News and Analysis

How Brands Are Using Hyperlocal Marketing to Reach Millennial Shoppers

Members of the millennial generation—generally defined as those born between 1982 and 2004—are more comfortable receiving targeted digital ads than consumers in other generations, and they’re warming to technologies like NFC and mobile payments. Here’s how five brands have targeted millennials with location-based strategies, along with insights into what made their tactics so successful.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Food Ordering, Apple Throws Advertisers a Curve Ball

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Adds Food-Ordering Feature… Publishers Are Already Feeling Pain from Apple’s Move Against Ad Tracking… Mobile-Ordering Apps Trouble Restaurants…

Street Culture: Female Leaders at Main Street Hub Highlight Group Dynamics and Diversity in Communication

At marketing automation and CRM company Main Street Hub, the product engineering team has grown from six people to 30 in three years. The entire company employs more than 500 people, so in the product, engineering, and design department, the leadership is proud of the diversity and success they have achieved.

Latest Posts

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Esquire, GetGlue

In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at jeans that check-in for you; Esquire jumps the gap between magazine and digital; and is Foursquare’s new valuation too high? Plus news from GetGlue, a new Apple patent on location and a clip from the archives with Holger Luedorf, VP mobile and international at Foursquare…

Street Fight Daily: Mason Stays, LivingSocial Speeds to a Halt

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon CEO Mason to Stay After Directors Discuss His Tenure (Businessweek)… LivingSocial Learns Speeding Doesn’t Pay  (The Wall Street Journal)… Hyperlocal Ads Are Linchpin to Holiday Mobile Search Auccess (Mobile Marketer)…

Memo to Hyperlocal Editors: You Too Can Be a Nate Silver

As I watched Nate Silver achieve such success analyzing numbers during the election, I asked myself: Can hyperlocal news sites learn anything from FiveThirtyEight? The question is pertinent because numbers of all kind — far beyond those from polling and elections — are gushing from local governments, but not many of them are showing up in meaningful ways on community sites…

Can Businesses Use Hyperlocal to Leverage Customers’ Politics?

There has been significant coverage about the differences in Democrats and Republicans, but to date there hasn’t been any analysis on real world activities associated with political affiliation. From grocery stores to restaurants, from retailers to gas stations, voting Democrat or Republican plays a part in which establishments we step foot in and which ones we don’t…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Layoffs, Google Buys Couponer

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.LivingSocial expected to lay off 400 in U.S. (Washington Business Journal)…
Google Buys ‘Coupon’ Platform Incentive Targeting For Closed-Loop Marketing (Screenwerk)… The Story Of Adku, And Why Andrew Mason Isn’t The Problem At Groupon (TechCrunch)…

Groupon’s Mason: It Would Be ‘Weird’ If Board Wasn’t Discussing My Job

“There’s no question that we’ve had bumps in the road, but Groupon has created not just a business, but an entirely new category,” said the CEO. “If I ever thought I wasn’t the right guy for the job, I would be the first guy to fire myself. I care much more about the success of Groupon than being CEO.”

The Steaks in Square’s Future

Back in June, social/local analyst Rocky Agrawal bet Reuters financial journalist Felix Salmon a steak dinner that Square would be acquired by a company other than PayPal in 2012. At this point, a sale seems pretty unlikely before the end of the year — and I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. So if someone wants to bet me that Square gets acquired before this time in 2013, I’ll take that bet…

A Quick Guide to SMB Success on Mobile

Less than 5 percent of local businesses have a website optimized for mobile devices. In some cases, a company’s site isn’t even “findable” through searches on mobile devices. Worse, consumers, when they do find the local business’s website, can only see a desktop-specific version. Here are a few tips to help demystify mobile for business owners and help them get started right away…

Conference Notebook: Yelp ‘Focused,’ Foursquare Denies Slower Growth

It doesn’t look like Yelp has plans to push across the local marketing stack anytime soon. Responding to a question of whether Yelp planned to position itself as a local operating system for local business like Groupon, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said it was “hard to say what tangential businesses [Yelp would] get into” but “its safe to say we’re focused.”

Street Fight Daily: Groupon CEO on Hot Seat, Apple Maps Manager Out

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Is Andrew Mason on the Bubble as CEO of Groupon? (AllThingsD)… What Kinds of Local Stories Drive Engagement? The Results of an NPR Facebook Experiment (Nieman Lab)… Apple Fires a Manager Over Its Misfire on Maps (New York Times/Bits)…