News and Analysis
Chatmeter Scores New Funding Amid Hiring Spree
Local brand management platform Chatmeter announced a new investment by Providence Strategic Growth aimed at helping the company increase its ambitions further after hiring 25 employees over the course of six months. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Report: DTC Brands Outperform Traditional Retail, Win Over Gen-Z
As the millennial generation settles down and moves into its 30s, retailers are looking at a new group of consumers as the most coveted demographic. Generation Z—born between 1994 and 2002—is forming its own identity and seeking out different shopping experiences than its older counterparts.
A new report, released by the location intelligence platform Ubimo, finds that Generation Z shows a surprising preference for physical stores, although members of this group aren’t interested in shopping so much as experiencing new products in-store.
Heard on the Street, Episode 29: Push Notifications and Tech History, with Airship’s Mike Stone
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.”
Commentary
Building the Essential Digital Marketing Bundle for Local Businesses
“Last time we identified our essential digital bundle for small businesses,” says David Mihm to Mike Blumenthal. “This week I thought we might tackle how agencies and media companies might go about building and selling that bundle — and why there seem to be so few who are actually doing it.”
Local’s Next Hurdle: The Impressionable Use Fallacy
No matter how good the targeting, creative, and “right person, right place,” the vast majority of our time contains urgencies that render us immune to push-based mobile ads. It’s basically a question of how often we’re actually idle, and therefore impressionable to being rerouted from a deliberate course.
Omnichannel Personalization: Striving to Increase Average Basket Size
Consumer goods and retail companies are using omnichannel personalization to engage consumers, and offer them the convenience to browse and buy products however and wherever they choose. With data analytics, retailers can engage in automated omnichannel personalization to deliver marketing that aligns with a customer’s specific behaviors.
Latest Posts
Raise Report: Fresh Funding for Branch Metrics, Spotcap, Geofeedia
Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes new cash infusions for IdealSpot, The Bouqs, and JANDI.
LBMA Podcast: Citymapper, Land Rover, Indoo.rs, and Micello
On the show: Order Domino’s from Amazon Echo; Los Angeles GeoHub; Ace Hotel + WeTransfer; Starbreeze’s Starcade virtual reality arcade; Land Rover’s #hibernot Instagram campaign; Screenvision & Mobiquity bring beacons to the movies.
Street Fight Daily: Web.com to Acquire Yodle, Foursquare Latest to Embrace On-Demand Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Web.com to Buy Online Advertising Firm Yodle (Wall Street Journal)… Foursquare Adds Deep-Linking Integration with Delivery.com (The Next Web)… Groupon Soars 23% on Favorable Earnings (TechCrunch)…
CourseHorse Co-Founder: People Are Spending Locally in Adult Education
The company, which recently raised $4 million in Series B funding, powers a local discovery engine connecting students and classes (and taking a commission on every registration). Street Fight spoke to co-founder Nihal Parthasarathi about the various local opportunities in ed tech and adult education.
The Physical Web: How a New Type of Beacon Is Disrupting Proximity Marketing
The newer Eddystone-URL is truly disruptive. This web approach, also called the Physical Web, follows the unstoppable trend toward lessening friction, and will ultimately be the dominant beacon technology. Marketers should be aware of this trend.
Street Fight Daily: Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Arriving This Month, eBay’s Turnaround Plan
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Accelerated Mobile Pages Coming This Month, Google Aims to Reinvent the Mobile Web (AdAge)… How eBay Plans to Take On Amazon (Fortune)… Verve Opens Self-Serve Location Targeting Platform Aimed at SMBs (GeoMarketing)…
As Legacy Media Companies Evolve, ‘Culture Trumps Strategy Every Time’
“The legacy culture is the biggest impediment, for sure,” says LMA President Nancy Lane. “Those media companies that have separated traditional and digital are clearly ahead of others. But it’s a tough concept and it requires an investment.”
Case Study: Burger Chain Grows Facebook Reach By Prioritizing Local Pages
In the past 18 months, the ratio of spending between print and digital marketing campaigns has flipped at Hwy 55. Today, the company’s digital spend is more than 20% higher than print. The company has chosen to focus its efforts on platforms that can be used to reach consumers at the hyperlocal level.
Street Fight Daily: Gannett Met with Amazon to Explore Delivery, How Facebook Got More SMBs to Buy Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Gannett Explores Parcel-Delivery Business (Wall Street Journal)… Sheryl Sandberg Explains How Facebook Got More Small Businesses to Buy Ads (Business Insider)… Why Yahoo Couldn’t Adapt to the Smartphone Era (New Yorker)…
After School, Generation Z, and the Localization of Anonymous Expression
Investors have poured money into anonymous, local chat apps like After School (which connects students at every public and private high school) — but they can be prime venues for online bullying. To get a little more context about this issue, we spoke with After School’s content director Michael Luchies.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem