Marketing Pilgrim

Amazon’s iPhone app has had the ability to scan a bar code and compare prices since October but now the sales giant is putting that ability front and center with a new app they call Price Check.

The app, which was just released in time for Black Friday shopping, is specifically designed and marketed to siphon sales away from brick and mortar stores. By scanning a bar code on a product, typing in the name or even saying the name into your phone, the app searches for the same item on Amazon and you can bet that more often than not, it will be cheaper online.

At that point, you’ll be prompted to place your order right there, while you’re standing in Target, you’ll be ordering the item in front of you from Amazon. How do you like them apples?

Yelp is truly trying to leverage its history as the local business review site of choice (depending on your age and your location for the most part). It has rolled out Yelp Deals in New York City and is now giving business owners the chance to provide check-in offers as well.

Mashable reports

With Yelp Check-in Offers, business owners can incentivize repeat checkins and reward patrons with three different offer types: percent off, free or fixed price offers.

Businesses are able to offer one check-in special at a time, and patrons can redeem earned rewards by presenting a special mobile certificate showing they’ve unlocked a particular offer.

Paris-based Yakaz has recently launched a new real-time social classified ad system designed to quickly facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. The Yakaz website offers visitors the chance to view and post to live classified feeds from across the country or in the city or state of their choice.

My initial test drive of Yakaz was a mixed bag of experiences. I started by trying to create an account directly through their web site. Everything seemed to go well, but going on 1 hour I still had not received my verification email, which pretty much left my account useless. I finally caved and used Facebook Connect to log onto the site. I’m sure this is one of those temporary glitches with a start-up, but if you’re impatient you can save some time by using your Facebook credentials.

On some level, most larger businesses are engaged in social media. I say larger only because we have discussed the plight of the SMB in this space before and it is not safe to assume they are doing anything at all with social media.

To what degree and with what level of success these businesses use social media varies across the entire spectrum of runaway success to abject failure. This is not unusual because that’s how things work with everything in life, not just social media.

A recent study by Ketchum and FedEx tries to capture just how or to what degree most businesses are jumping in the social media waters. eMarketer shared part of their study with this chart.

Imagine throwing all of your company’s hard copy files off the roof of twenty-story building in Manhattan. Tax returns, meeting notes, personnel files, all of it, gone with the wind.

That’s the brick and mortar version of the business data that’s currently speeding along the social media super highway. From public Twitter Tweets to private Facebook messages more and more of our daily exchanges are happening over the Internet and it means we’re losing track.

Sure, you probably don’t set out to send formal communications through Facebook but you’re on the site and Susan’s on the site, so why not just ping her chat box and let her know that deadline was moved up to Tuesday? And remember that customer complaint on Twitter? The one where you promised the guy a replacement part overnight? Forgot about him, didn’t you?

A gift card may seem like the last act of a desperate gift giver, but Home Depot is determined to change that feeling by adding video to their cards.

When sending a Home Depot e-card, you can now upload a video up to 3 minutes long, or, you can use a webcam to record a message. Then, the recipient uses the code they receive in their email to access the video and voila, it’s now more than just virtual money!

Want to spread the love? With one click, you can send e-gift cards to your friends on Facebook, even if you don’t know their email address.