with a single software product. Luckily for SMB, that won’t always be the case. Now is the time to get ready for a new SMB software market that will experience more growth than enterprise or consumer.
Charting Google’s Shifting Priorities in the New Local Search Survey
For many years, Physical Address in City of Search was the most important ranking factor, but it has now been overtaken by Proximity of Address to the Point of Search (Searcher-Business Distance). As such, the canonical local search use case has become a mobile user searching for a business nearby his or her current location.
Latest Posts
VCs Share 7 Strategies for Hyperlocal Startups Looking to Raise Money
As access to venture capital funding softens within the startup community, it’s becoming even more important for hyperlocal firms to think more strategically about how they’ll fund their great ideas. Here, several top VCs talk about the groundwork that founders need to do to make their funding goals a reality in 2016.
Street Fight Daily: Washington Post Revamps Digital Ads, Bad Mobile Experiences Hurt Brands
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google and Postmates Make the Case for SMB Deliveries… The Washington Post Introduces “Fuse,” New Tech for Ads Across All Post Platforms… Why Google Beat Yahoo in the War for the Internet…
Openings and New Hires at Blueshift, Upserve, OpenTable and flok
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 Foursquare, Thumbtack, and Search Influence.
Raise Report: New Funding for Bridge2 Solutions, BigCommerce, Big Panda
Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This edition’s raises include new rounds for Unacast and Grey Jean Technologies.
Street Fight Daily: Microsoft Building Its Own Bot, UberMedia Expanding Attribution Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Walmart Outperforms Estimates, but Online Retail Lags… Looking for a Sustainable Business Model for a Regional Newspaper? Start at the Star Tribune… Microsoft is Building Its Own Bot to Rival Google Assistant and Viv…
Swirl Looks to Close the Digital Divide Between E-Commerce and Physical Stores
Pushing back against a shifting tide and changing consumer behavior won’t be easy, but executives at in-store digital marketing technology provider Swirl believe they can change the way consumers shop. Hilmi Ozguc, Swirl’s CEO, says the key will be arming physical retailers with the same datasets as e-commerce giants.
Pasadena Now: 20 Articles Daily and 75 Advertisers — But Big Challenges As Well
“We built an online community newspaper the old-fashioned way — with daily deadlines, plenty of shoe leather and a grueling schedule of personally attending dozens of community events every month,” publisher James Macpherson says about his 12-year-old local news site.
Street Fight Daily: Google Debuts Assistant, Investors Losing Interest in Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Meet Google Assistant: A New Search Platform, Rather Than A Gadget or an App… Swirl Looks to Close the Digital Divide Between E-Commerce and Physical Stores
ClipCall Uses Mobile and Video to Help Consumers Connect With Home Service Providers
Lots of companies have taken a whack at the local home services space — from Angie’s List to a raft of startups. ClipCall, which came out of beta in January and will present t Street Fight summit West on June 7th, relies on customers using the company’s app to record video of a job they need doing and then sends that video out to nearby experts.
How True Religion Uses Wearables to Elevate the Shopping Experience
“It’s no secret that today’s retail landscape has shifted from ‘shopping efficiency’ to experiential. Customers want and expect elevated treatment from their brands. Specifically, brands that they frequent,” says the company’s SVP for direct to consumer, John Hazen.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem