Great products today are defined by great design, especially in the age of social media, where what consumers say about you matters as much as your direct marketing plan.
Having led multiple product teams, advised numerous startups and most recently served as the CTO of an online marketing solution for small- and medium-sized businesses, I’ve seen firsthand how design has evolved. In the age of mobile, social and data, here are four key principles to keep in mind as you approach the design process.
As the CTO of a marketing technology company, my main challenge is to keep up with rapid changes in technology and consumer behavior in order to create differentiated growth.
In the last 10 years, mobile and social media have disrupted advertising, software and consumer electronics. Just like the rise of the PC and internet a decade before, these are foundational disruptions.
Multiple groundbreaking technologies are looking to change how we interact with products, companies and each other, and they are being driven by a perfect storm of dependent innovation.
It's an exciting time, particularly in five key areas.
As president and co-founder of an online marketing platform, I’ve seen tremendous shifts around local commerce the past few years. Local news and print marketing have been upended by online equivalents that offer more personalized discovery, powered by social feedback. Local businesses already know that the lion’s share of their marketing should be online, and that’s how they’re earning customers’ loyalty today.
We’re increasingly seeing winner-take-all economics, and it’s no surprise to see industry leaders investing to capture their market. One company that is uniquely positioned to run the gauntlet is Facebook FB -2.94%, which has been less publicly putting together assets that could disrupt local search, local news and loyalty marketing — and, in the process, solidify its local advertising proposition. But for Facebook to establish itself in the local space, it will require bolder steps and an integrated vision. Here’s what that might look like.
As the publisher of the largest local business newswire, I know there is a great and growing demand from organizations, businesses and community leaders seeking to push their messages out to a largest possible audience. Why not? 78% of CMOs think that custom content is the future of marketing.
t’s always with great anticipation that I open up Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report. The report always includes some really interesting data that helps me understand how the Internet and technologies associated with it are changing and there are always several big themes that create new foci for the year ahead. This year is no different and I thought I would share some of those takeaways in the context of the local marketing industry. Arguably how the Internet affects local commerce was one of the biggest themes this year and that starts with mobile…
For the next week, we are putting a big focus on thinking about the Retail Industry given our Retail 150 Local Marketing Report Card research. When watching 60 Minutes, you might think that in a couple of years most retail sales would all occur online and be delivered by airborne drone. Instead, the industry data paints a much different picture.
As a follow up to our post on why only 2% of local businesses think pay-per-click advertising is effective, we started getting asked why are people paying so much for it? We were asked a lot! With costs per click continuing to go up, why spend money on advertising vs the marketing channels that were orders of magnitude more successful? We are examining this a bit in our upcoming white paper on The Top Digital Marketing Opportunities for 2014, coming out in December.
We love marketing infographics at LocalVox, especially when they say good things about us. This infographic from the Social Media Strategies Summit 2013 that was published in Social Media Today breaks down the top 25 social media tools by functional category. We are very pleased to be included under “Social Conversation” – and isn’t that really the heart of social media marketing?
Google is new to the review game with the launch of Google+Local in May 2012 (see all Google Maps Updates and History), whereas industry leader Yelp has been focusing on reviews since October of 2004. As a result, traditionally local businesses have been focusing on their Yelp reviews, but they should start transitioning to focus on Google+Local. Here’s why Google is going to win in the long term (my 2 year prediction).
A vacation is a great chance to catch up on all that reading that you have been meaning to do. For many that’s fiction, poetry or political commentary, but whether it is an indictment of my workaholic nature or not, I am on a beach reading about local marketing and a great piece by Google called the Zero Moment of Truth. It’s wonderful white paper that talks about the influence of your online brand to every traditional touch point in the marketing models of the past 20 years.
We say this over an over again, but mobile is inherently local. It’s a link to information as you move around your day. For just 10 Euros, I know had access to every train, every bus, every schedule and optimal routes to get everywhere just by putting a destination into Google Maps. What once was daunting, became simple. Uncertainty of not knowing a new place faded away. With GPS, we could always confirm we were going in the right direction. With Google+Local listings, we knew what hours stores, museums and restaurants were open. Google+Local saved us twice from going to a place that had since been closed (from our online research of things to do). All of that information in my pocket.
It started with the Yelp Revenue Estimator Calculator, which was a very flawed tool to estimate revenue generated from Yelp as we have documented before. By some estimations, it was overcounting revenue by at least 6x, although they validated it with Boston Consulting.
