Small businesses continue to be in love with social media. In the first in a series of surveys Street Fight will be conducting with Alignable, we asked approximately 100 small business owners to rate their most effective marketing tools and tactics among a list of a dozen. Two-thirds of respondents selected social media as one of their top three. SEO and email rounded out the list of leading techniques.
Raise Report: Thumbtack, Premise, Ibotta Score Big funding
Every two weeks we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. In this edition, new investments include rounds for Thumbtack, Premise, and Ibotta.
Street Fight Daily: Starbucks Launches Mobile Ordering, a Recap of Google’s Local Search Updates
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Never Wait in Line Again: Starbucks Rolls Out Mobile Ordering Nationwide (Mashable)… The New Google Local Search Display (Search Engine Land)… Postmates Unveils Revamped Platform, Announces 4 Million Deliveries (TechCrunch)…
Microsoft Is a Sleeping Giant in Local — But Its Window May Be Closing
What’s the most important dataset for a small business? More often than not, it’s a customer list. A batch of new relationship management systems have popped to make sense of customer data for small merchants in recent years, but the technology with the biggest market share isn’t what you might think…
Survey: Small Businesses Still Not Sold on Apple Pay
There’s no shortage of hype around mobile payments. Since the release of Apple Pay, pundits have claimed that your smartphone will soon replace your wallet. But a recent survey of small business owners suggests that it may some time before credit cards are threatened.
Can Amazon Bring One-Click Purchasing to Home Services? Here’s What Experts Think
Earlier this week, Amazon launched its widely-anticipated Home Services marketplace where you can book plumbers, painters and other professionals. We caught up with a handful of small business experts to breakdown the news and handicap Amazon’s chances of transitioning its dominant position in ecommerce to a complex and scattered service landscape…
5 Keys to Small Business Success From 2014
Given all the hyperlocal solutions aimed at small businesses, it’s no wonder merchants took a varied approach in 2014. Over the past year, merchants have become savvier about online marketing solutions, and as a result, many are now willing to try platforms they would not have been comfortable using in previous years…
Five Hyperlocal Startups to Watch
At the Street Fight Summit on Tuesday afternoon, startup investor and mentor Laurel Touby quizzed five founders about their plans for world domination and developing a viable business model to support it. Here’s what we learned…
Alignable Growing a Social Network for Small Businesses
Founded by the co-founders of Constant Contact and Invisalign, Alignable allows small businesses owners to share information, ask questions, and seek answers from other merchants nearby and business owners in similar industries across the country. Think Nextdoor — but with worried store owners instead of overbearing parents.