News and Analysis
Happy Returns Expands Into College Market
Startup Happy Returns, based in Santa Monica and founded by alums from HauteLook and NordstromRack.com, offers a way for shoppers to return e-commerce purchases at real-world kiosks. Beginning this fall, Happy Returns will be setting up kiosks—which it calls “Return Bars”—at five campuses around the country to capitalize on the returns generated by back-to-college online shopping.
Commentary
How Customer Retention Plays a Key Role in SMB Marketing
Approximately 60% of SMBs spend the majority of their annual marketing budgets on customer retention, because it delivers such a strong return on investment. Within customer retention, email marketing is considered the most effective digital marketing tactic, followed by social media and content marketing…
How to Use Video Content to Boost Local Search Rankings
Over the past year, online video has become a powerful tool for boosting organic SEO rankings. Search engines still value video because it’s harder to make and is typically much more engaging. Here are a few tips to make sure you are getting the most value out of your branded content to compete online…
Why Yelp Is Steadily Becoming a Force in Local Data Aggregation
Unlike traditional aggregators like Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar Localeze, and Factual, which provide basic listings for a very broad range of something like 20 million businesses in the U.S., Yelp is primarily focused on popular businesses — especially reviews of, and deals at, those businesses…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Bud Light On-Demand, Google Adds Events
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… AB InBev Launches App For One-hour Home Delivery Of Beer (MarketWatch)… Google Makes It Easier To Buy Tickets For Live Events, Straight From Search Results And Maps (The Next Web)… With The Booking Now App, Booking.com (aka Goliath) Just Arrived To The Last-Minute Hotel Game (Pando)…
Optimizing Your Pay-Per-Call Campaign
Basic pay-per-call campaign optimization strategies run the gamut from scheduling ad play according to hours of operation to selecting the most accurate categories for ads to play in. These optimization strategies help increase both the volume of calls that a business receives and the duration of those calls…
Street Fight Daily: Microsoft’s Square Competitor, Moovit Raises $50M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Microsoft, PayPal Team Up for Mobile POS for SMBs(eWeek)… Moovit Raises $50M To Scale Its Public Transit App, Goes Up Against CityMapper (TechCrunch)… Facebook Ad Clicks Are Shifting to Mobile, so Why Aren’t Conversions? (AdWeek)…
4 Reasons Location-Based Services Will Become a Thing Again in 2015
With improved location accuracy, improved POI data, and efficient background location processing, developers will be equipped to build apps that can truly extract relevant real-world user experience. Location will mean more than a wandering blue dot; it will mean the places we’ve traveled, the relationships we’ve developed, and the resolutions we’ve kept…
Why Local Marketing Is a Function of Commerce, Not Media
I’ve come to believe that the initial narrative about digital — the one about eyeballs simply moving online — actually impedes an effective analysis of the local marketing industry. Once we see local marketing as a function of commerce (ad not media) we start to find a more dramatic shift than previously thought.
Street Fight Daily: Zomato Buys Urbanspoon, Ford Opens Dashboard
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Zomato Food Portal Buys Urbanspoon to Expand in U.S. (Businessweek)… With Applink 3.0, Ford Lets You Choose Your Navigation App (GigaOm)… 75% Of Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) Say Internet Marketing Is Effective (Street Fight)…
Scaling Seasonal SEO Across Locations With AI Insights