Tag: Hyperlocal

xAd Unveils New Platform To Help Stores Gain Insights On Foot Traffic

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday, xAd, a New York-based mobile ad tech company, unveiled MarketPlace Discovery, a new location intelligence platform that tracks foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores. Powered by the anonymized foot traffic data that xAd collects from its network of over a hundred thousand mobile apps and its proprietary Blueprints technology that charts the geo-boundaries of nearly a hundred million store locations, this platform enables brick-and-mortar businesses, especially retailers and chain restaurants, to see not only the foot traffic pattern of their own stores, but also that of their competitors. Users will also be able to see where their customers were prior to their store visit, helping them better understand the consumer journey and geographic distribution. The platform, currently in beta, is free to use and available to the public with a “more comprehensive version” planned for launch later this year.

What Brands Need To Do
The advances in smartphone adoption and location-based mobile ad tech have enabled brick-and-mortar stores to track the volume and sources of their visitors, just like what a digital shop can do with Google Analytics, in order to better understand customer behavior. This new location intelligence platform from xAd can be a great tool for brands with physical stores to gain some valuable insights on a number of things, such as how they measure up to their competitors in terms of store visits, how they can better serve their customers by anticipating the ebb and flow of store traffic, and where they should target their outdoor campaigns based on where customers are coming from.

 

Source: StreetFight

How IBM Is Using Weather Data For Hyperlocal Marketing

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Since acquiring all the digital and data assets of The Weather Company last October, IBM has been looking to integrate the weather data into its marketing solution. Now the company has announced that it is combining The Weather Company’s data with Watson’s cognitive computing to create a powerful tool for personalized marketing based on hyperlocal weather forecasts. Users of IBM’s Marketing Cloud platform can implement weather-related triggers, and IBM is aiming to eventually make it capable of predicting the impact of a “weather event” on future sales.

What Brands Need To Do
Weather can affect store traffic and people’s moods, so it makes sense for IBM to integrate weather data into its marketing platform. By adding another hyperlocal dimension to its contextual ad tools, IBM is making a compelling case for brand marketers to try out its ad platform and adopt a data-driven approach.  

 

Source:  Ad Exchanger

Foursquare Launches Offline Attribution Tracking Tool

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Foursquare is launching a new tool named Attribution Powered by Foursquare to help brands connect digital ads to store visits. The tool is built on voluntary and non-incentivized participation by a panel of 1.3 million Foursquare users who leave location-sharing on at all times, allowing Foursquare to track their whereabouts even when the app isn’t active. When brands launch a mobile ad campaign on websites like Yahoo and AOL or various mobile app ad networks, Foursquare sets up a test group and a control group from the aforementioned panel to monitor the effectiveness of those mobile ads in driving consumers to stores.

What Brands Need To Do
Traditionally, brands have had to wait weeks to sync credit card data with campaign data in order to determine attribution. This new tool from Foursquare can help brands link mobile ads with offline behavior, offering a more dynamic look at attribution in real time so they can adjust their campaigns accordingly. If your brand is looking for a way to connect mobile ads to store visits, this new Foursquare product should be worth checking out.

For more information on how brands can better utilize customer data to better understand shopper behavior and reach shoppers across channels. check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Foursquare Adds Delivery Feature Thanks To Delivery.com And Button

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Local search and discovery service Foursquare is adding a new feature to its app. User can now  order from any restaurant that supports orders via Delivery.com, which includes over 10,000 businesses across the United States. The new feature works through the deep-linking platform provided by Button, which also integrates services like OpenTable and Uber. This means that although users can see the menu and prices in Foursquare’s app, they will have to switch to delivery.com’s own app (and install it) where they can complete the purchase.

What Brands Need To Do
Delivery.com is but one of the many on-demand local delivery services, as it faces strong competition from the likes Postmates, DoorDash, and Uber, which is reportedly buidling a separate app for UberEats. So partnering up with a local discovery app is a smart move to increase its reach for Delivery.com. For local businesses, this integration means one more channel to reach out to mobile consumers and keep up with their growing demand of on-demand fulfillment.

 

Source: The Verge

Ford Develops App To Help Everyone Find Parking And More

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Right on the heels of CES 2016, Ford announced that it has started working on an app that aims to help drivers get around more easily. Powered by its partnerships with ParkWhiz and Parkopedia, the new FordPass app can help users quickly find and pay for a parking spot. Ford also is working with FlightCar to help users borrow and share vehicles while traveling.

Additionally, McDonald’s and 7-Eleven are also among the launch partners to reward FordPass members with “merchandise and unique experiences,” which will possibly translate into providing drivers with coupons and value offers when they are near one of their store locations. The app, set to launch in April, will be available for free for everyone, no Ford ownership required.

Market Impact
In recent months, Ford has been making strides in transforming from a traditional automaker to a modernized mobility company. It launched a pay-per-minute car-sharing service in London in May, and is reported to be developing its own version of Uber. Partnering with McDonald’s and 7-Eleven signals Ford’s ambition in integrating hyperlocal commerce into its app, spelling new opportunities for restaurants, chain stores, and other local businesses to get into the connected car space and reach consumers on the go.

 

Source: The Verge

Apple Launches App To Help Businesses Create Indoor Maps

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Sunday Apple quietly launched a dedicated indoor mapping app on iOS named Indoor Survey, which uses radio signals and WiFi to locate users and allow business owners to map out their venues using nothing but iPhones. This first-party app marks Apple’s latest effort in indoor mapping, after introducing iBeacons in 2013 and launching Apple Maps Connect last year, an initiative that invites businesses to verify and submit their indoor mapping information.

What Brands Need To Do
Unlike the Apple Maps Connect program, which is only open to businesses with over a million yearly visitors, this new Indoor Survey app bares no such restriction. With Apple slowly but surely opening up the iOS ecosystem to ecommerce, businesses that operate sizeable retail stores or event venues would be smart to try out this new indoor mapping tool from Apple and prepare for the Cupertino company to expand its mapping efforts into more granular, localized areas.

 

Source: The Verge

Amazon Echo Adds Local Business Listings From Yelp

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
With a software update pushed out over-the-air over the weekend, Amazon’s smart speaker Echo now pulls local business listings from Yelp, making it possible for users to ask Alexa for basic information about any local business, including phone numbers, addresses, opening hours and more. After answering an inquiry, Echo also offers additional information sourced from Yelp about the resulting businesses in its smartphone app, including Yelp ratings and price range.

What Brands Need To Do
Since Amazon surprised everyone with the launch of Echo about a year ago, the Alexa-enabled smart speaker has been quickly gaining new functions, adding support for smart home devices in April and integrating event information from StubHub in August. As its list of features continues to grow, Echo is becoming increasingly business-friendly, creating a unique platform for brands to connect consumers in their living rooms in a conversational context. Therefore, it is important for local businesses and national chain-store brands to make sure their store information is listed correctly on Yelp, so as to be accessible via Echo.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Revamps Its Notifications Tab With Customized Information

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Monday, Facebook announced that it has started to roll out an expanded, personalized notifications tab in the Facebook app that will surface personalized information alongside the regular notifications. The revamped tab will now include your friends’ birthdays, your upcoming events, as well as sports scores and TV reminders based on Pages you Liked. Moreover, users will also have the option to add localized information to their notifications tab, such as popular events and news based on the city they live in, movie showtimes in nearby theaters, and restaurant recommendations, if they enable the Location History feature in the app.

What Brands Need To Do
Notifications alert users of new happenings, and the notifications tab naturally receives a lot of user attention. So it makes sense for Facebook to take advantage of this prime real estate in its mobile app and turn it into a customizable feed of relevant, hyperlocal information. For brands, this new notification feed provides a brand-friendly channel to reach consumers. Sports or entertainment brands can use it to engage fans with notifications of new content, whereas local businesses can use it reach potential customers and target them with relevant value offers. For the latter, it is crucial to make sure relevant information like store locations and business hours is properly indexed by Facebook.

 

Source: Facebook Newsroom

Google Maps Now Lets You Search For Stops Mid-Route

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The latest update to the Google Maps Android app quietly added a new feature that lets users find places to stop along the current route. Now you can search for gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, and more mid-route without leaving the navigation mode, and Google will show you results that are relatively close to the path you’re currently on.

What Brands Need To Do
With the addition of this new feature, Google is effectively adding hyperlocal search to in-car navigations, while also laying down the foundation for monetization opportunities, presumably in the form of sponsored pit stops. Local businesses could benefit greatly from this new feature, so it is important to get your store location and other relevant information properly indexed by Google.  

 

Source: The Verge

Pinterest Goes Hyperlocal By Adding Location Data To Its Pins

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, Pinterest introduced an update to its Place Pins feature, which automatically expanded location data to approximately 7 billion pins. When users save a Place Pin, its app now shows a map with other pins saved from the same location and nearby. Designed to increase its local discovery capability, the updated pins with geo-tags will also allow users to get directions through Google and Apple maps, call a local merchant, or check reviews from previous visitors.

What Brands Need To Do
Pinterest has long enjoyed its reputation among social networks as a “Sales Conversion Powerhouse,” beating all other social media sites in U.S. ecommerce conversion rate and accounted for 22 percent more sales than Facebook despite far fewer users, according to a 2014 study by Shopify. Therefore, local businesses should consider leveraging this new feature on Pinterest to organically reach new customers by correctly indexing the location information of their businesses and creating appealing Place Pins for their products and storefronts.

 

Source: The Next Web