Why Purpose-Built Marketplaces Matter for Marketers
Today’s digital landscape is brimming with buzzwords like “full-funnel campaigns,” “omnichannel,” “data-driven,” “personalization,” and more. These concepts promote the idea that marketers can achieve all their goals with a single, unified approach. However, while these ideas sound appealing, the reality is that one-size-fits-all solutions often fall short, especially when it comes to achieving distinct objectives […]
5 Local Marketplaces for Housecleaners
Marketplaces aimed at providing consumers with easy ways to quickly find and book local housecleaners and home services providers are heating up, with frontrunners like Handy and Homejoy enjoying major investments from well-known venture firms like Revolution (led by AOL co-founder Steve Case and Groupon chairman Ted Leonisis), Google Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. Here are […]
6 Strategies for Onboarding Merchants to a New Marketplace
Being unable to attract qualified sellers is one of the biggest obstacles a local marketplace will face. And, as Harvard Business School associate professor Andrei Hagiu described to Street Fight in an interview last summer, it’s an obstacle that many marketplace founders are unprepared to overcome. “If you don’t have buyers, then you’re not going to have sellers, and visa versa. That prevents a lot of marketplaces from getting off the ground,” Hagiu said…
Street Fight Daily: RadioShack Shutters Stores, A Rollup in Food Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… RadioShack Plans to Close Up to 1,100 Stores (Wall Street Journal)… With Eye On Growth, Just Eat Buys Meal2Go To Offer EPOS Tech To Its Takeaway Partners (TechCrunch)… NCR Updates Its iPad Cash Register With Loyalty Features (GigaOm)…
Why It’s So Hard to Create Marketplaces for Local Commerce
Recognizing the success of Uber, startups and incumbents alike rushed to replicate the company’s model in other verticals, developing new products to help business and consumers buy and sell local services like car repair, house cleaning, and haircuts. MyTime, the 9-month old project launched by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson, is one of these and is staying the course. When I spoke with Anderson last week, he outlined a few key strategic decisions and clever hacks, which have helped the company get some early traction for its marketplace..
5 Tools for Building a Community Marketplace
With their built-in audiences already in place, hyperlocal publications are able to easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting a community marketplace off the ground. However, technical challenges still remain, and building a marketplace from scratch can be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Now, a handful of vendors are offering a solution, providing publishers with the tools they need to create custom marketplaces that can be up and running in a matter of days…
6 Strategies for Building a Local Online Marketplace
Local marketplaces are notoriously difficult to build, and yet the rewards are significant for publishers who are successful. When done right, local marketplaces can create additional streams of revenue, and they can serve as page-view generators for the hyperlocal news sites they’re associated with. We spoke with several folks who have built marketplace products for local to get some insight…