Commentary
Hyperlocal Case Study: Efficiency, Aggregation, and Profit
There’s one thing every publisher of a local news site knows: making enough ad dollars to get paid is hard. In fact it’s really hard. But it’s been my experience that if we look at why the Web is so dang good, we can make the struggle to keep the lights on a stiff hike rather than a mountain climb. At TheDigitel, which I founded in 2008 to offer a central place for hyperlocal coverage in Charleston, S.C., we’ve managed to carve out a niche among a saturated market (we have several conventional media outlets and a vibrant local blog and Twitter community) by taking an evolving approach to creating content and winning advertisers…
Using Mobile Inventory Data to Drive Foot Traffic
It’s no secret that local brick and mortar retailers have been heavily competing with online shopping for years now. So, how do these stores stay competitive in an environment where Amazon offers free shipping, no taxes, and consumers can shop from the comfort of their own home? In other words: how do retailers localize their presence, stand out from the crowd and bring shoppers right to their front door?…
Police Scanners and Speculation = Necessary Hyperlocal Journalism?
A lively discussion erupted yesterday in the comments section of Street Fight’s interview with B-Town Blog’s Scott Schaefer. At issue: Schaefer’s suggestion that sites did their communities disservice by reporting on rumors and information that comes over the transom via unconfirmed rumors and police scanner reports… Among those taking issue were The Batavian’s Howard Owens, who wrote: “When you don’t do scanner reports, you’re missing a key to audience growth and retention, and I think abandoning your ethical obligation as a real-time news service to keep readers fully informed.”…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: eBay Acquires Shutl, Tracking Companies Set New Rules
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… eBay Acquires Shutl, Races Amazon To Your Front Door (ReadWrite)… Tracking Companies Agree to Notify Shoppers, But Retailers Demur (Wall Street Journal)… Why Longtime Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy Just Agreed to Work for Clinkle’s 22-Year-Old CEO (AllThingsD)…
What Legacy Local Media Can Learn From the Red Sox
In advance of 2013, the Red Sox again fired the team’s manager, changed the executive suite, and reinvented the workforce. The new goal: replace high-cost and complaining “superstars” with a talented new group who bought into the new model. The organization became more horizontal and the salary of the team dropped by 20%. Meanwhile, over the course of the year, productivity increased by 40%…
6 Tools Restaurants Can Use to Fill Tables at the Last Minute
With one in five dinner reservations resulting in a no-show, according to some estimates, restaurant owners are always searching for low-cost ways to fill empty tables at the last-minute. Increasingly, these frustrated restaurateurs are turning to hyperlocal vendors for a solution. Utilizing a combination of geotargeted messaging and real-time inventory control, restaurants are able to incentivize would-be diners to come in and fill tables that would otherwise have remained empty. Here are six tools that restaurants can use to fill tables at the last minute…
How Back-Office Innovation Is Transforming Local Marketing
Over the past few years, we’ve watched as a host of payment processing, point-of-sale and scheduling services have popped up, helping local businesses manage day-to-day operations in more efficient ways. Using the cloud, these ‘commerce’ software plays have begun to undercut a number of large legacy companies, shaking up industries which have remained static for decades. In a new report, Street Fight takes a look at the impact of supply-side technologies on the local marketing industry, detailing the opportunities and risks that these emergent services present to existing solutions providers…
How to Set a Pricing Structure for Your Hyperlocal Business
Most hyperlocal founders think the products they’ve developed are priceless. The small business owners they’re selling to, however, are likely to have a very different view. Deciding on a pricing structure is one of the most difficult challenges a hyperlocal business is likely to face in its earliest days. Here are six strategies for determining the right pricing structure as an early-stage startup from hyperlocal executives who’ve managed to crack the code…
Chart: The Local Marketing Landscape
The shift from print to digital is old news, but what’s shaking up the industry is the introduction of cloud-based business management systems — for everything from payments and point-of-sale to schedule — into the marketing mix. Marketers can write algorithms to connect supply and demand, automating the way businesses and consumers interact locally. Yelp meets Booker. Facebook meets OpenTable. These combinations will bring together consumer data from every stage of the purchase funnel, automate marketing plans and messaging, and reduce implementation and sales costs for both marketers and solutions providers…
How Audiences Must be Redefined for the Mobile Platform
Now, marketers are rushing to grapple with a new medium in the smartphone, struggling to understand what audience means in the mobile age. In considering audience on mobile, marketers need to understand the constantly changing context of a user and the implications it has on the needs and attitudes of the consumer. Marketers need to listen to all the signals a smartphone provides, the most important of which is undoubtedly location…
5 Leading Indicators of the Future of Local Search
The local search market is changing. On the buy-side, enterprise advertisers are starting to assert their control, demonstrating that they can leverage large footprints to compete in local with clean distributed data, and accurate claimed citations. Consumers, meanwhile, increasingly want to use their mobile devices for more activities than navigational search, expecting to be able to buy and not only find goods and services nearby. The advancements of local search are evolving so rapidly that a race to control consumer behavior may be brewing between the Davids and Goliaths…
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