News and Analysis
How Major Brands Are ‘Gamifying’ the Consumer Buying Experience
Although gamification itself is not a new marketing strategy, advancements in mobile apps and location technologies are providing brands with new opportunities to engage customers using these time-tested techniques. Here’s how six major brands are using gamification to change the consumer experience and promote loyalty.
Commentary
‘Hyperlocal’ – Everyone’s Sold Except Advertisers?
This guest post, originally here, is from BRANDWEEK writer Elena Malykhina
Hyperlocal is not all it’s hyped up to be as an ad medium – but such venues are making efforts to juice up their offerings and turn the focus on targeted consumer-centric content and experiences into increasingly compelling opportunities for advertisers…
Check-Check-Check-Check-Check-Check in Everywhere
That terrible choice you had to make every time you wanted to check in (which service do I use?? Brightkite? Foursquare?) has been tackled by a few different players of late, including Footfeed and Check.in. No longer do you have to pick your favorite child – a nanny-app will log you into all at once. But Footfeed will help you get proper credit for those checkins – hey, become mayor/king/sultan/boss of your fave coffee shop all at once…
P-U! (That’s PatchU to You, Kid)
When we started our journalism career in the late 1980s we slugged it out with other hungry coeds for the few slots open at the local paper. A better time was never had – headlong into the Romantic World of Newspapering, we were. Assigned lightweight stories, we tried to turn into much more than they were in hopes of getting attention and even a Page 1 position. (We should also mention this was when we first used a modem to transmit text of the college paper to the print shop – a sort of magical event in those days). FF a couple decades and the print side of the news business is the same: filling holes around ever-fewer ads. And they are still looking for free(ish), energetic college kids to not only pick up the scraps but also learn to create a better future of journalism. Enter stage center in a puff of magic smoke: PatchU from Patch.com…
Latest Posts
Daily Voice Reports First ‘Unit’ Profitability (With an Asterisk)
The regional hyperlocal news network Daily Voice says it has recorded its first “unit” profitability for operations covering its 41 sites in the hotly competitive suburban Connecticut and New York market. The profit — which does not include corporate costs — was a tiny $2,000 for August, according to CEO Carll Tucker. But it comes after the company burned through $18 million in four years and experienced near-death six months ago…
Street Fight Daily: McDonald’s Tests Mobile Ordering, ‘Showrooming’ Threat Wanes
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… McDonald’s Testing Mobile Order App for U.S. Stores (Business Insider)… Maybe Showrooming Isn’t Killing Retailers After All (Businessweek)… SMB Twitter Followers Show Devotion (eMarketer)…
Local Media Companies Need to Decentralize to Survive
As applied to information technology, centralization is an error that needs correction. The concept of centralization is counterintuitive to the network, because the network sees every node as equal. The real business opportunities are all local, not in bundling everything together to create scale in order to accumulate digital pennies…
Street Fight Daily: Apple’s NFC Alternative, Google Faces ‘Street View’ Lawsuit
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… With iBeacon, Apple is Going To Dump NFC (GigaOm)… Google Loses Appeal in Street View Privacy Case (Reuters)… Yelp’s Newest Weapon Against Fake Reviews: Lawsuits (BloombergBusinessweek)…
5 Things SMBs Can Do to Optimize for Mobile Search
Recent data from Google found that 94% of smartphone users have searched for local information, 70% have called a business after searching, 66% visited in person, and 90% of these users acted within 24 hours. So what do SMBs need to do to ensure they’ll get calls from potential customers who are searching on mobile?
Case Study: Managing Online Reputation in a Healthcare Setting
As the healthcare industry evolves, it’s becoming increasingly common for physicians to utilize hyperlocal tools for both patient acquisition and retention. As the public relations director at Nova Medical Group, one of the largest integrative primary care practices in Northern Virginia, Melanie Schmidt is responsible for spearheading the group’s digital marketing initiatives. She works with hyperlocal vendors like Demandforce, CriticMania, and Binary Fountain on patient acquisition and retention efforts…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Tracks You In-Store, Twitter Buys MoPub
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Now PayPal Aims To Track You In Real Life (AllThingsD)… Twitter Plans to Sell Ads for Other Companies With MoPub Acquisition (New York Times)… Foursquare Now Lets You Search for Individual Menu Items (Mashable)…
Placeable CEO: Local Directories May Die Off
Thanks to changing strategic incentives and evolving trends in the search market, Placeable’s CEO Ari Kaufman believes that Google may make changes to its local algorithm that work to push traffic directly to first parties, or keep traffic within its own ecosystem altogether. Street Fight caught up with Kaufman to talk about the state of the local search ecosystem, why Google might devalue directories, and what it means for large brands.
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