Category: Marketing

5-Minute Whiteboards Analytics Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

7 Reasons Every Marketing Team Should Monitor Brand Mentions

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Wait a minute… are you telling me you’re only doing brand monitoring for reputation management?! What is this, 2004? It’s time for an upgrade, not necessarily to your tools (though if you’re still using Google Alerts, OMG stop; Alertmouse is free and 100X better) but to your process. I track mentions of my name, SparkToro, our research, my investments, my…
Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

Creating and Promoting Were Never the Same Decision

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
I’ll admit I’m kind of a thinkboi (gender neutral). I’m often more interested in the philosophies behind marketing — how we pick our campaigns, which ideas are worth exploring — than in the campaigns themselves. So when Tim Soulo asked me a question on the Ahrefs podcast that I couldn’t immediately answer, I did what any thinkboi would do: I’ve…
5-Minute Whiteboards AI/LLMs Analytics Data Marketing Zero Click

New Research from Similarweb: How AI Brand Mentions Influence Direct Visits & Traditional Search Queries

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
If my brand shows up in AI answers, does that have real impact on my marketing? Do people search more for my brand? Do I get more traffic? Do I make more sales? Great news; Similarweb has a new study out: The Downstream Impact of AI Visibility to help answer these questions. The study looks at three consumer industries: finance,…
Audience Research Briefs Marketing

When Your Audience Isn’t Who You Think They Are

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Picture the audience for commercial backup power, and you probably see an electrician on a ladder, hard hat and all. And if you were to describe that audience in three numbers, it would be this: 67-93K reachable people, an estimated $4.2-$5.8B in annual work, and +1.3% year-over-year. It’s a real, sizable, stable niche. But when we ran a SparkToro report…
Marketing Product SparkToro

Total Addressable Market (TAM) Size is Now in SparkToro Reports

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Casey’s back with a brand new invention. This time, it’s estimated TAM: Total Addressable Market Size, one of the most requested features from SparkToro customers that we’re thrilled to finally have in the app. In any SparkToro report, you’ll now see TAM at the top of your reports, alongside a methodology breakdown, e.g. Audience for the above report: Computational chemists…
Agencies Marketing Tactics

Audience Affinity vs. Traffic: Why High-Affinity Media Belongs in Your Earned Media Strategy

Kelsey LibertBy Kelsey Libert
If you’ve been building media lists by zeroing in on the sites with the biggest domain authority and traffic, you’re not alone. For years, the default playbook was to pitch the publishing giants and let their syndication networks carry your story far and wide. But bigger doesn’t always mean better, and the highest‑traffic sites often reach everyone except the people…
Data Marketing Research SEO Zero Click

In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In the first four months of 2026, a whopping 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click. Thanks to AI features, instant answers, UI elements that keep searchers in the results, and shifting user preferences, Google is becoming a walled garden. Their financial and stock performance suggests that these changes boosted both ad revenue and investor confidence, and thus, it’s…
Audience Research Briefs Marketing Tactics

How Do You Market to a Double-Sided Marketplace?

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
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 Briefs Marketing Tactics

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

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
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…

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