SparkToro Blog

Posts by Rand Fishkin:

Product SparkToro

New Feature Alert: Email + Contact Info Are Now In SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Since launch in April, showing emails and contact information inside the SparkToro app has been our most requested feature. Today, it’s here. Billions of email addresses and social contact URLs now pull directly into the Lists feature. If you’ve used SparkToro Lists in the past (and have a Standard or higher tier account), your Lists have already been updated to…
Psychology Startups

We’ve Gotta Stop Using “Lifestyle Business” as a Pejorative

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
For a long while, American business culture has worshiped at the altar of big. Entrepreneurs want to build “big” companies, because they believe that’s how they prove their worth. The media tells us that’s true when they report on every move made by big companies, but barely cover small ones. Speakers on stages and webinars reinforce it when they talk…
Marketing Psychology

Outreach Tips (better than anything you’ll find searching Google)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s 2020, so your inboxes probably look like mine. Bloated with requests from people you don’t know, overrun by low-quality spammers, a bubbling morass of bandwidth-consuming time vampires mixed in with people and sources you actually *want* to hear from, forcing you to pan for gold amidst the sans serif grays and post-modern white of your mail provider’s “productivity-centric” user…
Marketing Startups

Where Should You Start Marketing a New Business or Product?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There’s no question I get more when presenting on startup marketing than this: “I feel so overwhelmed… Where do I even start?” It’s a fair response, one for which I have great empathy. If you start consuming information about marketing a business online, the rabbit hole can quickly lead to some very overwhelming and, in my opinion, misleading advice. When…
Marketing Product SparkToro Tactics

How to Find Those Hard-to-Reach Audiences in SparkToro… Fast

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Updated: April 5th, 2024 (for SparkToro V2) Every day, I help folks in fascinating, unique niches uncover key information about the audiences for their marketing efforts. It’s a fun problem! For a few minutes, I get to feel like a digital Sherlock Holmes, digging into their products and services, trying to understand their customers, and then figuring out how to…
Data Marketing Psychology

Too Much Creative Marketing is Stifled by Attribution

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
You’re listening to a podcast. The guest describes a product that sounds compelling, alluring, something you’ve been looking for… What happens next? Yup. You search Google. And then what? Google shows you the website for that alluring product, and you click. Maybe you explore the site a bit, perhaps give them your email address or even buy the product. Next…
Marketing Psychology

The “Wall Street Journal” Marketing Problem

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
If you’ve worked in the marketing field long enough, either with consulting clients or as an in-house practitioner with executive participation, you’ve encountered a scenario just like this one. Marketer: “Based on this market research, we know our primary audience: tabletop board game enthusiasts with kids. So, we’ve designed a content marketing campaign, followed by PR and social media outreach,…
Data Hiring Marketing

Survey: 734 Marketing Professionals Share How They’re Hiring in the 2020 Recession

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
If you’re a marketing student about to graduate, a job-seeker considering the field of marketing, or someone who’s looking to advance in their marketing career, this report is for you. Marketing is an immense, growing, and well-paid field, and is one of the few where credentials and alma mater mean far less than quality of work and level of knowledge.…
Data Marketing

The Dirty Secret to Ranking #1 in Google (Part 3 of 3)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Years ago, one might reasonably separate the elements of Google’s results into distinct entities: Google News, Books, Videos, Images, Local… But today it’s near-impossible. The list of elements Google might show for a given query are so vast and varied that at the macro-level there’s really only three kinds of search results that matter: 1) Google-owned properties and answers (where…

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