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
SMB-SaaS: Macroeconomic Forces Driving the Market (May 30, 2019)
LSA Insider: “At next week’s Localogy: Engage event in Washington DC, we’ll present findings from Wave IV of our proprietary SMB research. The new data show additional SaaS adoption momentum, with meaningful differences by age of business owner.”
Why Marketers Still Struggle With One-to-One Personalization (May 30, 2019)
Street Fight: “Personalization has long been touted as the future-proof way for businesses to connect with and retain customers. With Gartner predicting enterprises will win or lose due to customer experience in 2019 and beyond, offering customers meaningful, personalized experiences takes on even greater importance.”
Strategy & Tactics
Shopping as entertainment and how social commerce will succeed (May 29, 2019)
Marketing Land: “Traditional ad formats on social channels will face a shakeup as Facebook and others aggressively test new ad experiences to make purchases without ever leaving the platform.”
Content goals: Links, keywords and conversions (May 28, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “Ever since the early days of the internet, content has been a driving force in how we interact with the web. Bill Gates famously stated, “Content is king,” and even Google told us that content and links are driving forces behind their search rankings algorithm.”
Stats & Studies
SMBs Warm Up to New Tech But Are Skeptical of Impersonal Interactions (May 30, 2019)
Street Fight: “A freshly released report from SMB software firm Broadly uses data from a survey of 300 SMB leaders to paint a picture of the American SMB in 2019: gradually embracing mobile-first communication, skeptical of innovation that undercuts human connection, and ambivalent toward large digital marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy.”
Social Media Moves Down the Funnel as Commerce Opportunity Arises (May 28, 2019)
eMarketer: “Social networks are generally thought to occupy the upper end of the digital marketing funnel. While brand awareness is still the bread and butter of social marketing, social may also have a place further along the path to purchase.”
Industry News
Popular Dishes: Google Using Machine Learning to Improve Maps (May 30, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Teased at Google’s recent developer conference, the company is rolling out (Android now, iOS in the coming month) a new “popular dishes” feature in Google Maps. Google Maps will now show images and descriptions of a restaurant’s most popular menu items. Google says this was created through machine learning by matching “dish names, provided by Google Maps users, with relevant photos and reviews.””
Google: Mobile-First Indexing Becomes Default For New Domains (May 28, 2019)
MediaPost: “All new websites that were previously unknown to Google Search will be indexed using the company’s mobile-first indexing method starting on July 1, the company announced Tuesday. For new websites, this indexing feature will become enabled by default, so there are no plans for Google to notify webmasters.”
