News and Analysis
Regions Bank Foregrounds the Lives of its Customers on Social With a Local Focus
“We think about our customers’ lives and the big events taking place in their lives. We focus more on the consumer and their needs than the brand and the messages we may want to push out ourselves,” said Regions Bank’s head of social media, Melissa Musgrove.
Street Fight Daily: Regions Localizes Its Social Strategy, Developers Harried by Facebook Changes
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Regions Bank Foregrounds the Lives of its Customers on Social With a Local Focus… Facebook’s Privacy Changes Leave Developers Steaming… Why Marketers Struggle With Data Management…
Brand Battle: Shell vs Exxon Mobil
Sponsored: To see how two gas giants—ExxonMobil and Shell—stacked up in a competitive marketplace, digital marketing company Brandify used its proprietary software to see which marketing and branding areas stood out as strengths, and which areas fell short.
Commentary
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…
80% of Disposable Income Is Spent Within 20 Miles of Home – Or Is It?
Many “geoscenti” have uncritically accepted certain foundational local statistics because they’re so widely cited and repeated. As a result they’ve acquired the status of “common knowledge.” But are these numbers ultimately traceable to a real, credible source? It’s not really clear…
Latest Posts
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…
Street Fight Daily: Visa, Mastercard Back NFC, Skyhook Finds an Exit
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… MasterCard, Visa back smartphone payment (Financial Times)… In Mobile Location Tie-Up, Skyhook Wireless Sold to TruePosition (Recode)… Why the Web’s Biggest Players are Gobbling up Location-based Apps (Digiday)…
Breakfast, a Marketing Agency and Hardware Shop, Offers a Peek Into a Post-Mobile World
Last week, Fast Company named Breakfast, a small marketing agency in Brooklyn, one of the top 10 most innovative companies in local. The firm’s newest project, a digital signage system called Points, is the culmination of the company’s two-year-long effort to integrate the Internet into the physical world, and an demonstration of a wider shift in the technology and marketing communities beyond the small screens of the mobile phone into a burgeoning Internet of Things…
Looking to Woo Mobile Developers, Esri Releases New Tools
Two years after acquiring the Portland-based startup Geoloqi, Esri is putting the startup’s technology to use. The forty-five year-old mapping firm released a new geo-trigger service and a redesigned developer site this morning in an effort to build a wider developer tool kit that might serve as an alternative to the native location tools provided by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android…
Street Fight Daily: Same-Day Delivery Stays Hot, China’s Tencent Bets on Local
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Postmates Closes New Financing Round and Passes 10,000 Deliveries a Week (New York Times)… China’s Tencent firms up online-to-offline muscle with review site buy (Reuters)… AP Brings Olympics Coverage to Local News Outlets With Customizable, White-label Microsites (Poynter)…
Location, Relevancy, and the Search for Personalization
Marketers today have access to an unprecedented amount of data about consumers and their environment that go well beyond location, ranging from their demographics and shopping behavior to the time of day and weather. However, local marketers continue to fail to leverage this throve of new data to create and deliver relevant, quality and personalized ads to consumers. And it’s a big missed opportunity…
3 Key Trends That Are Transforming Local Online Marketing
Small businesses face increasing marketing complexity driven by more fragmented media outlets and more online channels, and a vast array of marketing technology that is supposed to “help” them simplify this dynamic. SMBs are being forced to rethink where they advertise and how to stay in touch with existing loyal customers….
Street Fight Daily: Airport Tracks Travelers, Yahoo Looks to Contextual Search
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.…At Newark Airport, the Lights Are On, and They’re Watching You
(New York Times)… More on Mayer’s Search Plans for Yahoo: The “Three S’s” and Slipping Through a Microsoft Loophole (Recode)… Apple’s IDFA Crackdown Reverberates Through Mobile Ad Ecosystem (AdExchanger)…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem