News and Analysis
With Product Launches, Drift Moves Conversational Marketing Into Prime Time
By launching a Conversational Advertising product, Drift is looking to create a new category of online advertising—one that leads potential customers directly from digital ads to real conversations, without relying on the types of static landing pages and lead forms that tend to slow sales processes down.
Street Fight Daily: How to Manage Google’s Local Services Ads, Instagram Building Standalone Commerce App
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Social’s Hottest Platform Is Building a Standalone App for Commerce… 3 Tips for Managing Local Services Ads… Ad Tech Needs a Shared ID Solution ASAP…
Street Fight Daily: Google Misses Self-Imposed Transparency Deadline, Retail’s Apparent Comeback
TODAY IN LOCAL & DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA… Google Misses Self-Imposed Deadline to Implement IAB Consent Framework… How to Build a Quality SMS Subscriber List, Bridging the Gap Between Text and CRM… Hard Lessons Breathe New Life into Retail Stores—But Few Reap the Benefits…
Commentary
Is Apple Pay Fixing a Problem Consumers Don’t Have?
Paying with a credit card isn’t broken. So mobile payments have to offer something greater than reducing my wallet by the atomic weight of a credit card. We’re talking tangible benefits like skipping store lines, saving time, or monetary rewards. Without these benefits, I don’t see how the masses will be compelled to change such an entrenched habit…
Selling to Small Businesses: Getting Your Pitch Past the Gatekeepers
Having better conversations with gatekeepers is one way to improve the sales process. Most inquiring sales reps tend to ask a gatekeeper when the decision maker will be available and then quickly end the sales call. This is a waste of a great opportunity to gather valuable intel. A gatekeeper can be your unwitting scout, giving you the information you need to better serve your prospective client…
The Value of Measuring the Immeasurable In-Store Customer Experience
Consumer purchasing behavior is shifting from stores to online and retailers are seeing less shopper foot traffic into physical stores. Here are five ways brick-and-mortar retailers can utilize passive shopper behavior information in-store and across the enterprise to increase sales…
Latest Posts
How Google Wallet’s Ex-Product Lead Plans To Tell Retailers What You Buy
The company offers retailers a chance to link the mountain of data, available about consumers online, to the growing, but relatively opaque, credit card data collected by retailers in stores. Marc Freed-Finnegan, the company’s chief executive, spoke to Street Fight recently about the shift toward a more intelligent brick-and-mortar retail experience…
Survey Highlights the Challenges of Marketing to Smaller SMBs
The evidence suggests that marketers who can tell a simple and compelling story tying ROI to hard evidence will stand the greatest chance of winning SMB confidence. The trick is doing this at sufficient scale to be profitable…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Folds Mobile Wallet, Yahoo’s Search Bump
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Amazon To Fold Its Mobile Wallet App Beta On Wednesday (CNet)… Yahoo Sees Big 1.6 Percent Monthly Search Share Gain At Google’s Expense In New ComScore Data (Search Engine Land)… NYC City Council Showdown on Airbnb Rentals on the Agenda (Skift)…
Lowe’s-Backed Porch Raises $65 Million to Target Angie’s List
With the second largest home improvement retailer in its corner, the Seattle-based startup has raised a $65 million round of funding to beat out a set of cash-rich startups vying to help people manage their next kitchen remodeling…
Why Chilean Hyperlocal Network Mi Voz Succeeds Where Patch Failed
Over the past decade, the Chilean community news network Mi Voz has transformed the way news is produced, consumed, and sustained in the often neglected small cities and towns outside of the country’s capital, Santiago. In the process, it has also proven that a local news network can be profitable…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Buys ZipDial, Porch Nabs $65 Million
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Twitter Buys Indian Mobile Marketing Startup (Time)… SoftBank Emerges As The Biggest Challenger To Uber (TechCrunch)… Marketers Claim to Be More Mobile Than We Might Think (MediaPost)…
The Importance of Responsive Web Design for SMB Sites
It’s critical for local businesses to have a beautiful site that doesn’t just scale down to low resolutions, but also looks great on all devices — from a 27” desktop display to a “smart” refrigerator, and every tablet, phablet, and phone in between. That’s why for the majority of local businesses, responsive design is the best mobile strategy…
Street Fight Daily: Google Eyes Softcard, Lyft Seeks Mega-Funding
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Is In Talks With Mobile Payments Company Softcard (TechCrunch)… Lyft Seeking New Mega-Funding to Battle Uber (Recode)… Are Facebook And Yelp Losing The Support Of Small Businesses? (Pando)…
Openings and New Hires at UberMedia, Yext, Google and Dex Media
Every two weeks, Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs and hires at Groupon, MenuPages, Square, Skyhook Wireless, and more…
How to Get to 5 Years of Success in Hyperlocal Publishing
This month Scott Brodbeck is celebrating the fifth anniversary of ARLnow, which has expanded into a mini-network of four sites in metro Washington D.C. We caught up with Brodbeck recently to see how he’s made a journalistic and business success out of community news and where ARLnow is headed in 2015…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem