News and Analysis
6 Influencer Marketing Platforms for Brands
As some of the most visual social channels, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest have become important tools for brand marketers. These are also the channels most likely to be used by so-called “influencers,” the social media stars who frequently partner with brands to promote products to their online followers. Influencer marketing has become a big business, with 31% of retailers now working with brand advocates to become influencers and 28% using paid celebrity influencers to spread the word about their products and services.
Here are six popular influencer marketing platforms being used by retailers and brands right now.
Retailers Use Visual Channels to Attract Last-Minute Mother’s Day Shoppers
Spending on Mother’s Day is expected to reach $25 billion this year, with consumers flocking to department stores and florists in search of the perfect gifts for Mom. The bulk of that spending will happen in the next few days, as foot traffic data from the location platform GroundTruth reveals that Americans tend to wait until the very last minute to shop for Mother’s Day gifts.
What are retailers around the country doing to prepare for the onslaught of last-minute shoppers? More than ever before, retailers are leaning on visual marketing opportunities to drive last-minute sales.
Report: Websites and GMB Profiles Both Essential for Local Businesses
A whopping 64% of respondents indicated relying on Google My Business to find contact information for local business, suggesting it’s an indispensable platform. Yet consumers still trust local business websites most of all, and only 8% say they never consult a business’ website when making shopping decisions.
Commentary
Street Fight Launches 2nd Annual ‘State of Hyperlocal’ Executive Survey
In last year’s State of Hyperlocal report, over half of our survey respondents said they were investing in mobile. Respondents also deemed their own company’s brand awareness as their biggest challenge, even more than proving ROI to customers. What investments will make sense in 2017? With your help, we’ll find out, and present the results at our upcoming Street Fight Summit NYC next month…
As Google Pushes for Users to Stay on Its Platform, What Are the Effects for Local Search
“Obviously Google still controls a fair bit of the searcher’s pre-purchase mindshare, and they obviously want to retain that role,” writes Mike Blumenthal. “They are also fighting like crazy to be relevant in a world where 50% (and growing) of users’ total digital media time is spent in Apps.”
Making Sense of the Mobile Marketing Spending Disparity
Consumers’ relationships with media and mobile devices have changed. Advertising needs to change as well. The responsibility is with advertisers and their agencies and service providers to demand the granularity and specificity that you can only achieve with the targeted data you get from mobile advertising.
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For Small Businesses, the Tide Is Turning
With a high percentage of retail consumer spending occurring in the last six weeks of the year, the fourth quarter is a good time to take the temperature of business owners. Recent surveys from Thumbtack and Yelp indicate an overall positive outlook heading into 2016.
Street Fight Daily: Yelp and OpenTable End Partnership, Google’s Plans For Accelerated Mobile Pages
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp, OpenTable Part Ways amid Heightened Competition (Reuters)… Inside Google’s Plan to Speed Up the Mobile Web (Poynter)… DoorDash Partners with b8ta for On-Demand Tech Gadget Delivery (TechCrunch)…
Is the Humble Phone Call Actually the Killer App for Local Businesses?
It turns out reports of voice calling’s death are greatly exaggerated. Despite an explosion in data usage and mobile messaging, voice calling — facilitated by search and virtual assistants — remains a popular activity among mobile users. A lot of those calls are going to local businesses, where they are more likely to convert to revenue than web forms or emails.
6 Reasons Why Hyperlocal Tech Initiatives Continue to Elude Consumers
Hyperlocal is a totally logical concept in the minds of technologists, analysts, and investors, but many hyperlocal tech initiatives have yet to catch fire with consumers. Part of the challenge is people are creatures of habit. Here are six reasons why hyperlocal tech will continue to elude consumers’ grasp in 2016.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Partners with Uber, Will Google’s Driverless Cars Be the Next Uber/Lyft?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Messenger Now Lets You Hail Uber Rides (The Next Web)… Google’s Plan for Self-Driving Cars Means It Will Have to Compete with Uber (Recode)… Brand Relevance and Revenue in the Age of Snapchat (Nieman Lab)…
7 Ways Predictive Intelligence Can Be Applied to Small Business Marketing
Small business owners have the tendency to shy away from advanced technologies like predictive intelligence, however experts in the field say that’s a mistake, and many of today’s platforms can be implemented by merchants on Main Street. Here are seven ways that small businesses can get in on the action and start using predictive intelligence tools today.
5 Reasons Why Local Marketing Will Mature in 2016
The past few years have seen the introduction of a whole universe of new tools designed to address individual aspects of digital marketing. In 2016, we will see a shift away from many of these discreet, single-purpose tools toward more comprehensive marketing solutions, DataSphere’s Gary Cowan predicts. Here’s a look at five ways SMB local marketing will mature in the coming year.
Street Fight Daily: New Google Research on ‘Micro-Moments,’ What Won’t Happen in 2016
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Says Search Intent Matters More for Marketers Than User Identity (Adweek)… Trends for 2016: What Won’t Happen (eMarketer)… What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Local Search ‘Test’ (Marketing Land)…
Storefront Fills a Growing Market for Short-Term Retail Spaces
Pop-up shops are becoming of a fixture of the omnichannel retail landscape — and not just during the holiday season. Storefront is a three-year-old startup that connects anyone who wants to sell and promote their wares with landlords who have retail spaces they want to rent — a “marketplace for renting short-term retail space,” as co-founder and CEO Erik Eliason described it. The model is proving successful in syncing both large retailers and local artisan/makers with physical spaces that would otherwise lie dormant.
Missing from ‘Spotlight’ Movie: How News Sites Pay for Top-Quality Investigative Journalism
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team uncovered the pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church, but for all the acclaim the reporting won, it didn’t save the paper from a catastrophic financial decline that nearly put the Globe out of business. To understand how such journalistic success could be followed by such financial failure, Street Fight spoke with Dan Kennedy, associate professor in the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, who has written extensively about the subject.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem