News and Analysis

Street Culture: AvePoint CMO on Continuous Learning and Making the Sale

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AvePoint, a Jersey City-based tech company that helps migrate, manage, and protect Office 365 data, has a classic two-people-in-a-garage backstory. The founders, Tianyi Jiang and Kai Gong, built their first product in a local public library, and the company has now grown to about 1,500 employees.

Survey: Marketers Toss Out Valuable Location Data

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What if seemingly inconsequential data—and location data, in particular—could actually be re-harnessed and used to provide additional revenue-generating opportunities for brands? That’s the concept behind a new report out from the global geolocation data and services provider Digital Element.

Are Holiday Campaigns Launching Too Late in the Season?

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Black Friday has historically been seen as the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, but new research from the data solutions company Lotame and the digital intelligence firm Jumpshot indicates that consumer interest actually peaks almost one month earlier. Retailers that wait until late fall to launch their holiday campaigns could be missing out on sales.

Commentary

In Local Marketing, ‘Obsolete’ Is All Relative

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The pace of innovation is such that many new technologies are deemed “obsolete” before small business owners get the chance to fully understand them, let alone implement them in their business. Many feel left behind the curve as a result. But obsolete is not an absolute condition when it comes to marketing techniques. Where marketing tactics and technologies are underutilized, potential for competitive gains still exists.

Do You Bing? If Not, It’s Time to Start

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Microsoft recently announced that Bing turned its first profit since being launched in 2009. The company continues to extend its reach, grow its share of the search market, and add features that make it a stronger commerce tool. The question businesses should be asking is not whether Bing will catch up to Google, but whether they view Bing as a critical publisher to improve the reach of their location data.

The Privatization of Local Search

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Local search takes place across services that are proprietary and dedicated, even if indirectly, toward earning revenue for the companies that run them. But that doesn’t preclude us from thinking of local search as a kind of public utility whose objective is to provide accurate and consistent information. That means treating local listings primarily as a public good, not a business.

Latest Posts

2015 ‘Michele’s List’ Shows Strengths — And Weaknesses — of ‘Indie’ News Sites

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There are encouraging and even bullish numbers in the performance of independent community news sites as reported in the 2015 “Michele’s List” survey. But other numbers indicate that “indies” are having a difficult time generating enough revenue to ensure stability.

Local Tech Businesses Diversify to Serve a Wider Range of SMB Needs — But Do They Really Know Their Customers?

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In the rush to diversify their offerings, single-product local tech companies either move horizontally (reaching out to all the markets that could remotely utilize their product) or, more often, vertically (seeking to cater to all the nuanced needs of a niche market).

Street Fight Daily: Facebook and Google Embrace ‘Buy’ Buttons

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Will Soon Add a ‘Buy’ Button So You Can Shop From Facebook (Business Insider)… Google Starts Testing Buy Button (Mashable)… 20 Years of Amazon: 20 Years of Major Disruptions (USA Today)…

Small Businesses Aren’t Afraid of Amazon — And You Shouldn’t Be Either

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Yes, Amazon is a giant. But as long as you continue to innovate and keep your hand on the pulse of independent business needs, it’s not going to kill your business. Here’s why.

10 Local Digital Agencies You Should Know About

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Although nearly half (49%) of franchise SMBs have been partnered with a digital agency for two or more years, independent merchants are just getting in on the action. Here are 10 digital agencies that businesses are using right now.

Street Fight Daily: Google’s iBeacon Competitor, Wi-Fi Proximity Program Launches

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Launches Eddystone, Its Platform-Agnostic iBeacon Competitor (The Next Web)… This New Wi-Fi Tech Uses Proximity To End Waiting In Long Lines (ReadWrite)… Like Google, Yahoo Wants to Reinvent Search Without the Search Bar (Ad Age)…

Courting SMBs, Facebook Integrates Its Ad Platform With Wix Email Marketing

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Facebook and Wix announced a new integration this morning that will allow businesses using Wix’s email marketing app to creating a Facebook ad within the platform, automatically taking the email’s content and images and translating them into Facebook’s format.

6 Strategies for Increasing Conversions in Mobile Food Searches

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Sixty-three percent of consumers use smartphones and tablets to find local businesses, and 23% of those local business searches involve restaurants. Here are six strategies that restaurants can use to help convert mobile search traffic.

Panel: Different Kinds of SMBs Require Different Kinds of Marketing

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At a panel discussion hosted by CoInvent last week in New York, SMB experts talked about a range of topics, including social media marketing, SEO strategy, and the importance of paying attention to online reviews.

Street Fight Daily: Google Tests Direct Hotel Booking, Yelp Sued By Delivery Drivers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Tests Direct Hotel Booking (Search Engine Land)… Drivers Sue Yelp Over Unpaid Tips for Food Delivery Service Eat24 (Fortune)… Deep-Fried Crystal Ball: Seamless’s Recent Missteps Pave the Way for Competitors (Digiday)…