News and Analysis

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.

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.

Commentary

The Price of Free Listings

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When the Yellow Pages directory came out once a year, if your business’ phone number was printed incorrectly, you were in trouble. It was the same with local business listings on the internet, except that instead of one or two books, there were thousands of websites carrying your bad data. This added up to a serious headache for multi-location brands and a serious opportunity for solutions providers that could bring order to the free business listings chaos. Here’s a look at how listings management has evolved.

Can Facebook Win Local?

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Facebook is known universally for its social networking features, but the company has quietly but consistently been rolling out a set of tools to make it the go-to platform for SMBs. From social buy buttons, call functionality, and Pages to messaging and free beacons, Facebook is staking its claim to online, offline, and online-to-offline marketing and commerce for SMBs.

INFOGRAPHIC: The Complex SMB Marketing Ecosystem 2.0

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As the head of digital strategy for a broadcaster operating local TV stations, Lorren Elkins has been challenged to clearly understand the digital marketing space from an SMB perspective. In response, he developed an interactive chart, now in its second iteration, to both enhance his own understanding and assist SMBs in identifying potential suppliers.

Latest Posts

Will Newspaper Companies Find Revival in Local Video?

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Ten years from now newspapers will be delivering more local video programming than TV stations. Inconceivable? Sub out the word newspapers for “a local media company formerly known as a newspaper,” and consider the assets, cash-flow and aggressiveness of these big print companies, and you might warm up to my theory.

LBMA Podcast: Gimbal’s New Beacon, Tinder for Apple Watch

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On the show: AOL/Verizon may be Millenial Media; Shape-changing interfaces; Big Gay Ice Cream uses beacons; Rubicon Global’s quest to be UBER for your trash; Waze’s RideWith ride sharing.

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.