News and Analysis
#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important for brands and local businesses to address.
Commentary
What Hyperlocal Marketers Can Learn From Disney’s Wearable Devices
We talk a lot in the hyperlocal industry about what the future of offline marketing and commerce will look like. Mostly it would seem to involve taking the advantages of online marketing and shopping (customization, personalization, analytics, actionable CRM data, etc.) and bringing them into the real world of retail stores. Different players have been experimenting with different elements of this online-to-offline migration of technology, but the Walt Disney Company has really taken the ball and run with it…
Local Search for Events: The Great Missed Opportunity
My jumping off point for this week’s column is a recent post from Greg Sterling, where he observes that despite all the impressive innovation around local search in recent years, no one has launched a truly useful local events service. I have had this feeling for years and wasn’t sure if it was just me. But if Greg doesn’t know about a local events service that truly works, I think it’s fair to say one doesn’t exist. So pay attention, developers and entrepreneurs: local events need a killer app…
How Consumer Messaging Is Going From ‘Push’ to ‘Pull’
The biggest battle coming in the world of marketing is a 180-degree shift in the routing of commerce-related messages. Today, we call them “advertisements,” one-directional messages FROM somebody with something to sell TO somebody who may potentially be a buyer. Tomorrow, the messages will come FROM those wishing to buy TO those with something to sell…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Tech Helps Small Business, Inside Uber’s War Machine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Startups’ Modern Tools Help Small Merchants Compete (New York Times)… Inside Uber’s Political War Machine (DailyBeast)… Airbnb CEO: Cities Are Becoming Villages (Atlantic)…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Charges Fees, Intuit’s M&A Machine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare Will Start Charging the Heaviest Users of its Places Database (TheNextWeb)… With Its M&A Train Rolling, Intuit Looks to Prove the Big Company Can be a Good Home for Small Firms (Pando)… Apps Now Account for Half of All Digital Media Time (MarketingLand)…
Despite Many New Local News Sites, ‘Media Deserts’ Are a Stubborn Reality
More than 120 newspapers have shut down in the U.S. since 2008. Surviving papers have been forced to cut their local news budgets in the implosion of old media ad revenue. Hundreds of digital community news sites have been launched in the meantime, but journalist and educator Dr. Michelle Ferrier from the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University says that millions of Americans have ended up in a “media desert.”
Is the U.K. Moving Ahead of the U.S. in Location Targeting?
If the American Revolution were fought based on technological powerhouses alone, we’d win in a heartbeat. Yet some advertisers in the U.K. are pulling off the sorts of campaigns that we only dream of here. It’s easy to chalk that up to the comparatively small size of the market, but that’s selling ourselves short. There’s no good reason that we can’t roll out the same location-based ad tech that has proven so successful in the U.K…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Plans Grubhub Competitor, Google Moves to the Car
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Is Quietly Launching A Local Takeout Service To Rival Seamless And DeliveryHero (TechCrunch)… Google Moves to the Car with Android Auto (Recode)… Uber: The Great Disruptor of Pizza Delivery? (Fortune)…
How Retailers Can Bridge the Gap With Beacons
Using beacons, content can be delivered to a consumers’ mobile device that augments the shopping experience and bolsters the relevancy of the merchant’s real-time communications based on the consumer’s location and real-time behavior. As a result, the messaging can be perceived by the consumer less as “marketing” and more as “helpful.”
8 Strategies for Reaching Out to Online Influencers
Rather than sitting idly by while influencers dictate what’s being said about their businesses on social media and review websites, merchants are beginning to reach out to these social media users on a personal basis. Here are eight strategies that marketers should consider when reaching out to influencers online…
Street Fight Daily: ZocDoc Raising $152M, FAA Bans Delivery Drones
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… ZocDoc Raising $152 million at $1.6 Billion Valuation (Fortune)… FAA Bans The Use Of Drones To Deliver Packages (TechCrunch)… RelayRides’ Altered Future Points To A Ride Sharing World Dominated By Lyft And Uber, Not Zipcar (Forbes)…
Shopkeep Founder: Micros/Oracle Deal Won’t Help SMBs
With its acquisition of Micros, Oracle is affirming its commitment to making, selling, and continually repairing outdated technology that has far outlived its usefulness. This approach, while wasteful, works for big companies with million-dollar IT budgets — but small businesses neither want nor need technology that sits in a room and takes up space…
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