News and Analysis
Google Updates Search to Recommend Local Events Based on User Interests
Google is bringing the personalization zeitgeist to local event recommendations. The company reported on its blog Thursday that it is releasing a series of new features that will make it easier for users to find essential information about events of interest to them right on search engine result pages.
Commentary
Phone Leads for Local Businesses: The Unsexy Cousin of the Click (Part II)
Beyond bringing in big leads — and SMBs paying handsomely for them — call monetization will be compelled by something else: Opportunity cost. We forecast call volume to SMBs to explode (65 billion by 2016) as a result of increasing mobile usage trends. That’s going to mean a whole lot of calls to answer…
Why Mobile Marketing Needs to Evolve Past Physical Location
In order for location targeting to be effective, marketers must think beyond just physical location or proximity to their store. It means moving beyond the traditional mindset of ‘who’ you are trying to reach to include ‘where are they,’ ‘what are they doing,’ ‘what are their interests’ or even ‘what might their intentions be,’ based on past behavior…
New Location-Based Services Are Poised to Enter the Mainstream
To a surprising degree, the panels and presenters at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit last week in Denver emphasized a similar theme: we’re about to see a plethora of new technology-enhanced real-life experiences centering on ingenious uses of data. The signal feature this time around is an orientation toward experiences situated in a physical context. The question the new technologies will answer is this: “What do I need my technology to do for me now, in this place, at this time, under these circumstances?”
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Enters Home Services, eBay Kills Same-Day Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Amazon Promotes Handyman and Installation Services (Recode)… Ebay Now Pulled From App Store As Company Rethinks Its Same-Day Delivery Plans (TechCrunch)… It’s Not Just About Print Vs. Digital Media — It’s About Culture (GigaOm)…
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…
Creating a “Local Service Layer” — To Build or To Buy?
The question of “buy or build” is everywhere in technology, and for something as important as brand integrity, it is paramount to making the right choice. Marketers can use cloud software to empower local affiliates to evangelize the brand in a controlled environment while using data to localize messaging in an automated way…
Street Fight Daily: Yik Yak Raises $62M, Square Accepts Apple Pay
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Messaging App Yik Yak Tipped For $62M Funding A Year After Launch (Guardian)… Apple Pay Could Be Coming To Small Businesses, Thanks To Square (Gizmodo)… Investors: Damn Ubergate and Full Speed Ahead With Mega-Funding (Recode)…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Renews IPO Push, Amazon Eyes Hotels
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…GoDaddy Seeks Nearly $4.5b IPO Valuation, Talks Diversifying (New York Post)… Amazon to Get Into Hotel Booking With Launch of Travel Site (Skift)… Leaked Internal Uber Deck Reveals Staggering Revenue And Growth Metrics (Business Insider)…
Best Practices in the Cloud-Based “Local Service Layer” for National-to-Local
Thanks to evolving tech tools, national marketers are in a powerful position to harness their web of data to deepen their relationships with consumers via their local agents. Best practices set a baseline of data, create a parent-child structure, monitor performance — and iterate, iterate, iterate…
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