Commentary
SMBs on Mobile: Questions of Analytics and Performance
The proliferation of mobile apps for local continues, with all major local search players maintaining their own apps, and Apple’s App Store currently returning 347 results for the phrase “local search.” With all of this attention, the time is not far away when businesses will begin to get concerned about the presence, accuracy, and effectiveness of their listings on mobile apps. I’d love to see a service that aims at comprehensive analysis of SMB presence across the “app space” for Android and Apple…
‘Tis the Season for Mobile-Motivated Sales
Nothing makes the holidays jolly for retailers like increased foot traffic, elevated sales and full cash registers. Here’s how new hyperlocal mobile ad technologies this year are helping retailers who target some of their marketing efforts at mobile devices significantly increase their odds of achieving the jolliness they’re hoping for…
Deals Plus Ads Equal a Bundle of Conversions
Deals companies that want to remain relevant must diversify their solution sets to include other services for local merchants. At the same time, publishers who are looking to expand digital revenues through deals and offers need to overcome some of the objections raised by merchants. We wondered what would happen if we bundled local deals with other advertising products, like display ads. The result was that publisher sales conversion rates nearly doubled…
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Case Study: Local Bakery Chain Scales With Hyperlocal Tools
At Cako, a mini bakery chain in the midst of expansion, co-owner Albert Chen says it’s difficult to provide the same level of customer service when he can’t be present inside all of his stores on a 24/7 basis. One way that Chen is working to avoid the mistakes that other growing businesses have made is by utilizing hyperlocal tools that provide him with data about what products and flavors his customers are buying…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Ads Tap Twitter, Airbnb Courts Cities
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s New Ads Tap Twitter And Require $100K Commitment (AdWeek)… Airbnb Cozies up to Cities (Fortune)… Charting the Years-Long Decline of Local News Reporting (Washington Post)…
The Shifting Line Between Free and Paid Local Marketing Services
The manipulation of organic reach on Facebook is one of many examples of the shifting boundary between free and paid local marketing services. In “pure” local search, that boundary has tended to be relatively clear: look for a local business in your typical IYP and you’ll see sponsored listings at the top of the results page, followed by organic results. But that boundary is likely more clear to those of us who know what to look for than it is to the general user…
How One Startup Uses Carrier Data For Real-World Analytics
For the most part, in-store tracking startups rely on a device in-store — a wireless router, video camera, or bluetooth beacon — to count customers as they shop. But Canadian startup Viasense has created a new system using existing data from cellular networks to provide businesses with information about their foot traffic — and, more importantly, where that traffic goes next…
Street Fight Daily: Instagram Tests Facebook Places, GOP Hails Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instagram Testing Facebook Places Integration to Replace Foursquare (Fast Company)… GOP Hails App-Based Taxi Service Uber, Says Regulations Stifle It (Wall Street Journal)… Cloud POS Startup Vend Raises $20M From Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures And Square Peg Capital (TechCrunch)…
5 Local Marketplaces for Childcare Services
What Taskrabbit has done for household errands, Uber has done for transportation, and ZocDoc has done for local physician services, a handful of hyperlocal vendors are aiming to now do for childcare. By harnessing the power of social recommendations and connecting parents with babysitters in their own communities, local marketplaces for childcare services are harnessing technology to facilitate online networking within physical communities…
A New Way to Think About Local: Last Mile Advertising
While advertisers today seek to take advantage of an increasingly fragmented media environment, those focused on local advertising have different challenges and opportunities in that they are in closer proximity to the point of purchase. Even with the tremendous growth of online shopping and e-commerce, two-thirds of all local purchases are still taking place in-person at brick-and-mortar locations…
Street Fight Daily: GrubHub Prices IPO, Flurry Tracks Users Offline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… GrubHub Sets Price Range for I.P.O. (New York Times)… Flurry Launches Service to Track Mobile App Users, Offline (AdAge)… China Set to Cap Transfers Using Mobile-Payment Services (Wall Street Journal)…
With Partnerships, YP’s Consumer Product Takes a Back Seat
Last week, YP announced a deal with Yelp in which the Yellow Pages spin-off will sell Yelp’s core advertising product to the company’s small business clients. For YP, and its owner Cerberus Capital, the agreement is the culmination of a deeper strategic push and a tacit acknowledgment that its role as leading consumer brand, which defined its print past, might be waning…
5 Tools to Collect Customer Data Using Checkout Technology
Ecommerce retailers have always had a leg up on brick-and-mortar businesses when it comes to collecting data about their customers’ shopping behaviors and buying habits, but now a group of hyperlocal vendors is providing offline merchants with similar sets of tools. These vendors are using data from a merchant’s POS system to build detailed customer profiles, even in an offline environment…
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