News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Instagram Prototypes Giving User Location History to Facebook; Ideal Ad Time—6 Seconds?

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Instagram Prototypes Handing Your Location History to Facebook… Street Culture: Vendasta’s Intention Behind Job Perks and Fun at Work… Six-Second Ads: It’s All About Context…

Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s Push into SMB Territory; Ad Tech Growing Half as Fast as Mar Tech

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Amazon Furthers Embrace of SMBs with Storefronts… Ad Tech Now Expanding at Half Rate of Mar Tech… How Restaurants Are Using Big Data to Boost Loyalty and Stay Competitive…

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Lands Series F, AppLift Shifts Focus from Mobile Installs to Engagement

TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Foursquare Picks Up $33 Million Series F Investment… Behind Applift’s Rebrand, a Shift Toward Engagement… Google’s Top Ad Exec to Leave for VC Firm…

Commentary

How Small Businesses Can Nail Social Marketing

A strong social media presence can be a hugely powerful tool for any small business. With even a limited amount of time and effort you can create new opportunities for customers to engage with or discover your brand and strengthen your relationships with your target audience…

The ‘Five Places’ Method for Manageable Local Marketing

It’s critical for SMBs to focus attention on a few of the most effective marketing activities, and to adopt a strategy that allows them to keep marketing efforts consistent. The “five places” method is a simple way to organize one’s efforts based on an inventory of what matters most…

5 Steps for SMBs Looking to Dominate the Local Competition

SMBs’ natural advantages are being eroded by the techniques that social and mobile technologies make available to larger businesses. But they can gain back the advantages they’ve always had by operating differently. Here are five steps that can serve as the starting point for competing more effectively in the new social economy…

Latest Posts

7 Online Booking Platforms for Independent Businesses

online booking platforms are providing a way for independent businesses to meet a rising demand from consumers who want to schedule, confirm, and in some cases even pay for local services through their mobile devices…

4 Musts for Making Mobile Click-to-Call Work

In a Street Fight webinar Thursday sponsored by Telmetrics, Jay Weintraub, CEO and founder of grow.co, and CJ Arseneau, VP of marketing for Telmetrics, addressed how companies are moving closer to tracking customer purchase behavior from an online impression to offline action…

LBMA Podcast: RetailLoco at SXSW

This episode was recorded after RetailLoco at SXSW in Austin. Asif and Rob highlight some of the key points that emerged from the conference as well as offer their take on what this means to businesses – both retail and technology…

Street Fight Daily: FTC Considered Google Suit, Sears Bets on Inventory Ads

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… FTC Staff Wanted to Sue Google for Ripping Off TripAdvisor and Yelp (Skift)… Has Google Perfected the Retail Search Ad With Its Local Inventory Offering (AdWeek)… 45% Of Offline Retail Sales Will Be Web-Influenced By 2020 (Forrester)…

Nextdoor Sports a Valuation Over $1B — But How Will It Make Money?

For Nextdoor, a transactional model might explain some of the investors’ faith, and may provide a clear path to revenue growth than trying to untangle the knot that is local advertising…

Small Businesses and the Impact of Mobile Optimization

Rather than competing with the big directories for search ranking, small businesses need to fit themselves within the dominant mobile search paradigm and ensure their profiles on third party sites are optimized for the needs of mobile consumers…

#LDS15: Taking Programmatic Advertising Into the Real World

“Programmatic [advertising] is getting more complex in the ecosphere,” Andrew Beckman, CEO of Location3 Media said. “When you’re able to have the right messaging across all channels, and [the consumer] is moving around with their phone or searching from their desktop, I believe you’ll be able to attract that consumer into your store or purchase something within a specific local area.”

Street Fight Daily: Apple Pay’s Slow Growth, Postmates Delivers Starbucks

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 85% Of iPhone 6 Owners In The U.S. Haven’t Bothered Trying Apple Pay, Study Claims (VentureBeat)… Starbucks Delivery Is Real and It’s Coming to Seattle and the Empire State Building (Recode)… GoDaddy’s IPO To Value Web Hosting Company At $2.87 Billion (Reuters)…

How Brands and Publishers Are Thinking About Beacons

“The data and analytics is important but in the end, it has to be about improving the customer experience first,” said Jennifer Bordner, marketing manager at Old Navy, during a panel at SXSW Interactive in Austin Tuesday. “What can technology do that feels more natural than an extra burden. In the end, it’s about bridging that gap between the physical and digital [experience] in a way that feels natural.”

7 Ways Hyperlocal Vendors Benefit From Self-Serve Sales Models

By doing away with expensive sales teams and giving local merchants a way to buy ads or services through automated systems, vendors can keep acquisition costs low and also reduce churn…