News and Analysis
Lessons to Draw from How DTC Disruptor Brands Market Themselves
DTC brands are emerging across dozens of categories. Early and best-known examples of DTC brands include Casper, Brooklinen, Warby Parker, and Tesla. Most DTC brands not only bypass the typical retail sales and distribution model but also act in other nontraditional ways. This has earned them a label as disruptors.
Advertising intelligence and sales enablement platform MediaRadar took a close look at DTC brand trends to find what’s fueling DTC advertising and to gain an understanding of how DTC companies make ad buying decisions. MediaRadar surveyed our own DTC clients and analyzed our data for deeper insights.
Consumer Dollars Are Up for Grabs—If Retailers Can Master the Basics
To maintain the business of today’s consumers, consistency is key. Just under 70% of respondents said they’re less likely to return to a store after just one subpar experience. As for what earns a shopper’s approval, only 19% of consumers said they seek out food or entertainment from stores. More important are fundamental technical capabilities like mobile app integration and access to WiFi. Two thirds of shoppers even said retailers are too focused on experimental tech and should pay more attention to the building blocks of good retail strategy.
Consumers Hungry for New Content Discovery Channels on Mobile
The content consumers are craving is personalized and brief. Over 40% said they would like content experiences between 15 and 30 seconds, and another 26% favored engagement somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds. Despite amplified privacy concerns of late, 68% indicated a willingness to trade some personal information in exchange for content tailored to their interests.
Brands still trigger-happy on mobile push notifications may want to reconsider. Twenty-five percent of respondents ranked them as their least liked content delivery method among current and future modes of discovery.
Commentary
Maps.me Offers Open Source Alternative to Google and Apple Maps
I’m impressed by the level of detail and by some key differentiators that make Maps.me seem like a fresh approach to mobile navigation. Indeed, I can see the app eventually finding favor in the U.S. marketplace. Even before that happens, local marketers should take note.
Bringing Brands Into the Fold, inMarket Touts Its ‘Three-Sided’ Beacon Network
inMarket’s strategic product is not the app, the value is created by their network. Their network links dozens of publishers’ apps to retailers that host inMarket beacons and, the third stakeholder in the network, the brands, whose products are being promoted. In this video, CEO Todd DiPaola talks about the importance of this network.
Tackling the Problem of Measurement in Local
“Google’s always had the disadvantage of being a more complex and opaque product than Facebook,” writes David Mihm, “but it feels like they’ve made almost zero progress on this front in the last eight years.”
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Will Spin Off Core Businesses, Pinterest Buys Two Search-Centric Startups
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Is Said to End Plan to Spin Off Alibaba Stake (New York Times)… Pinterest Buys Two Startups to Bolster Image Search (Wall Street Journal)… Uber Is Testing a New Service That Sounds Exactly Like a Bus (Business Insider)…
PlaceIQ Teams Up with IRI to Tackle Online-to-Offline Attribution
Marketers face a number of big challenges today. One is pinpointing their audiences as they move from device to device — and then from platform to platform on those different devices. Another is making sense all of the data consumers generate in the scores of micro-interactions they have every day across the devices and platforms they use. A third is online-to-offline attribution. The partnership with IRI that PlaceIQ announced today is a step toward tackling these hurdles.
Why 2016 Will Be a Big Year for iOS 9
Apple has established a new standard for conducting “nearby” searches, thanks to an enhancement to the Apple Spotlight search functionality. This moves the consumer down the path to purchase in a few significant ways, including proactive local search content and results that change by time of day.
Black Friday Weekend’s Unreported Story: The Rise of ‘Bricks and Clicks’
The mostly unreported story of Black Friday weekend is that much of the ecommerce growth came from “bricks-and-clicks” retailers, not pure-play e-tailers. The reason: Physical stores offer a critical customer experience and serve as a “brand anchor,” both of which support ecommerce for traditional retailers. Stores drive online sales because they instill a sense of confidence and trust in the consumer.
Case Study: NJ Gym Uses Loyalty Program to Increase Sales from Existing Members
When consumers commit to joining a gym and paying a fixed rate each month, they’re indirectly confirming their loyalty to the business. But after years of working with clients at Gold’s Gym of Jersey City, sales manager Mauricio Calmet noticed that a secondary loyalty market exists, one that’s rarely tapped by businesses once they’ve signed customers up for yearlong contracts or memberships.
Street Fight Daily: HomeAdvisor Expands to New Cities, Airbnb Confirms Rumored $1.5B Round
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… HomeAdvisor Expands, Takes On Angie’s List in Search for Ambitious Employees (Denver Business Journal)… Airbnb Just Confirmed a Massive $1.5 Billion Round That Makes It the Third-Highest Valued Startup in the World (Business Insider)… Yahoo: Be Careful Playing in Traffic (Wall Street Journal)…
Case Study: Salon Leverages Free Wi-Fi to Evaluate Digital Promotions
Collecting customer email addresses and generating Facebook “likes” are two tasks that are at the top of virtually every small business marketer’s to-do list. Edges Salon & Spa has a system in place to streamline this process and encourage customer loyalty at the same time. For the past seven months, it has been offering customers free Wi-Fi in exchange for the chance to learn about their behaviors and engage them on mobile.
Swiftype’s Riley: Site Search Can Make News More Compelling
The importance of relevant searches extends beyond search engines. For publishers, custom site search that helps make better decisions about how to maximize the impact of their content, know and understand the likes of their users, and increase their level of engagement can make a material difference in their business. “The key to building a relevant search experience is blending complex signals together and ensuring your site search algorithm is always improving,” said Swiftype co-founder Matt Riley.
Street Fight Daily: Gawker Media’s Ecommerce Success, Amazon Will Have Its Own Fleet of Shipping Trucks
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Gawker Turned into Groupon (Motherboard)… Amazon Buys Thousands of Truck Trailers as Its Transportation Ambitions Grow (Recode)… Waze’s Growth Chief: Even Driverless Cars Need a Better Route (USA Today)…
Why a Remote Work Policy Is Worth Considering
More than 3.5 million employees work remotely at least half the time, a technology-enabled trend that’s on the rise. Many employers claim that workers are more productive when they work remotely, but some technology companies are not considering remote workers or don’t allow telecommuting at all.
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The Local Media Paradox: Turning Community Trust into Measurable Confidence