Marketers love to talk about A/B testing. Heck, I’ve said it too. It sounds prudent. Responsible. “Test before you commit! Don’t waste resources!” But the longer I work in marketing, the more I believe most A/B tests are a waste of time — at least for small and medium-sized businesses. More often than not, these
How to Find (Not Guess) Your Target Audience: A Data-Driven Approach
By We all know what a target audience is. Or at least we think we do. We’ve written “target audience” in strategy documents and nodded along in meetings when someone mentions “our ideal customer.” But if we’re trying to grow, we have to pause and ask ourselves: Are we really targeting the right people, or are
Demand-Creation vs. Demand-Converting Marketing
By One of the fundamental mistakes I see executives and marketing leaders make over and over is investing in the wrong part of the demand funnel. In this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard, I’ll walk through an example of demand creation at the top vs. middle/bottom of the funnel, and explain why it’s critical to understand whether you
The Internet Needs Less Fighting, More Invisible Subtweets
By I guess we can’t really say “subtweets” anymore because Twitter is now X and tweets are now blandly called “posts.” But we all know in our bones what a subtweet is. It’s a unique description for the subtle shade thrown someone’s way on a text-based social media platform. Someone you know (or hate?) writes about
Getting Executive Buy-In: How to Tie Audience Research to Business Strategy
By It’s a tale as old as time, or uh… for as long as you’ve been doing digital marketing: You’ve uncovered powerful audience insights that you fully believe will transform your company’s approach, but when you try to share them beyond the marketing team, eyes glaze over. Executives nod politely before steering the conversation back to
How to Use Mental Jujitsu to Convince Your Boss/Team/Client to Make the Right Marketing Investments
By “How do I convince my boss/team/client to invest in my audience’s true sources of influence? Especially when those sources are so hard to prove attribution?” Friend, I hear you. So, for this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard, how about we try a little mental jujitsu to get everyone aligned on the reality of how the modern web
How to Turn Audience Research Into Content Ideas
By If you’ve ever stared at a blank content calendar wondering what to create next, you’re not alone. Even the most prolific writers* sometimes feel like they’re running nonstop on the content creation hamster wheel… even after ideas dry up and writer’s block sets in. But while continuing your creation habit can build momentum, sometimes the
New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT
By For years, two questions have dominated both marketers’ interest and the media’s coverage of Google Search: I’ve seen wild speculation that Google’s market share is down 5-10% since ChatGPT’s launch, and heard anecdotes across my feeds from people claiming that they never use Google and have entirely switched to AI tools. But, there’s been no
New Research: How Often Do Americans Search Google? Which Search Verticals Do They Use?
By Last quarter, we published an extraordinary analysis of hundreds of millions of Google searches alongside our clickstream panel partners at Datos (A Semrush Company). That analysis opened many marketers and creators’ eyes to the reality of how people use Google in 2024, i.e. navigational-heavy, and significantly weighted toward the top few thousand queries. This quarter,
ROI vs. VOI: Smart Marketers Look Beyond the Numbers
By Most of us default to Return on Investment (ROI) for measuring marketing success. It’s the tried-and-true metric that quantifies financial returns. Money in, money out. But we all know the messy reality of attribution. The prospects who subscribe and unsubscribe from our newsletters, who toss us a LinkedIn like now and then, who eventually Google