The Five Fundamentals of Deals Success for Local Media Companies
Many local media companies have not structured their daily deals programs appropriately or put the necessary resources behind them. While there is no silver bullet to guaranteed deals success, we have used our experience working with more than 400 local media companies to develop a model that breaks down the five most important factors to creating a successful deals program…
Hyperlocal Start-Ups Say They Can’t Measure Their Engagement. Huh?
Independent hyperlocal news sites are busy trying to get their users fully engaged, but they say they can’t measure how well their strategies are working. A new study from J-Lab at American University finds that nearly eight in 10 news sites “could not measure whether their engagement strategies were also converting readers into advertisers, donors, content contributors or volunteers.”
Can Tech Innovations Bring Revenue for Hyperlocal Publishers?
What innovations can help startup news sites earn money? How should hyperlocal publishers decide what technology to use? These are constant questions at the Journalism Accelerator, a website focused on crowdsourcing knowledge to help journalism find new, sustainable financial models. In a recent conversation Street Fight’s David Hirschman and CJR’s Michael Meyer talked with JA about some of these issues…
Google+ Takes a Big Step Toward Hyperlocal Integration
I would say this to Marissa Meyer and the Google team: The more tightly you can integrate Google Plus with other social networks, they greater the chances are that could both make your own users happy and bring in others. People go where their friends are, and Google Plus can make it easier to tap into latent local knowledge via social graphs while simultaneously augmenting frequency of Google Plus usage…
NJ’s TAP Grows Indie Hyperlocal Network Through Licensing
Under the licensing program, participants pay a $2,500 fee in their first year, $5,000 in year two and $10,000 in year three, plus 10% of their ad revenue. Alternative Press publisher Mike Shapiro says a licensee, “after the three-year ramp up, should bring in $50,000 to $100,000 in income (after expenses have been taken out for licensing fees, freelance, ad commissions, marketing etc.).”
For Daily Deals Sites, It’s Evolve or Die
Today’s daily deal sites are experimenting with every variation and vertical for their offerings — they know that not only is disruption on the horizon, but their own expiration date is as well. And it won’t be a new entrant into the deals space that ends them; instead it will likely be a very familiar brand entering local advertising: Google, PayPal, Square, or one of the other numerous payment services companies…
The New Local Delivery Systems
The consumer decision now becomes: do I spend my precious hour driving and dickering at the store, or do I spend $20 for somebody else to do this for me? As crowdsourced delivery services gain acceptance, it’s not hard to imagine big brands like Apple Store, Home Depot or any restaurant chain leveraging delivery as a competitive advantage…
Wielding Hyperlocal Brand Influence
It’s clear that for brands there is an ever-increasing array of tools available to help us find the true local advocate. We must remember, however, that influence is not only the ability to drive awareness and get recognition, but also a function of credibility, expertise and the ability to convince people to make decisions…
In Wake of Layoffs, a 4-Step Plan for Patch Success
The Patch layoffs today are actually a very good thing. This is an indication that the management at Patch is getting a better handle on what hyperlocal must look like in order to succeed. While I am not bullish on hyperlocal networks and national chains, I am even less bullish on hyperlocal networks with significant management layers. Here’s my map for the highest chance of success for a national hyperlocal network — and my quick turnaround program for Patch.
Hyperlocal News Coverage of Classroom Violence Requires Caution
News videos of classroom brawls and bullying in local schools are newsworthy, but the hyperlocal coverage may draw threats from some who don’t want the information published. This year, legal claims emerged in New York and Philadelphia that provide some guidance on what hyperlocals may expect if they cover such sensitive types of local stories…
How Hyperlocals Can Burn In Their Brand
How important is branding to hyperlocals? I put the question to a handful of editors, publishers and other leaders of hyperlocals that are successful or are headed in that direction. What’s interesting, and reassuring, is that they were are in basic agreement: branding is important, it has to be earned, and audiences wield the iron that burns in the brand…
Will Retargeting Destroy Hyperlocal Chain Models?
Ad retargeting damages the economics of hyperlocal networks hoping to make any real ad revenues selling to larger buyers. These same buyers can – and increasingly do – use retargeting to get the same Internet users at a fraction of the cost. This is another example of how hyperlocal actually scales down better than it scales up…
Will Mobile Payment Companies Expand Into SMB Marketing?
Transaction processing will become only a moderately profitable business. Where the big POS guys will make money is in value-added marketing services. Square has already started to add in loyalty programs. It’s only a matter of time before digital loyalty card startups start to tap into the POS APIs to enable tight integration between their loyalty efforts and the POS vendors…
Feet on the Street: How Hyperlocals Can Enhance Local Sales Outreach
Building a successful local sales force takes more than just placing bodies in coverage areas. To be truly effective, salespeople must create strong ties in their target community through outreach. These ties create an authenticity that is invaluable when it comes to establishing a lasting local presence…
Will eBay Be the Next Giant in Local?
It’s not just about where users are spatially, or what device they’re on. It’s a function of where they are in the proverbial purchase funnel — the increasingly convoluted path between offline and offline worlds that leads from awareness to purchase. “The boundaries between the physical and digital world have disappeared, says WHERE’s Walt Doyle, “and the purchase funnel has become a purchase pretzel.”
Privacy Experts: Consumer Trust Is Vital for Mobile Payments and Apps
Building relationships with consumers is all about trust — and trust is exactly what consumers lack when it comes to most mobile transactions: “Without strong user privacy controls, mobile payments may turn your cell phone into a magnet for telemarketing, spam, and online behavioral advertising,” CDT’s Harley Geiger writes…
Does the ‘Debt’ in Daily Deal Transactions Inhibit Loyalty?
Even forward-thinkers who speak about “commerce,” or “local commerce,” or even “e-commerce” as the next stage in digital marketing are abstracting too quickly: the industry-sparking innovation here is the use of commerce to drive customer acquisition by bringing the point of sale to the moment of impression…
Can Bloodied Patch Pull Off a Digital ‘Rocky’?
Patch could compete more effectively if adopted a community-faced news strategy. Instead of building a Ptolemaic news gathering universe in each community centered on one young, inexperienced, overwhelmed reporter-editor, it should set about recruiting regular reporter/contributors who know their communities inside and out…