The Near Memo

Send us Fan Mail After the release of iOS 15 it has become clear that Apple is not just a wannabe in the mapping space. As they move towards AR, Maps has become a discovery platform and a fully functional travel tool. Mike, attempting to eat his own dog food, takes it on his cross country journey as his sole mapping and discovery tool.  Twitter, despite its outsized role in our news focused cultur...

Send us Fan Mail In this recent Uberal study conducted by Greg Sterling consumers confirm the importance of local search with over 50% of their searches being local and that they trust local businesses more than they do internet only brands.  Apple, with their consistent and regular builds for Apple Maps has increasingly included new features on Maps to both aid business discovery and to provide a...

Send us Fan Mail VistaPrint in creating its new brand, Vista showed how to elegantly rebrand a legacy company that has become digital. It created a new umbrella brand for its many acquisitions and space for future brand building. Vista is another company that demonstrates the possibilities in the very small business market.  With some notable funding You.com released its new search engine. Can any...

Send us Fan Mail This week we discuss but one topic, the rebranding of the Google My Business tools to the Business Profile. With enhanced in-search and in Maps editing, Google is trying (once again) to lure small businesses to edit their listings via new features. The GMB API will become the Business Profile API and they claim that the GMB dashboard will become the Business Profile Dashboard in 2...

Send us Fan Mail Largely uncovered in the news, Amazon has announced a new program, Local Selling, that allows local merchants selling on Amazon to apply for the ability to take an order on Amazon and deliver curbside from their location or to deliver via their own delivery process. Clearly this is a response to Google’s successful push of Product Merchant center into local and might lead to addit...

Send us Fan Mail The consolidation of internet, cable, voice, content, distribution, smart devices, advertising, and analytics exemplified by these large vertically-integrated ISPs—which represent approximately 98.8% of the mobile internet market—has increased the volume of information they are capable of collecting about consumers, improved their insight into consumers’ behaviors, and strengthene...

Send us Fan Mail The FTC sent out a letter to many of America’s largest  businesses (Apple, Alphabet, Comcast, Yelp among others) detailing unlawful practices relating to the use of endorsements and testimonials. At first glance it might seem like these companies are doing something wrong, and possibly, some are. But for the most part the FTC, still smarting from their failure to extract fines in...

Send us Fan Mail Squarespace’s “Everything to Sell Anything,” Google vs. Lowe, and Has the Local Pack Outlived Its Usefulness? The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands. Near Memo Ep 36 Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail Google Lens was first introduced at Google I/O in 2017 and it has become a showcase for Google’s image recognition. Now when paired with MUM, Google’s new language processing, Lens is being enhanced with commerce capability to provide more than just a simple “this is that” answer to uploaded images. One more benchmark as search becomes ever more visual.  Yelp is making a strategic...

Send us Fan Mail wix claims to have 210 million users. Since there are only 125 million businesses worldwide and about 30 million in the US, this number is suspect. But when you explore their paying users and their $1.1 B income, it works out to the $175 per user per year. A very reasonable amount given their SMB focus and with lots of opportunities for upselling.  The recent past has been unkind...

Send us Fan Mail With ever increasing ad costs SMBs need to understand customer acquisition costs and lifetime values whether you are a SAAS company or not. This survey of small e-commerce and small business firms  shows they spent approximately $9K on average on marketing annually. Average CAC was just under $60.  Reviews can provide an independent look at management issues and consumer trends at...

Send us Fan Mail 32% of B2B buyers were willing to spend between $50,000 and up to $500,000 without actually talking to a salesperson. 35% of businesses prefer self service as opposed to talking to either a remote sales person or a field sales person.  6% of iPhone users have opted into apple pay and use it regularly. And this compares to 5% in 2015. Apple’s digital wallet use grew only 20% growth...

Send us Fan Mail - Rumors of Intuit buying MailChimp for $10 Billion validate SMB / Agency strategy With an EBITDA of $300,000 million, MailChimp is apparently going to be sold for an eye popping $10 Billion. With a product forward approach they have built a great product for small business audiences and agencies. While it is a great compliment to Intuit’s other small business products, can Intuit...

Send us Fan Mail An unusually assertive Biden who noted that this 40-year “experiment” has failed. “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” he proclaimed at the signing of the executive order. “It’s exploitation.” It remains to be seen if real changes will occur but this is the first time in recent memory that a President has made it clear that the whole of the executive branch is respon...

Send us Fan Mail Walmart is doing something that would have been unthinkable in a pre-Amazon world: offering its delivery infrastructure to other retailers. Announced earlier this week, the last-mile delivery service is called GoLocal . It's being provided on a white-labeled basis to any retailer regardless of size.  The SMB social media disconnect: what SMBs THINK consumers want is not what...

Send us Fan Mail  Agency’s amended complaint details how the monopolist survived existential threats by illegally acquiring innovative competitors and burying successful app developers. But will the agency be able to 1)prove that Facebook is in fact a monopoly and 2) can they overcome the fact that the FTC previously approved the buyouts? CallRail surveyed 600 US-based businesses across various in...

Send us Fan Mail Google, when testing new features in the chase to improve user’s experience, often pick large partners for the test period. Effectively they pick a “winner”, that, if the test succeeds, has an early mover advantage in local. often this is to the disadvantage of existing, smaller local players. That is what happened with delivery services being included in the Local Business Profil...

Send us Fan Mail Yelp, in a turnaround from a disastrous 2020, even managed to surpass 2019 number by about 15% by targeting enterprise customers and seeing more self-serve success and success outside of the restaurant vertical.  Bredin surveyed over 800 SMBs on how they learn about product and services for their businesses,The biggest takeaway: Roles one would expect to be common – such as a head...

Send us Fan Mail Due largely to ad price increases, Facebook’s profits soared as the economy picked up. But wait, Mark Zuckerberg notes that in 5 years they will be known as the metaverse company rather than a social network.  Apple, slowly, very slowly, is attempting to build out their own SMB database to improve their Map experience.  Consumers say that they trust Facebook and Google less but th...

Send us Fan Mail Google makes reviewing easy by adding attributes to restaurant reviews, Fake reviews are costly to SMBS but Google seems incapable of squashing them, Square’s new bank is a threat to traditional SMB banking relationships Google makes reviewing easy by adding attributes to restaurant reviews. Google, unlike Yelp, is making reviewing easier and quicker for users by adding quick stan...

Send us Fan Mail An unusually assertive Biden who noted that this 40-year “experiment” has failed. “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” he proclaimed at the signing of the executive order. “It’s exploitation.” It remains to be seen if real changes will occur but this is the first time in recent memory that a President has made it clear that the whole of the executive branch is respon...

Send us Fan Mail Given the powerful standing of the leading apps, it is unlikely that, even if the app stores are more regulated, whether there will be a more competitive environment. And any anti-trust efforts focusing on competitive harms will go up against 40 years of jurisprudence that has only looked at consumer harms. The Google updates favors better content for Local too!  Sterling Sky did...

Send us Fan Mail Facebook’s new Bulletin product integrates tightly into Facebook groups, their newsfeed and comments. It is well a designed and a thoughtful newsletter implementation that could bring significant social benefits to newsletter publishers and new advertisers and news content to Facebook.  From Localogy: “Shopify is planning to roll out an ad product called Shopify Audiences. The pro...

Send us Fan Mail Why has Google, so shortly after announcing FLoC, already pulling back? Google’s delay of FLoC is signaling both the confusion and fear in the market and lack of acceptance amongst the leading platforms.  The successes  of DuckDuckGo as the Avis of search engines indicates the customer demand for privacy DuckDuckGo has become the number two mobile search engine in the world and is...

Send us Fan Mail The local arc from inventory to ordering to monopoly and consolidation  Google makes it easier to upload products & services and give Pointy away for free...Google Local announced this week the ability of merchants to more easily add products, services and appointments to the Local graph. As part of this effort, they are giving away Pointy, POS hardware that automatically crea...