News and Analysis

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.

5 Big Takeaways from Black Friday 2018

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As Cyber Monday gets underway, another Black Friday looms behind us. Below are the highlights of brick-and-mortar retail’s big day as we prepare for the windfall expected from its digital counterpart.

5 Hot Retail Strategies in Play This Thanksgiving Weekend

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Top retailers aren’t leaving anything up to chance. In one of the biggest pushes we’ve seen in years, retailers around the country are embracing interactive technology and social channels in a play to capture a greater share of consumer holiday spending. Read on to learn about five innovative strategies.

Commentary

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.

SMBs and Self-Service: Are We There Yet?

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The question of whether or when SMBs are going to self-provision online marketing has been a topic of intense debate for at least a decade. Signs now point to the emergence of solutions simple enough to make self-service viable within three to five years. Ultimately, rather than a do-it-yourself vs. do-it-for-me dichotomy, we’re likely to see an increasingly stratified local market that looks a lot like a three-cabin airplane seating chart.

Latest Posts

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.

Local Publishers: Take Back Control of Your Brand

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The announcement of the Digital News Initiative partnership with Google is yet another step backwards for publishers. If they would just consider how they operated their own platforms before the 1990’s they will realize that Google, Facebook and other current tech platforms owe them nothing.

Street Fight Daily: Jet.com’s Plans to Dethrone Amazon, Instagram’s New Web Search

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Jet.com Will Launch With Amazon Prices Front and Center (Recode)… Instagram Brings Search To The Web (TechCrunch)… Online Takeout Orders Could Overtake Phone Orders in Five Years or Less (Mashable)…

8 Things SMBs Should Consider Before Adopting Mobile Payments

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With 22.6 million people in the U.S. expected to make at least one mobile payment in 2015, merchants of all sizes are feeling the push to start accepting mobile payments. But whether every local business should jump on board is still a matter of debate within the hyperlocal community.