Category: 5-Minute Whiteboards

5-Minute Whiteboards Analytics Marketing

In a Zero-Click World, Traffic is a Terrible Goal

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
60% of marketers say their top goal for the next 12 months is “increasing traffic.” And 59% say their primary KPI is… also traffic. To all those folks, I say: you’re about to have a terrible, horrible, no-good year. The Internet is sending less traffic. Period. That’s a provable fact, and it’s true for every source of referral traffic —…
5-Minute Whiteboards Data Product SparkToro Tactics

How to Use SparkToro + LLMs to Do Marketing Magic

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Most folks who follow me know I’m a bit of a late adopter and skeptic of AI. Yes, it can do some impressive things that takes humans a long, painful amount of time to replicate. But, they’re also stereotype machines whose reasoning and capabilities, especially in the creative and novel needs that marketing demands, isn’t replacing even 1% of jobs…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Product Tactics

Want better marketing output from your AI Tools? Give it real data about your customers.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
An overwhelming number of marketers are using AI tools to bolster their campaigns, their tactical output, and even their strategic ideas. I don’t actually recommend all of those (AI can seriously mislead you on strategy, and using it to write anything you’re going to publish directly is a recipe for unsubscribes), but there are some clever, high-quality marketing use-cases out…
5-Minute Whiteboards Advertising Marketing Psychology

Demand-Creation vs. Demand-Converting Marketing

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
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 have one of two problems:…
5-Minute Whiteboards Agencies Industry Marketing Psychology Tactics

How to Use Mental Jujitsu to Convince Your Boss/Team/Client to Make the Right Marketing Investments

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
“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 works, and how people make…
5-Minute Whiteboards Industry Marketing Predictions

Unpopular Opinion: Public Relations is the Future of Marketing

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Public relations is a dying trade. Mainstream media has less influence than ever. Pitching for coverage is a thankless, fruitless task. Yeah, well, I think PR is poised for a massive comeback. Here’s why: Traditional media may have less influence, but diverse, distributed sources of influence have never, NEVER held more sway over opinions and buying behavior. The 2.5 hours…
5-Minute Whiteboards Industry Marketing Zero Click

Traffic Is Down; Revenue Is… Up?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s weird times in the digital marketing universe. For decades, traffic and sales went together like peanut butter and jelly, cacio and pepe, palak and paneer. But, in the last few years, we’ve seen a deeply strange trend where the two have become unbound. In example after example, traffic can fall while revenue rises. Why is this happening? And is…
5-Minute Whiteboards Content Marketing Industry Marketing Zero Click

Why Do We Need Zero Click Marketing?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
You’ve heard of zero click marketing — and yes, you definitely heard it here first. We’re talking about creating standalone value in the platforms where people hang out, instead of dropping teasers and links in hopes that people will be compelled to click over to your site. It’s marketing where people already are and speaking to them in a way…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Research Tactics

The Biggest Mistake We Make When Asking: “Where Are My Customers?”

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s January, and that means many marketers are tasked with a project to identify new channels and sources of influence for new potential investments. This year is likely more active than most given the decline of Google search traffic, the rise of AI, the Twitter exodus, and the meteoric growth of Threads and Bluesky. But, far too many times, we…

Keep up with SparkToro®