News and Analysis

Heard on the Street, Episode 29: Push Notifications and Tech History, with Airship’s Mike Stone

Share this:

Airship has been innovating around push notifications for more than a decade, a lifetime in internet years. Airship SVP of Marketing Mike Stone, the latest guest on Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast, broke down the company’s approach to the mobile marketing business.

“There are two dimensions. One is the proliferation of devices and the channels that are attached to them, but there’s also that much more difficult thing of what consumers are willing to do,” said Stone. “The devices are one thing, but it’s also, once they’re there, where’s that line of creepy versus helpful.”

Fresh Chalk Has a New Take on Local Reviews

Share this:

Despite digital change, recommendations from friends remain one of the most credible forms of marketing. Now, a new startup called Fresh Chalk is aiming to capitalize on that, giving consumers a way to find local professionals with help from their friends.

Like Yelp, Facebook, Google, and other local business directories, Fresh Chalk is aiming to help people source recommendations from reliable, qualified businesses in their own communities. But unlike most other competitors in the market, Fresh Chalk is keeping a tight focus on personal connections.

food

This Largely Brick-and-Mortar Industry Is Resisting Digital Disruption

Share this:

Despite Amazon’s high-profile acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017, grocery is the bastion of brick-and-mortar shopping proving unusually resistant to a takeover by digital channels. At least, that is the vision of consumers, only 15% of whom say they are excited about the technical “revolution” in grocery, according to a new report on the future of retail by Walker Sands.

Commentary

Small and Large Local Marketers Have Remarkably Similar Spending Focus

Share this:

A survey of 200 U.S. small and medium businesses conducted late last year revealed that 70% said they would be increasing their digital and online marketing budgets in 2017. Fewer than a third said budgets would stay the same, and only 2% said they were cutting back.

Apple Gets Into Position for the Voice Search Revolution

Share this:

As voice search becomes more prevalent, Apple will “retain an advantage over Amazon in ‘on-the-go’ searches, since our phones are always with us,” David Mihm tells Mike Blumenthal. “Unfortunately for Apple, people overwhelmingly conduct voice searches at home. “

Three Ways Location Marketing Is Changing in 2017

Share this:

People are searching differently. They’re using emoji, voice commands, and social media to find what they want on demand through a variety of channels and devices. As a result, businesses need to be more nimble and imaginative in the way they convert online searches into offline sales.

Latest Posts

March Brand Battle: Marriott Residence Inn vs. Hilton Garden Inn

Share this:

Spring break is a big time for family travel across the U.S. According to travel booking site Orbitz, 61% of spring travelers will be families. What are they looking for? The March Brand Battle pits two affordable luxury hotel chains, Marriott Residence Inn and Hilton Garden Inn, against each other in a fight for local-mobile hotel domination as they head into the spring break season.

How Retailers Can Bring Home the Beacons

Share this:

Beacons will become standard when retailers use them to identify their businesses in the same fashion they publish their address or phone number. They will also become a standard when the industry starts treating them like a standard. That will solve the chicken-and-egg problem.

Foursquare’s Attribution Solution a Step in the Right Direction, but Still Leaves Gaps for Marketers

Share this:

Foursquare—the location-based social network that now calls itself a “location intelligence” company—recently stepped into the analytics business. The company’s entree is a product called Attribution Powered by Foursquare that is intended to help brands measure how media impacts foot traffic in brick-and-mortar locations. To fuel this intelligence, the company pulls data from a panel of […]

Street Fight Daily: DoorDash Raises $127 Million, Billy Penn to Expand Its Local News Model

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… DoorDash Raises $127 Million in ‘Down’ Round (Wall Street Journal)… Can the Billy Penn Model for Local News Work Beyond Philadelphia? We’re About to Find Out (Poynter)… Yahoo Ad Revenue to Drop Nearly 14% This Year (eMarketer)…

PlaceIQ’s Mandeep Mason on Looking at Location from an International Perspective

Share this:

PlaceIQ’s EMEA General Manager, Mandeep Mason, discusses international expansion, why this is a good time for local marketing, and why local analytics need to be part of any overall media plan.

Case Study: NYC Restaurant Uses Automation Tools to Update Search Listings

Share this:

This case study looks at how New York City’s Paola’s Restaurant worked OpenTable, Yext, email and Yelp to boost walk-ins and traffic. Which tools were most effective and which weren’t worth the expense?

Street Fight Daily: Google’s Increasingly App-Like Mobile Web, Mobile Sensor Project ‘CrowdSignals’

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Is Gradually Turning Mobile Search Into an App-Like Experience (Screenwerk)… CrowdSignals Aims to Create a Marketplace for Smartphone Sensor Data (New York Times)… Retail Browsing Is Rapidly Shifting to Mobile, So Why Isn’t Buying? (AdAge)…

Go Daddy Launches Cloud Solutions for SMBs

Share this:

Go Daddy has launchedtwo new products: Cloud Servers and Cloud Applications, both of which are engineered to help a web professional quickly build, test and scale cloud solutions.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Separating Real Value From ‘Shiny New Things’ in Local

Share this:

Perhaps there is an industry epidemic of insecurity around the value provided to local businesses given the large market opportunity. Or, perhaps some organizations still think there is business in obfuscating value long enough to make some profit regardless of the damage.

E-commerce Is a $341.7 Billion-dollar Industry — Can SMBs Get a Piece of the Pie?

Share this:

Small businesses can close the gap between online and offline commerce with some hard work and adherence to a smart strategy. Here are a few tips to get you started.