News and Analysis

Back-to-School Shopping Patterns 2024

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Most holidays seem to have moved up in the calendar as opportunities for retailers and manufacturers to get a jump on back-to-school sales activities. In some warmer states, school starts in August. Parents sending their kids off to college need ample prep time to stock dorm rooms (and the closets and refrigerators within them). Amazon […]

SOCi, Dominating the CoMarketing Cloud Revolution Street Fight

SOCi, Dominating the CoMarketing Cloud Revolution

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SOCi, Inc., the CoMarketing Cloud tailored for multi-location enterprises, has reached a significant milestone: $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). This achievement places SOCi among the exclusive ranks of global centaur companies, a status that is seven times rarer than the coveted unicorn status. Unlike unicorns, which are often valued based on speculative projections, […]

Hallmark Launches its Own Media Channel Street Fight

Hallmark Launches its Own Media Channel

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In the MULO (multi-location) retail world, Hallmark is one brand that has consistently been able to flex and scale — beyond the brick-and-mortar card store. Now, Hallmark is “joining the streaming fray.” The new media channel will (of course) be called Hallmark+, and it will make its debut in September. Hallmark has been way ahead of […]

Commentary

3 Recession Priorities for Multi-Location Marketers

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What brands, and multi-location brands in particular, cannot ignore is showing up for their customers. Even during a recession, marketers will spend to ensure that the customers searching for them find them, that they have a positive experience, and that they can easily find whatever they need to convert. This is what marketers will need to zero in on amid a possible market contraction.

GrabMaps Launches Local Mapping Tech

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In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers whether Apple & Google will get rid of IP address tracking, GrabMaps launching and licensing their own local mapping technology, Walmart partnering with senior care app Avanlee Care for grocery delivery, and NTT Data launching Mobicomma in Okinawa, Japan.

The Value of Business Agility

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Business agility is not just a talking point; it’s a worldview that informs all of your organization’s decisions and allows the business to continue evolving amid unpredictability.

Latest Posts

6 Highly Effective Ways to Generate Trust in Your Ecommerce Site

6 Highly Effective Ways to Generate Trust in Your Ecommerce Site

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Here are six highly effective ways to use your ecommerce website to generate trust, even with first-time visitors. 

Yelp Provides Peek into Local Commerce Misinformation and Other Bad Practices

Yelp Provides Peek into Local Commerce Misinformation and Other Bad Practices

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Everyone tuned into local commerce knows that fraudulent local reviews are a problem. But how big is the problem, and what can marketers and platforms do to diminish it?

5 Martech Trends That Will Define 2023

5 Martech Trends That Will Define 2023

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As the US follows in the EU’s footsteps, privacy regulations will only play a larger role in marketing in 2023. While the GDPR is still the strongest privacy regulation to date, we will see an increasing number of regulations in the U.S. The best marketers are agile and should be using the coming year to make preparations for the loss of third-party cookies. One thing is clear: decisions must be strategic, privacy-centric, and backed by data.

Study: Consumers Skittish on Spending in 2023

Study: Consumers Skittish on Spending in 2023

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Strong labor markets and a growth in wages have helped consumers maintain spending on discretionary items until now, but a new study released by the National Retail Federation and Affinity Solutions paints a less optimistic picture of the year ahead.

Catalina Collaborates on In-Store Promotions with Kroger’s 84.51° Labs

Catalina Collaborates on In-Store Promotions with Kroger’s 84.51° Labs

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The shopper intelligence firm Catalina and Kroger’s retail data and analytics unit, 84.51°, are collaborating on a solution that will deliver Kroger’s digital promotional offers to customers who shop exclusively in-store.

Agencies Are Embracing ChatGPT. Is That a Mistake?

Agencies Are Embracing ChatGPT. Is That a Mistake?

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In SEO expert Andrew Shotland’s view, most agencies aren’t saving as much time using AI to develop creative content as they might think. Tools like ChatGPT are fast, but they aren’t particularly accurate. That’s a major problem, especially for agencies trying to create hundreds or thousands of local pages for national brand clients.

How Brands Can Use Apple Business Connect to Reach Local Customers

How Brands Can Use Apple Business Connect to Reach Local Customers

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With access to Apple Maps Insights, multi-location brands should have a much better sense of which locations are performing well, which ones need attention, and how performance is trending over time.

Super Bowl LVII Ad Landscape Shaped By Economic Uncertainty

Super Bowl LVII Ad Landscape Shaped By Economic Uncertainty

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With so much economic uncertainty in 2023 — including mounting layoffs at tech giants like Microsoft and Google — Sol Marketing CEO Deb Gabor believes advertisers may choose to focus on promoting small-ticket items during this year’s game, like snack foods and beverages, while brands selling big-ticket items are largely out. 

Why It Matters that Home Depot Reportedly Gave Meta Shopper Data Without Consent

Why It Matters that Home Depot Reportedly Gave Meta Shopper Data Without Consent

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The Home Depot-Meta incident imparts a broader lesson about the limitations of basing a data privacy strategy on the collection of first- or zero-party data.

Is Sustainability the Latest Retail Marketing Fad?

Is Sustainability the Latest Retail Marketing Fad?

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While countries like France are laying down the law regarding sustainability in fashion, retailers across the U.S. are preparing to capitalize on consumer interest in eco-friendliness as a marketing tactic.