Closely Raises $3M to Turn Its Social Analytics App Into a Business
Closely, the maker of Perch, a social analytics app for small businesses, has raised $3 million in a series A round of funding led by Grotech ventures. Amid a chaotic local marketing industry, the company has quietly built out a novel business model which draws on learnings from the consumer world to solve one of the most dire problems in the business technology industry: selling to small businesses…
With Partnerships, YP’s Consumer Product Takes a Back Seat
Last week, YP announced a deal with Yelp in which the Yellow Pages spin-off will sell Yelp’s core advertising product to the company’s small business clients. For YP, and its owner Cerberus Capital, the agreement is the culmination of a deeper strategic push and a tacit acknowledgment that its role as leading consumer brand, which defined its print past, might be waning…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Partners With YP, Airbnb’s $10B Valuation
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp, YP Partner in Local Advertising Deal (SearchEngineLand)… New Capital Could Raise Airbnb Value To $10 Billion (New York Times)… The Newsonomics of Selling Cars.com (Nieman Journalism Lab)…
Street Fight Daily: Comcast Resurrects Everyblock, iOS in the Car
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Hyperlocal Website EveryBlock to be Resurrected (Chicago Tribune)… Developer activates Apple’s upcoming iOS in the Car system, shows different interface (9to5Mac)… After Rebranding, YP Names Allison Checchi CMO (Adage)…
Street Fight Daily: YP Buys Sense Networks, Taskrabbit Delivers Cold Medicine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… YP, a Mobile Search Firm, Buys Sense Networks (New York Times)… Walgreens Taps TaskRabbit to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins (Mashable)… Facebook WiFi Comes to Some Netgear Routers, Allowing Small Businesses to Offer Free WiFi access (The Next Web)…
5 Keys to Making Location Work for Mobile Marketing
Smartphones generate billions of bits of location data every day, creating an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to understand and engage with local consumers at scale. In a Street Fight webinar Wednesday sponsored by YP, Patrick Dolan of the IAB joined David Petersen of Sense Networks and YP’s Luke Edson to discuss the trends that make location data a must for mobile marketing, and outline a handful of ways advertisers can use big data to unlock local relevance in their campaigns…
5 Things SMBs Need to Know About Their Customers in the Multiplatform Era
In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Greg Sterling, a senior analyst with Opus Research and contributing editor at Search Engine Land spoke with Sanjay Sood, YP’s SVP of consumer platforms, about new strategies small businesses can use to get discovered by consumers in the smartphone age…
5 Keys To Making Local Listings Count
Local listing sites have mushroomed in recent years, sending local businesses scurrying to get their digital houses in order. In a Street Fight webinar Thursday sponsored by YP, David Mihm of Moz, and YP’s Deepak Thakral discussed the growing impact of listings in local search, and outlined a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to improve their presence online…
Street Fight Daily: Square Redesigns Wallet, Why Facebook Passed on Waze
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Square Wallet Gets a Major Redesign (CNet)… In Passing on Waze, Did Facebook Make a Big Mistake or the Right Call? (AllThingsD)… Foursquare Tries To Find Revenue By Turning Your Data Into A Samsung Galaxy S4 Ad (TechCrunch)…
5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs
As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….
When Will The Last Yellow Pages Book be Printed?
With the rise of local search sites, social media, and mobile directories, the physical Yellow Pages books delivered to consumers’ doors — long a staple of local marketing — are quickly becoming obsolete. We asked a few folks from around the industry what date they would envision for the directories’ final print run…
Efficiently Selling to SMBs: Finding Paths of Less Resistance
We’re entering a more fertile environment for what I’ll call the SMB advertising “Trojan Horse.” Local companies start by targeting SMBs’ CRM systems, payroll, back office management, reputation management and payment processing. From there, local advertising can be unveiled as a “one-stop-shop” upsell…
Managing Local Presence on Mobile Devices: A Developing Challenge
The continued strong growth of mobile local search combined with the high value of mobile customers indicates a shift in attention is required on the part of local search publishers, in order to make it easier for businesses to manage their listing content on the devices consumers are turning to in ever increasing numbers.
Openings & New Hires at Retailigence, Square, Patch, PayPal and more…
PubMatic keeps up a hiring spree; the Keith Rabois is-he-or-isn’t-he saga is over, but he’s not the only Square loss; Retailigence has a LOT of jobs on offer; and things are a-changing’ at YP. Plus, former Martha Stewart Omnimedia doyenne Susan Lyne leaves her post in hyperlocal before she even really got started And if you’re working in sales, you won’t want to skip this lineup of listings…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Expands Deals, Visa Teams with Samsung
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Foursquare Opens Up Check-In Deals to More Kinds of Plastic (AllThingsD)… Visa Teams Up With Samsung on Mobile Payments (New York Times)… With ClubLocal and New SaaS Tools, ReachLocal Wants to be the Amazon of Local services (PandoDaily)…
Openings & New Hires at YP, Facebook, PubMatic, CBS Local, and More…
YP brings on a heavyweight from AOL, Clear Channel and others to head up its national markets group. CBS Local poaches from CityGrid. There’s activity in the U.K. at Discount Vouchers and Shopitize. Plus there are openings at Yelp, Facebook, SinglePlatform, LivingSocial, Google, and more…
How to Create a Great Vertical Directory
It’s tough for a start-up to break into the top echelon of local search players and become a one-size-fits-all solution like Google or YP. The great opportunity that exists in the space lies in serving special interests or special use cases better than anyone has before. Foursquare and Yelp are highly visible examples of this, but other very successful, vertically oriented directories exist, flying mostly under our radar…
Openings & New Hires at eBay, Foursquare, Copilot, Condé Nast, Square, and More…
Two high-profile exits took place this week — those of Jack Abraham at eBay and Keith Rabois at Square. In both cases, the tales are still unfolding. At Group Commerce, 28% of the staff was cut. Meanwhile, other employers are picking up their pace, advertising openings in sales, product management, design, social media, and management. Learn more about who’s changing jobs and where you can apply for a job now…
Finding the Balance Between Relevance and Reach in SMB Content
It’s simple enough to say that creating great content or a great platform should be enough to bring users to your door; but if they have no idea you exist, getting the word out effectively is both a matter of reaching your intended user base and staying within the confines of an algorithmically defined concept of quality content. For small and medium-sized businesses, the challenge is to be present and available to customers and potential customers in multiple online venues in a way that conserves effort while remaining effective…