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
LSA Forecast19: Is the SMB World Moving from SaaS to SaaT? (June 11, 2019)
LSA Insider: “The Local Search Association presented its 2019 forecast for the small business software industry at this week’s LOCALOGY ENGAGE: SaaS/SMB conference that suggests the future will be less about software as a service (SaaS) and more about software as a transaction (SaaT).”
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: Getting CACky — Who has Mastered the Art of Efficient Selling? (June 7, 2019)
LSA Insider: “At this week’s LOCALOGY ENGAGE: SaaS/SMB conference, we heard a variety of perspectives from a panel of experienced industry leaders. Danica Greenwood, a former Yellow Pages executive with Hibu, who now leads sales teams at Paychex — the $25B (market cap) provider of payroll and human resource services to small and mid-sized businesses — shared that Paychex can make the outside sales or premise model work.”
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: SaaS Integrations Bridge the All-in-One, Point Solutions Divide (June 10, 2019)
LSA Insider: “LSA proprietary data shows 79% of small business owners would prefer a single, integrated software solution or provider to solve multiple operational or marketing problems. Only 21% said they would rather work with point solutions. That finding offers some important context for the discussion of SaaS and tool integrations.”
Strategy & Tactics
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: What Drives Engagement? (June 12, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Most SMB software products offer customers improved efficiency and time savings. But the upfront investment in learning and training is a big ask for busy SMBs. One of the key threads in the latest wave of LSA’s SMB survey research, now called the Modern Commerce Monitor™, is that small business owners are underutilizing SaaS products, for a variety of reasons.”
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: Empathy Driven Products Will Sell Themselves (June 7, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Most companies targeting small businesses aren’t as effective as they could be because they fundamentally don’t understand their customers. This was a key point made by Sydni Craig-Hart, CEO and co-founder of Smart Simple Marketing, who spoke earlier this week at the LSA’s LOCALOGY ENGAGE: SaaS/SMB event in Washington, D.C.”
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: Turning Customers Into Advocates (June 10, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Andrea Kayal, CMO of Upserve, a restaurant operations app company in the Vista Private Equity portfolio, spoke at our LOCALOGY ENGAGE: SaaS/SMB event last week. Andrea walked through Upserve’s model and approach for leveraging their best customers as a means to influence prospects.”
Stats & Studies
Survey: Voice Assistant Adoption Lags, Especially on Android (June 11, 2019)
LSA Insider: “A new survey from SUMO Heavy pushes back on some of the hype surrounding voice search and virtual assistants. It also suggests that, despite the aggressive promotion of Google Assistant, most of the voice search activity is happening on iPhones and not Android. The survey had just over 1,000 respondents and was conducted online in April.”
Study Shows, Once Again, Clicks Are Not Customers (June 10, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Despite all the sophistication now available in analytics and customer journey analysis, a substantial number of marketers are still focused on clicks — including last-click attribution. And while clicks can be a helpful directional metric, it’s usually a mistake to focus on CTR as a primary KPI.”
Nearly 80% of Voice Search Results from Top 3 Organic Rankings (June 7, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Earlier this week SEMrush published its first voice search ranking factors study. It looked at multiple variables for more than 50,000 voice queries and their ranking impact on an Android smartphone, Google Home and Google Home Mini.”
Industry News
The Interesting Bits from Mary Meeker’s Massive Slide Deck (June 12, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Described by some as “the most anticipated deck in Silicon Valley,” former Wall Street analyst turned VC, Mary Meeker did her annual data dump yesterday (.pdf). By way of context, the slides are put together by subordinates and sourced from third party data. There’s no original research or forecasting in the document.”
H&R Block Jumps into SaaS with Wave Financial Acquisition (June 11, 2019)
LSA Insider: “The convergence of traditional and cloud account continued today with H&R Block’s C$537 million ($US405 million) acquisition of Wave, a Toronto-based SMB-focused cloud accounting software company with an estimated 400,000 customers and annual revenues of C$50 million ($US38 million).”
LOCALOGY ENGAGE 19: Market Outlook – Rollups and Exits (June 12, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Last week’s LOCALOGY ENGAGE: SaaS/SMB event finished off with a conversation about the environment for acquisitions and rollups featuring a panel experienced in evaluating and acquiring small business software companies.”
Member News
Facebook Promotes Study App, Shifts To Reward-Based Market Research (June 11, 2019)
MediaPost: “Facebook just debuted a new market research app, which it believes more closely reflects the expectations of consumers. Dubbed Study from Facebook, the new offering emphasizes transparency, data safety, and compensation for all participants, according to Sagee Ben-Zedeff, Product Manager at Facebook.”
Google brings the Assistant to Waze (June 10, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “Part of Google’s Assistant everywhere strategy, Waze users will be able to ‘avoid tolls’ and ‘report police’ without touching the screen.”
