News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Google Cedes Some Control of AMP, How Important Are Online Reviews?
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Google Is Giving Up Some Control of the AMP Format… Heard on the Street, Episode 12: How Important Are Online Reviews?… After Amazon Storefronts, A Self-Service Suite of Ad Tools…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Gets into SMB Goods, Leading Travel Reviews Site Pivots to Social
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Amazon Wants to Take Over Every Aspect of Shopping. Next Up? Small Businesses… TripAdvisor Wants to Become Your Social Media Network for Travel… Shoppable Billboards: Retailers Say Physical Stores are Driving Online Sales…
TripAdvisor Wants to Become Your Social Media Network for Travel
What started as a site for travel reviews is pivoting to become a social media hub for travelers, providing a personalized travel planning experience that combines reviews and recommendations from friends, publishers, and influencers, the company announced Monday.
Commentary
A ‘Radical Transformation’ Is Brewing in SMB Phones
For local businesses that rely on the phone for inbound leads (which is nearly all of them), the functionality of copper lines pales in comparison to what call-tracking-enabled lines have done for years. Unfortunately for business owners, the VoIP packages being sold to them also fall far short of the level of functionality that call tracking provides…
How Personalization And Security Will Coexist in Local Commerce
The evolution of mobile technology has been very exciting to observe, especially in the local commerce space. As I covered in my last piece we are finally starting to see things come to life with the ability to pay for everyday products and services using mobile devices. But overall one has to ask if this […]
Did Apple Just Transform Pay-Per-Call (Without Anyone Noticing)?
OSX Yosemite’s “Continuity” feature has received surprisingly little media attention in general and zero coverage for its implications for call monetization. But it could be a glimpse into the sector’s future.
Latest Posts
Groupon Plans to Start Selling Beacons to Merchants
The deals company announced solid fourth quarter earnings Thursday evening, finishing the year with gains in both revenue and gross billings. During the earnings call, CEO Eric Lefkofsky announced its latest project: a redemption system that uses beacons to allow merchants to track and communicate with Groupon customers in their stores…
Florists Hate Valentine’s Day — BloomNation Thinks It Can Change Their Mind
Americans will spend $18.9 billion on flowers, candy and more for the holiday — but the spike in demand typically does not translate into big profits for small flower shops…
How Iowa’s Gazette Is Working to Make Deep-Dive Local Journalism Sustainable
Display ads, even successfully targeted ones, aren’t likely to pay for the resources that go into The Gazette’s innovative journalism, where packages can take weeks or months to produce. As a result, sponsorships and memberships are the focus…
Street Fight Daily: Google’s New Payment Project, Real Estate’s Digital Decline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Google Said To Be Testing A Point-of-sale System Called Plaso (GigaOm)… Borrell: Real Estate To Scale Back On Digital (NetNewCheck)… An Attribution Standard? IPG, Horizon, Digitas and Others Agree to Use One Firm (AdAge)…
Uber and Foursquare Co-Founders Lead $15M Investment in Dining App Reserve
Expa, the startup accelerator founded by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, has led a $15 million venture investment in Reserve. The round included a number of celebrity investors including actors Jon Favreau and Jared Leto as well as rapper Will.i.am…
Yelp Acquires Eat24, Bringing the Battle to GrubHub
The company announced Tuesday it had acquired Eat24, a food ordering service, for $134 million in both cash and stock. The acquisition positions Yelp on a collision course with GrubHub, the online ordering firm that went public last year after merging with the New York-based Seamless.
5 Tools for Mobile Customer Service
Catering to customer demand doesn’t have to mean scouring Twitter and Yelp for negative reviews all day long. Using one or more hyperlocal platforms, even the smallest merchants can introduce the types of mobile customer service channels their customers want. Here are five examples…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Buys GrubHub Competitor, Facebook Eyes Craigslist
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Yelp Acquires Eat24, Bringing the Battle to GrubHub (Street Fight)… Facebook Update Looks a Lot Like Craigslist (Recode)… SMBs Divided On The Effectiveness Of Google My Business (Search Engine Land)…
Brands Ignoring Local Search Are ‘Kicking Away’ the Opportunity Google Is Giving Them
Street Fight recently caught up with David Mihm, the director of local search strategy at Moz, to talk about the impact of Google’s latest local search update on multi-location brands, the state of local search’s shift to mobile, and what a rash of new vertical sites means for Google…
Why So Many Local Search Sites Are Adding Business Services
Strategies around SEO, listings management and SEM have long helped businesses generate clicks, calls and store visits. And while this remains true, search sites have recently begun putting more emphasis on adding tools and services that look to accelerate the purchase process…
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Reviews Are Now a Growth System for Multi-Location Brands