Inimitable Product is the New “Make Great Content”

For 25 years, Google told websites to “just make great content,” and they’d sort out the rest. This advice was incomplete, problematic, and reductive, but also… sorta true. If you made 10X Content in 1997, 2007, or 2017, it often worked (at least, so long as you *marketed* that 10X content). But, no more. Google’s future is no longer indexing…

How Do You Market to a Double-Sided Marketplace?

At last week’s SparkToro Office Hours, someone asked about how to incorporate audience research into a marketing strategy for a double-sided marketplace. That has lived in my head rent-free since. A double-sided marketplace, what’s that? That’s a marketplace that supports both vendors and end users. Think of TheKnot, which provides resources for people planning their own wedding, and for the…

Audience Research Brief: How We’d Market to Mid-Market RevOps Leaders

But seriously, how does audience research inform your marketing strategy? I often say audience research is the heart of it all. And in a sense, I don’t think most marketers would disagree. We use different words for it — customer insight, positioning, voice of customer, ICP development — but a lot of it comes down to the same questions: What…

Office Hours: Can You Actually Track AI Visibility?

“Can you even track AI visibility?” That was the question behind this SparkToro Office Hours session — on March 11, 2026. Because if you’ve used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Google AI Mode for more than five minutes, you already know the problem: ask the same question twice, and you probably won’t get the same answer twice. Different brands. Different order.…

Audience Research Newsletter: How to Promote Stuff; Permissionless Co-Marketing; Instantly Get Better Content Ideas

We’re publishing prior issues of the Audience Research Newsletter here! But we’re not just copying and pasting from the archives — we’re only surfacing what we believe is still salient today. For the newest, freshest advice on audience research and doing better marketing, subscribe here so you don’t miss new editions! We send this newsletter twice per month. Use viral-likely…

Audience Research Newsletter: How to Make Content Repeatable; a Hot Take vs. a Long Take; Why Bad Guys Are… Good

We’re publishing prior issues of the Audience Research Newsletter here! But we’re not just copying and pasting from the archives — we’re only surfacing what we believe is still salient today. For the newest, freshest advice on audience research and doing better marketing, subscribe here so you don’t miss new editions! We send this newsletter twice per month. Build a…