News and Analysis

With Help of Magisto, Small Businesses Reach Customers with Video

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AI technology is finding its footing in the small business market, years after it reached critical mass among big brands. A new app from Magisto is using AI to streamline video creation and help small businesses more effectively engage audiences on social media.

Crack-of-Dawn Black Friday Lines Are Already a Thing of the Past, Data Shows

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How is the increasing appeal of e-commerce and other digital options such as BOPIS—buy online, pick up in-store—affecting retail’s biggest day of the year? One consequence, data from Reveal Mobile indicates, is the end of the notoriously colossal lines that used to mark the beginning of Black Friday. 

What Will AR Mean for Consumer Brands?

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What’s driving AR today? And what does it mean for big consumer brands? Our lead analyst Mike Boland tackles these questions in this week’s Road Map column, which delves into the tech giants’ investments in AR and what they mean for the future of XR-driven brand advertising.

Commentary

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.

DEBATE: The Marketing of SMB Marketing Solutions

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Speculation over the best model for providing and marketing SMB solutions — do-it-yourself (DIY), do-it-for-me (DIFM), or the middle-ground option, do-it-with-me (DIFM) — has been swirling for years. Columns from two Street Fight contributors indicate that while technology is part of the current problem, it’s undoubtedly part of the solution as well.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Payments App CurrentC Ready For Trial Run, TripAdvisor Transformed

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Retailers’ Answer to Apple Pay Is Said to Hit Stores in August (Bloomberg)… Get Ready For the ‘Big One’ (GeoMarketing)… TripAdvisor Transformed: The Booking Site Is Now in Full Swing (Skift)…

Street Culture: MomentFeed CEO Says ‘Don’t Work Here Unless You Absolutely Must’

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“We only grow at a rate that guarantees that we can provide [our customers] the product and expertise that will drive that high level of customer success,” says CEO Robert Blatt. “We are growing rapidly, but we really limit our growth so we can always deliver client success.”

Hyperlocal News App Blockfeed Takes Another Stab at Geo-Aggregation

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Hyperlocal news organizations can be necessarily limited by their neighborhood focus, but Blockfeed thinks local news has the potential to be far more viable, because the essential components — content, an audience, and advertisers — have already been brought together by geography.

Sponsored Content: Duplicate Listings Are Killing Your Business

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Duplicate listings are one of the most common data problems plaguing small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. They can confuse potential customers, and cause your clients to lose business. But many marketers are uncertain about how duplicates are created, the problem they cause, and how best to address them.

Street Fight Daily: Macy’s Expands Same-Day Delivery Via Amazon, Angie’s List Misses Growth Targets

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Advertising Isn’t The Solution To The Media’s Problems — It Is The Problem (Fortune)… Macy’s Battle for the ‘Last Mile’ Leads to Amazon (New York Post)…

Study Finds Consumer Search Preferences Depend Heavily on Type of Business

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A few categories like restaurants, physicians, and beauty salons consistently capture the greatest volume of searches, stretching out into a long tail of lower-volume searches for occasional needs like roofing, chiropractors, and house cleaning.

11 Tools SMBs Can Use to Manage Social Media

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Instead of relying on agencies to manage their social media accounts, local merchants are increasingly using self-management platforms to post on multiple networks, optimize campaigns, and calculate ROI from their social investments. Here are 11 platforms that SMBs can try.

Sponsored Content: What to Know About SEO

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In order to start seeing a positive ROI on their websites, businesses of all sizes need to find ways to drive traffic to their digital properties beyond online listings and digital offers. In most cases, that means relying on search engines to bring in the crowds.

Street Fight Daily: Auto Makers Move to Buy Nokia Mapping, Yahoo’s Q2 Struggles

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Audi, BMW, and Daimler Near Deal to Buy Nokia Mapping Service (Wall Street Journal)… Yahoo Posts Loss, Despite Rise in Its Display Ad Business (New York Times)… Amazon Expands Home Services to 15 Cities in Pursuit of Growth (Bloomberg)…

On-Demand Services: Lessons Learned From the Rise and Fall of Homejoy

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The news that on-demand home cleaning service Homejoy is shutting down at the end of the month wasn’t a big surprise. Here are a few key lessons that stick out in thinking about the company’s trajectory.