News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: QSRs Innovative With Mobile Apps, MINDBODY to Acquire Booker
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Fast-Food Brands Are Making Slick Mobile Apps to Stay Ahead of the Competition… YouTube Debuts Search-Based Video Ad Targeting… American Online Shoppers Are More Impatient Than Ever, All Thanks to Amazon….
Commentary
When Tools Become Channels: Rethinking Local Promotion Distribution
Promotional commerce between small businesses and local consumers is undergoing a massive reconstruction. In the process, media channels are being forced to proactively adapt or wither into irrelevance. Media channels no longer enjoy the spoils of having critical mass in consumer reach and limited competition…
Local Stores Become Showrooms for Online Buying
“Showrooming” refers to the act of using local stores as showrooms for more price-competitive online purchases. Retailers can get on the right side of this trend by beating Amazon at its own data-centric game. That means launching apps — or working with those that aggregate retail feeds, such as Milo — through which personal recommendations and incentives are offered to in-store buyers…
As Facebook Readies IPO, Local Strategy Is in Focus
Considering that 70% of small businesses already use Facebook as a promotional tool through Pages, the company has a serious leg up on the competition. Transitioning these users into paying customers means cutting into Google’s massive market share of local ad spend, and potentially replacing the search giant as the de facto marketing tool for local businesses online…
Latest Posts
When Will Big Retail Rethink Point-of-Sale? Sooner Than You Think
Revel Systems wants to bring the tablet-based point-of-sale model upstream and disrupt the entrenched cadre of existing business software providers, which generated billions in revenue last year. Revel’s founder Lisa Falzone, a Stanford grad and one-time hedge funder, spun the company out of an online ordering app in 2010. Since then, Falzone and her team have raised over $14 million in venture funding, and have activated over 5,000 accounts…
5 Tools Local Retailers Can Use to Build Digital Storefronts
The majority of local retailers — including those with basic websites that are optimized for mobile — still aren’t offering customers tools to browse listings and complete purchases with their smartphones. Here are five platforms that local businesses can use to quickly (and cheaply) set up digital storefronts where customers can purchase goods and services via mobile…
Street Fight Daily: Square CEO’s Gift, Groupon Expands Point-of-Sale
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Square’s Dorsey Returns 10% of his Shares (Fortune)… For Groupon, The iPad is its New Passport to Global Markets (Washington Business Journal)… UrbanSpoon Hires New Top Exec, Hopes to Emerge from Restaurant Discovery Pack (PandoDaily)…
DemandForce CMO: There’s No Limit to Where We Will Want to Go
If Google’s acquisition of Waze was the biggest exit in local tech over the past few years, Intuit’s buy of Demandforce was arguably the most important. Since shelling out nearly half of a billion dollars for the retention marketing software provider, the company has quietly executed on a strategy to position itself an integrated solutions provider for small businesses…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Raises Another $35M, eBay’s Strategy for Offline Commerce
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.…. Foursquare Raises a $35 Million Round and Adds DFJ’s Schuler to the Board (AllThingsD)… EBay’s Strategy for Taking On Amazon (New York Times)… Nextdoor Talks Growth, Now Being Used In One In Six Neighborhoods In The US (TechCrunch)…
Why Small Local Sites *Must* Have Multiple Revenue Streams
“If there is a ‘model’ for community news, it’s finding the right mix of diverse revenue streams that are best suited to the particular conditions of a news organization’s local market and journalistic mission,” says Jake Batsell of NewsBiz. “But that diversity of revenue is critical, because news outlets depending on a single stream of income are leaving themselves vulnerable…”
Case Study: Caribou Coffee Amps Up Holiday Sales With Mobile Gift Cards
In an effort to enhance Caribou Coffee’s mobile marketing capabilities, and spur a boost in gift card sales during the important holiday shopping season, vice president of marketing Michele Vig launched an eGift card initiative in early November. Now, customers who purchase eGift cards online can send their gifts to friends via email. Recipients can then redeem their gifts by showing their smartphones to a cashier or printing the gift card at home and handing over a paper printout…
Street Fight Daily: Moovit Raises $28M, Local’s Next IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Moovit Raises A $28M Sequoia-led Funding Round For Its Public Transit Service (PandoDaily)… Local Heroes: The Public Companies of Tomorrow (AllThingsD)… Hey Uber, Lyft Is Growing Faster Than You (TechCrunch)…
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