Commentary
True Innovation in Local News Organizations Still Lacking
News sites need to innovate around their core competencies by spending time understanding their customers (advertisers and consumers) and what problems they can solve for them. The solutions should be a good fit for the organization and should be something that they are uniquely positioned in the marketplace to provide…
How Siri Works and Why It Matters for Local
It’s pretty clear that Siri’s interpreter can examine a spoken query for syntax and keywords in order to trigger what it thinks is the most relevant web service. Often when Siri gets it wrong, this is because it has made a mistake about which service to call. In my experience, Siri is somewhat over-eager to assume you want local businesses when you say a word that sounds like a product or service category…
Waze Highlights Inconsistencies in Local Data
There are too many different ways to categorize businesses, and none of them represents a unified standard for online search. Such a standard if widely implemented would make all businesses categorized as grocery stores line up neatly with each other and would provide a significant boost in overall relevancy…
Latest Posts
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…
Case Study: Hotel Chain’s Hyperlocal ‘Microsites’ Increase Online Bookings
Spurred by industry research showing that today’s travelers are more interested in creating memories than receiving discounts, Red Lion has launched a hyperlocal initiative that involves developing local “microsites” for each of the company’s hotel properties, along with localized menus, new transportation signage, and even employee nametags that offer localized tips for guests…
Street Fight Daily: Apple To Sharpen Maps, Consumer Concern Over Mobile Payments
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology….iOS 8 Said to Focus on Mapping, Transit and Augmented Reality (9to5Mac)… Consumers Wary of In-store Mobile Payments (Fixtera)… Microsoft Researchers Launch New Hyperlocal Project With a Twitter Connection (ZDNet)…
5 Tools for Targeting Customers Based On Their Historic Locations
Where consumers have been is just as important as where they’re going. Being able to track the historical — and in some cases, even future — locations of a consumer makes it possible for retailers and brands to strategically target mobile ads to the places where they know their customers are likely to be. Here are five tools that businesses can use to target customers based on where they’ve been…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Calls, A Deep Look at Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Tries to Prove Its Ads Drive Sales with Click-to-Call (Digiday)… A Deeper Look at Uber’s Dynamic Pricing Model (Above the Crowd)… EBay Rejects Icahn board Nominees, Asks Investors to do Same (Reuters)…
6 Ways to Use Analytics to Fine-Tune Mobile Campaigns
Mobile marketing is transforming the path to purchase, as consumers rely more heavily on their smartphones when making all types of purchasing decisions. The question for marketers now isn’t whether they should launch mobile campaigns, but how they can improve the effectiveness of those campaigns going forward. Here are six strategies that marketers can use when fine-tuning their mobile campaigns…
Street Fight Daily: Cars.com on the Block, Lyft Raises $150M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Newspaper Consortium Seeks to Sell Cars.com for $3 Billion (Wall Street Journal)… Lyft Funding Official: Documents Filed for New $150 Million Round (Recode)… TripAdvisor Plans Mbile Travel Guide Features in the Face of Competition From Rivals like Foursquare and Google Now (TheNextWeb)…
Control Group, a Dev Shop for the Real World, Rethinks Subway Navigation
The agency is one of a handful of development and marketing companies to carve out a niche in bringing the web to the physical world. These companies are helping retailers, restaurants and a range of other organizations with a stake in a physical place to use connectivity to rethink the way we engage with the world around us…
Beyond Likes: Win Hearts with Emotional Marketing