Commentary
BxB Recap: Is This the Future of Local News?
The passion with the group at Block by Block isn’t just about great journalism — it’s about turning online journalism into a business; it’s about leveraging existing tools and creating new ones; and most importantly it’s about working to collaboratively across these businesses to make an impact…
What Do SMBs Really Need From Digital Platforms?
Amidst the fog of buzzwords and the scramble for investment dollars, are locally targeted startups solving problems that are worth the effort? Within that industry we all generally have a conviction that our products and services matter, but we do spend a lot of our time within a circle of people who don’t need convincing. If our ultimate constituency is the business owner, the question we should ask is: “What really matters to SMBs?”
How Can Local Search Better Serve Service-Oriented Businesses?
Local search isn’t just about brick and mortar. In fact, a very large number of the local businesses we interact with on a frequent basis are service-area oriented. And yet service-oriented businesses make something of a poor fit in a local search model that is oriented toward my physical location and the proximity of nearby businesses on a map…
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Street Fight Daily: Google Courts Local Media, Billionaire Prince May Back Square
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Google Helping Local Publishers Surf The Programmatic Wave
(Forbes)… Will this Billionaire Saudi Arabian Prince Back Jack Dorsey’s Square (Fox Business)… GoDaddy Will Take On Shopify With A Simpler E-Commerce Storefront Arriving This Spring (TechCrunch)…
As Seamless Nears IPO, Search and Commerce Continue on Collision Course
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that GrubHub Seamless had made a confidential filing for an initial public offering. The move puts the food ordering giant on a collision course with Yelp and Google as the three firms look to wrangle local consumers who increasingly expect to search, compare and buy in a single keystroke…
5 Self-Serve Deals Platforms for SMBs
Groupon has generated significant press thanks to the recent rollout of its self-serve Deal Builder, which local merchants can use to create limited-time promotions for themselves. However, the daily deals giant is hardly the only vendor offering this type of service to SMBs. For years, a number of hyperlocal vendors have been providing self-service solutions to SMBs…
Street Fight Daily: Location Analytics CEO Arrested, Mobile Commerce Heats Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Former Motionloft CEO Jon Mills Arrested By The FBI (TechCrunch)… Rapid Growth of Mobile Commerce Fuels Rash of Competing Solutions (Financial Times)… MasterCard Dives Deeper Into Mobile With In-app Payments, C-SAM Acquisition (GigaOm)…
Mobile App GoSpotCheck Helps Brands Track Effectiveness of In-Store Marketing
In-store marketing is a big business for retailers, but traditionally brands have had no way of knowing the effectiveness of the strategy until the display is packed away, and the campaign is finished. Enter GoSpotCheck, a Denver-based startup that has developed a mobile app that helps retail companies collect and share inventory and sales information in real time, and check with the promotion they paid for is up and running.
LBMA Podcast: Mobile Mixed Founder Talks SMS Marketing
Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing, a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association. Top stories of the week include Sears offering curbside pickup; Virgin America’s new in-air social network; augmented reality on the bus; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago’s interactive billboard; Localytics brings in $17M in funding; and Yahoo! partners with Yelp…
Street Fight Daily: Seamless Files for IPO, Norstrom’s Local Sales Slump
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… GrubHub Seamless Joins the Tech IPO Crush (Wall Street Journal)… Sales at Nordstrom’s Department Stores Continue to Shrink (Wall Street Journal)… Are Companies Tracking us, or Merely “Observing” us? (Pando)…
Groupon Revenues Up, But Even Growth Disappoints the Market
Groupon reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the holiday quarter, but shares of the daily deal giant tanked in after hours trading due in part to poor first quarter guidance and concerns over declining margins. The company grew revenue by 18% from a year earlier, but it also saw double digit declines in margins decreased by as its less profitable ecommerce business continued to account for a larger portion of the wider revenue mix…
Reuters’ Salmon: Facebook and Twitter Don’t Replace Community Journalism
We all know that Facebook, Twitter and other social media are transforming news in major ways. But Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says social media — especially Facebook — aren’t just changing news as we have known it, but creating an entirely new news product that is defined by “personalization.” I went to Salmon to find out if there’s a place for community news sites in this world of personalized information…
Case Study: Hospitality Group Replaces Direct Marketing with Hyperlocal Campaigns
As mobile marketing picks up steam and consumers get more comfortable downloading branded apps on their smartphones, Wind Creek Hospitality marketing VP Michael Perhaes is becoming less reliant on direct marketing techniques for customer retention and acquisition. Although Wind Creek’s mobile apps are still new, Perhaes is already seeing response rates that are much higher than those he has achieved through email marketing alone…
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