News and Analysis
7 Delivery Trends You Should Know in 2019
Greater customer expectations and technological advancements are driving big changes in delivery. What’s more, the delivery experience has emerged as a differentiating factor for customers when choosing one retailer over another. eCommerce retailers that operate solely online and omnichannel retailers that offer a physical and digital presence are both beginning to expand their delivery options to meet customer demand. Here are seven trends that will define retail delivery during 2019.
In Age of Social Media, Brands Must Stay On Top of Reputations Capable of Changing on a Dime
A single video posted to YouTube was all it took for Chuck E. Cheese’s online reputation to go up in flames this month, at least temporarily, when an internet celebrity posted his theory about the pizza chain’s misshapen pies. As viral conspiracy theories on social media become increasingly common, brands are finding that their initial response can set the tone and create a carry-on effect that impacts customer sentiment across dozens of multimedia channels.
AR in Local Commerce: Google Shows the Way
Mike Boland: A recent and relatively understated development from Google could portend the future of augmented reality. Its previously teased “VPS” was released into the wild for a small set of users. For those unfamiliar, VPS (visual positioning service) guides users with 3D overlays on upheld smartphone screens. Sort of a cousin of AR, this type of experience could represent the sector’s eventual killer apps. Though we’ve seen the most AR success so far in gaming (Pokemon Go) and social (Snapchat AR lenses), it could be more mundane utilities like navigation that engender high-frequency use cases.
Commentary
The Context for Contextual Marketing Is Changing
The idea behind contextual marketing makes a lot of sense. But in practice, contextual marketing is getting pretty hairy, especially for location-based marketing. That’s because context is getting more complicated
Google Finally Reveals How to Improve Your Local Ranking
Google has significantly updated its help page on the topic of local ranking to include, for the first time, specific common-sense guidelines showing businesses how they can increase the likelihood that online searchers will find them in Google Maps on desktop and mobile.
Automating Local Commerce: Rise of the Chatbots
Bots could displace apps just as apps displaced search. “Search started with consumers typing into a box,” Pingup’s Ron Braunfeld said recently. “[AI] is all about knowing where you are, time of day, what’s in your refrigerator; and giving you the right information without having to search.”
Latest Posts
Report: Getting the Most out of Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing
A new report from Street Fight Insights found that many local businesses don’t feel they’re getting return on their social media efforts. That’s in spite of the fact that two-thirds of them are using social media for marketing, and many plan to increase their efforts. Companies in the connected local economy value chain looking to best serve merchants should supply them with tools and services to measure the impact and efficiency of their social media marketing programs.
Street Fight Daily: Postmates’ Super-Speedy Food Delivery, Apple Approves Native Ad Blocker
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Postmates Takes on Uber and Sprig with Quick Food Delivery Service Pop (Recode)… Apple Approves an App That Blocks Ads in Native Apps (TechCrunch)… Amazon Commands Almost Half of All Product Searches, and Marketers Are Ignoring Omnichannel (VentureBeat)…
Urgent.ly’s Spanos: On-Demand Is How Everybody’s Going to Get Service for Everything
“I’ve long been a believer that on-demand is going to revolutionize every service sector in the economy. There will be different flavors of it, based on the characteristics of particular verticals. Five years from now, this is how everybody’s going to get service for everything,” said Urgent.ly CEO Chris Spanos.
Editor’s Take: The Perils of Uberization for the Local Economy
On-demand is a convenient rubric for speaking about a certain type of currently faddish platform, but not every underlying service or product is the same. Transportation is not the same as home services or restaurants. By extension, not everything Uber does will work equally well outside of its particular niche. Demand-based pricing is a prime example.
Case Study: Hotel Attracts Luxury Travelers with Guest-Facing Mobile Tech
As London’s boutique Lanesborough Hotel began what would become a 19-month, multi-million dollar refurbishment in 2014, executives started looking for strategic ways to appeal to guests with luxury tastes. To go along with the newly renovated rooms, which reopened in July, the team decided to add a technology component that would be unlike anything travelers had ever experienced.
Street Fight Daily: What Dorsey’s Twitter Gig Means For Square, Google to Roll Out ‘Now on Tap’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Jack Dorsey’s Dual CEO Role Raises Questions for Square (New York Times)… Now on Tap, Google’s Mobile Search Trojan Horse, Is Out of the Gate (Recode)… Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins to More Ecommerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands of Merchants (TechCrunch)…
Connecting the Local-Mobile Economy, One Step at a Time
Hyperlocal, mobile, on-demand contextual commerce enabled by buy buttons within mobile apps — that’s the new string of buzzwords making the rounds at industry conferences. The market reality: It’s going to take a while for this string to play out in the connected local economy. A key reason is that even as mobile disrupts search, most marketers and merchants can’t expect to get their own app on a majority of users’ home screens.
The Struggle to Save Local News Is Not Doomed
The current state of local news in the technology-driven information age continues to be a hotly debated topic in industry circles. There’s more consensus around the grim prospects for local print media, and more debate about the outlook for independent local news sites. Understanding where the future lies for local news requires a thorough parsing of both positions.
Street Fight Daily: How Surge Pricing Could Affect Retail, Walgreens’ Mobile Approach
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber-Style Surge Pricing May Catch on with Retailers (Forbes)… Why Walgreens Is Partnering with Postmates and Betting Big on Mobile (LinkedIn Pulse)… Kroger Tests ‘Smart Shelf’ Technology (Indianapolis Star)…
NinthDecimal’s Staas: Programmatic Will Become a Strong Opportunity for Small Business Owners
“One of the challenges is a lot of the tools around the ecosystem have not really been built to scale for the small business owner, and they still require a lot of sophistication in understanding how to buy and sell media. The opportunity is in looking at how some of these platforms are evolving. I think programmatic will become a very strong opportunity for the small business owner,” said NinthDecimal president David Staas about shifting trends in location-based marketing and audience targeting.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem