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Posts by Charles Laughlin

January 6, 2020

Is Buy-It-Yourself Adoption Generationally Dependent?

Will small businesses that buy digital services from a live rep today willingly shift to buying from an AI-driven automated sales platform? The short answer is yes. But not everyone. And not for everything. At least not yet. And also, no surprise here, younger business owners will lead the way. This question of whether buy-it-yourself…

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January 2, 2020

Four More 2020 Local Media & Commerce Predictions

Each member of the LSA/Localogy analyst team has their own backgrounds, areas of interest, and expertise. So we’ve each independently developed our own set of predictions for 2020 — developments we believe will unfold that impact the worlds of local, small-business, SaaS, the gig economy, emerging technologies, and more. Below are my four predictions for…

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December 27, 2019

Why All Businesses Need to Think About Sonic Branding (video)

Most of us think of branding as a visual exercise. McDonald’s Golden Arches. Nike’s Swoosh. Yet consumers are increasingly asking Siri or Alexa to find things for them. So how does branding work in an increasingly audio environment? This is where “sonic branding” comes in. It’s hardly a new concept. But it’s importance is growing….

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December 13, 2019

ICYMI: This Week in Local

“ICYMI (in case you missed it) What’s New in Local” is a periodic series on LSA Insider that curates and offers brief commentary on items that you may have overlooked related to local and the small-business technology ecosystem. This edition features Yext’s deal with Subway, Scott Galloway’s takedown of Twitter, Sprout Social’s IPO, LogMeIn’s new…

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December 9, 2019

New Podcast: “The Answers Evolution” with Duane Forrester (Video)

Episode Outline 1:19  What “intent” means in a search context 5:35  It’s all about answers  10:19 Who wins in a zero-click search world? 16:48  Are brand websites structuring their data? 24:24  The age of “sonic branding” 27:22  What’s a small-business to do? Episode Summary This episode of Localogy’s Above the Cloud podcast features a conversation…

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December 3, 2019

SOCi Deal Signals Localized Social’s Importance to Brands

SOCi announced an important new client today. Self Esteem Brands, operator of notable names in fitness including Anytime Fitness, Waxing the City, Basecamp Fitness and The Bar Method has named SOCi as its platform of record for localized social marketing. SOCi is a social marketing and reputation management platform that specializes in multi-location brands. The…

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November 27, 2019

TheFuture of Co-working? It’s Gyms, Hotels & Apartment Buildings

We’ve written a bit about WeWork on this blog recently. Most of it has been critical, echoing the widely held view that the business is broken. We’ve taken issue with the company’s culture, its lack of effective governance, the flaky ex-CEO. We’ve also examined its shaky business model that takes on the risk of long-term…

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November 22, 2019

Ware2Go, Fundera Partner on SMB Financing

Cash flow is king for small businesses and we’ve seen a lot of recent innovation in the fintech space designed to give SMBs new sources of capital or to provide tools to help them collect money faster. All in the name of keeping the cash flowing and the doors open. A new example in this…

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November 21, 2019

New Podcast: “The Evolving Yellow Sales Channel” with Elise Balsillie

Running a traditional media sales organization is a tough job in the best of circumstances. Our latest podcast features an onstage conversation I had with Elise Balsillie, GM of sales at Yellow Australia (aka Sensis), at the recent Asiacomm ’19 conference in Vietnam. Elise is a longtime Yellow sales exec who assumed the sales leadership…

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November 20, 2019

Video Vault: SaaS — The Next Small Business Revolution

This is the latest in LSA’s Video Vault series. Running semi-weekly, it examines selected conference talks, including embedded video and key takeaways. Speakers’ opinions are their own. Check out the entire series here. At the recent Asiacomm 19 conference in Vietnam, presented by ALSMA, I shared the LSA’s point of view on why small businesses are…

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