News and Analysis

Raise Report: Placer.ai, Leap, LoopMe Secure New Funding

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Every two or three weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s report includes funding for HeadSpin, Mavrck, Entertainment Data Oracle, and ZypMedia.

New Hires at TripAdvisor, Rio SEO, Snap

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Every two or three weeks, guest columnist Geoff Michener rounds up some of the latest hires and openings in local and digital marketing. This week’s roundup also includes openings at Instagram, ThriveHive, and LoopMe.

GroupM Details the State of Digital Marketing’s Hottest Medium: Video

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For marketers looking to capitalize on the video boom, Street Fight has the latest from GroupM’s second annual State of Video report. The highlights include continued difficulties with measurement, emerging options to target effectively across channels, a look at Amazon and Facebook’s quest for domination, and social video’s fallibility and how brands can overcome it.

Commentary

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.

Forget DIY, DIWM, and DIFM: ‘Do Nothing’ is the Best Approach to Capturing the SMB Market

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The future of SMB marketing solutions isn’t do-it-yourself, do-it-for-me, or even do-it-with-me. Rather, it lies in a new go-to-market model called “do nothing” that combines context, content, software, and automation into solutions that are low-cost, have next to no barriers to entry, and require little in the way of learning or doing from customers.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Groupon Buys OrderUp, Advertisers Struggle With Google’s Mobile Update

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Acquires OrderUp Food Delivery Service (TechCrunch)… Google And Its Advertisers That Didn’t Prepare For Mobile Face Uphill Struggle (Marketing Land)… How Eddystone Will Take Beacons Further Than Ever Before (ReadWrite)…

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.