Here is this week’s roundup of the top news items related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.
Insight & Commentary
SaaS for SMBs: PR Is the Same, but Valuations Have Radically Changed (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “I saw an ad this morning for SurePayroll, which triggered me to learn more about the company. I was intrigued because while I had heard of SurePayroll, I had not realized it was part of the larger, more established small business payroll company Paychex. I discovered that SurePayroll was acquired in 2010 by Paychex for around $115 million.”
Location Data Confidence in an Exploding Data Universe (April 22, 2019)
Street Fight: “Location intelligence, sourced securely and used in the right way, is an extremely powerful tool to craft precise targeting, predictive modeling, and creative media that drive meaningful marketing moments, massive ROI, and brand growth. Unfortunately, the location intelligence sector has also become a jungle of data fraught with fraudulence and insecurity.”
Brands See Risk and Reward When Automating Reputation Management (April 22, 2019)
Street Fight: “With the reviews and other content being posted online about brands coming from an increasingly wide swath of sources, manual techniques for reputation management are no longer viable on a large scale. At the same time, the volume of online opinions bombarding potential customers is making it more important than ever for brands to constantly monitor what’s being said about them online.”
Strategy & Tactics
Webinar: Using Multi-Touch Attribution for Better Client Retention (April 22, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Despite all the advances in technology over the past several years, most marketers — especially those working with SMBs — are still using a “last touch” attribution model. Multi-touch attribution has been discussed for years but its complexity, data challenges and potential cost (if you use a vendor) inhibit people from pursuing it.”
Here’s how you build creative video experiences for a multi-screen world (April 22, 2019)
Marketing Land: “Creative has changed. Gone are the days when a brand could sink all of its heart, soul and budget into a single creative experience – say, a television ad. It’s 2019; you can’t be so singularly focused. Your audience sure isn’t.”
Mobile-first strategy is really about cross-platform experience (April 25, 2019)
SmartBrief: “The “trends to watch for in 2019” articles last year were unanimous on the importance of “mobile-first” strategy, and with good reason. Mobile market share now exceeds desktop worldwide, and mobile share in North America has climbed 12% in the last four years.”
Stats & Studies
Google SERP Survey: Younger Users Rely on Snippets, Rich Answers More (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “A new survey from Path Interactive, (n=1,400 mostly US adults), published on the Moz blog, explored how users interact today with various features of the Google SERP. The TL;DR version is: most user attention and clicks still focus on organic results, but features such as snippets and the Knowledge Panel are causing more zero-click results, especially among younger users.”
Searching for facts, directions, local businesses are top digital assistant use cases, says survey (April 19, 2019)
Marketing Land: “Nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of smartphone owners are using digital assistants, according to a new report from Microsoft. The findings are based on two surveys – one from mid-2018 that includes an international sample, and a 2019 follow-up involving 5,000 U.S. consumers. The study also found that 35 percent of the survey population had used “voice search” through a smart speaker.”
How Many Search Results Do People Scroll Through on Amazon? (April 19, 2019)
Marketing Charts: “One of the benefits of Amazon is that a shopper is rarely starved for choice. Yet, despite being presented with pages of options during a search, almost half (45%) of shoppers say they typically don’t scroll past the second page of results, per a report from Feedvisor.”
Industry News
Kohl’s 1,100 Stores Become Amazon ‘Return Centers’ (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Yesterday traditional retailer Kohl’s said it will accept returns for Amazon products at all of its stores. The policy will commence in July. The company has more than 1,100 retail locations in the US.”
Facebook Working on Digital Assistant Product 2.0 (April 22, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Late last year, Facebook announced it was entering the smart display hardware market with the release of its Portal devices. Portal, which relied on Alexa as its virtual assistant, was intended to compete with Google and Amazon smart speakers. But ongoing privacy issues led to lukewarm reviews and consumer response.”
Facebook ad revenue keeps rising, 3 million advertisers using Stories Ads (April 25, 2019)
Marketing Land: “Facebook’s bet on Stories Ads looks like it is paying off.COO Sheryl Sandberg said Wednesday during the company’s first quarter earnings call that, while Facebook and Instagram feed ads make up the bulk of Facebook’s ad business, Stories Ads are “an increasingly important growth opportunity.””
Member News
PlaceIQ Releases Inaugural Year In Location Foot Traffic Guides For The Travel, Retail, And Dining Industries (April 23, 2019)
Cision: “Location is an extremely powerful holistic marketing solution. From advertising to targeting, to measurement and analytics—location and Share-Of-VisitTM are key mechanisms for understanding consumers, competitors, event performance, market opportunities, and more.”
Google search spend growth slows as click volume rises, reports show (April 24, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “Google search ad click volume continues to rise as CPC growth trends down and spend growth slows, according to reports out this week from performance agency Merkle and campaign management platform Marin Software.”
