Category: Marketing

Data Marketing Tactics

How to Measure “Hard-to-Measure” Marketing Channels

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’ve ranted endlessly about how marketing leaders refuse to invest in hard-to-measure marketing channels like PR, media, native social, events, many types of content, and word-of-mouth. But, never stepped up and made clear how to use metrics, imperfect though they may be, to turn impossible-to-measure into difficult, but possible. Sadly, I’ve never seen a high-quality offering to reliably point-to, either.…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

Which Subreddits Does Your Audience Follow? What Do They Talk About? Starting Today, SparkToro Has the Answers

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Today, we’re launching a new “Reddit” tab in SparkToro. It will show you the Subreddits to which the audience you search for most-heavily subscribes, and the text content of their Reddit posts. This feature is briefly available for all paid subscribers. In a few weeks, SparkToro is updating our prices & packages, at which time it will be exclusive to…
Events Marketing SparkToro

Introducing SparkTogether 2022: Because the Marketing World Needs Better, More Unique Events

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
On November 10th, we’re running SparkToro’s first-ever marketing summit: SparkTogether. It’s live. It WON’T be recorded (because our presenters are sharing confidential numbers and information). And we’d love to have you there. For details and tickets, check out the SparkTogether 2022 Event Page, or read on for more background. Early bird tickets are on sale until Oct. 8, then prices…
Industry Marketing Psychology Tactics

Zero-Click Content: The Counterintuitive Way to Succeed in a Platform-Native World

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Update: We hosted a SparkToro Office Hours webinar about Zero-Click content on August 23. Sign up free to watch the replay. It could be a chicken or egg situation: Maybe the platforms have made us lazy, or we’ve trained their algorithms to reward platform-native content — as in, content that keeps people on the platforms’ sites instead of sending them…
Advertising Marketing SparkToro Tactics

SparkToro Demographics: 3 Underrated Ways to Upgrade Your Marketing

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
It’s been about one year since we launched Demographics in SparkToro, and it’s one of our most popular features. Many of our customers use the insights to develop personas, run programmatic ads, evaluate brand marketing partnerships, and more. But I have a feeling there are even more creative use cases that our community hasn’t yet tapped into. So I’m outlining…
Events Marketing SparkToro Tactics

The Episodic Content Creator’s Guide to Using SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Last Saturday, I received an email from Rich Wilan, founder of Fascinate Productions. Rich and his team help podcast creators build audiences and top charts, and they’re very good at their work, helping clients like Zoe: Science & Nutrition, Startup Dads, A Cuppa Happy (and more) launch, grow, and reach chart-topping numbers. Rich kindly gave me permission to make my…
Events Industry Marketing Predictions Psychology Startups

Google, Apple, and Amazon Stifle Innovation When They Favor Their Own Products

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
The SparkToro team got an exciting surprise on Sunday evening: a mention of our research on Last Week Tonight by John Oliver. The full episode, Big Tech Monopolies, is available on YouTube. It covers an issue I’ve railed against before, but with a heightened sense of urgency: there is actually a bipartisan bill in Congress that might fix this. Thankfully,…
Marketing

You Don’t Need a Buyer Persona. You Need Multiple Audience Personas.

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Update: We hosted a SparkToro Office Hours webinar about audience personas. Sign up to watch the replay. I have a bone to pick with buyer personas, but it’s only because I like them (in contrast to Rand who doesn’t like them; yes, we can disagree). My quibbles? There’s a misguided focus on demographics, arbitrarily chosen stock photos, and cutesy alliterative…
Data Marketing Tactics

Provable Marketing Attribution is a Boondoggle; Trust Your Gut Instead

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
You’ve heard the marketing analytics spiel before. It goes something like: Marketing journeys are long, complicated, multi-channel paths. Tracking them is always imperfect, but if you employ an extensive, expensive, difficult-to-configure combination of tools, tracking systems, and deeply talented statistics professionals, you can build a high-quality, predictive attribution modeling structure that approximates reality with relatively minor gaps. My counterpoint: don’t…

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