Category: Marketing

Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
There isn’t actually anything “wrong” with best practices. Best practices are general guidelines for what to do in order to ensure a general baseline of success. The problem comes when you employ best practices without personalization or a point of view. Then you’re just leading with some statistically average decision and marketing to… nobody in particular. Certainly not bad enough…
AI/LLMs Marketing

Why Everyone Prompts AI Differently (Even When They Want the Same Thing)

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Recently, I ran a tiny experiment. I asked eight mom friends — people very similar to me socioeconomically and with kids around the same age — to look up local basketball leagues for their kids. My only instructions were to search as though they really wanted a good answer. (And of course, “good” is subjective.) Every single one of them…
Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

Vibes Meet Facts: Write Like the Smart Human You Are, Not the LLM Making Stuff Up Again

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
If you were to perceive the world based on a skim of my Threads feed this morning, then you would be convinced that absolutely everyone is engrossed with the Beckham family drama, the only other pressing matter at hand is whether to recline your airplane seat, and the cost of $0.79 for a garlic bulb is exorbitant to the point…
AI/LLMs Industry Marketing Predictions Psychology Zero Click

The 5 Big Trends that Will Dominate Marketing in 2026

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I find most end-of-year prediction and crystal ball-gazing listicles to be trash. They don’t prove their assertions, use anecdotes rather than data at scale to back up their prognostications, and, worst of all, fail to grade their previous predictions (how the #$%@ else do you know if you can trust their current ones?!). And yes, I’m looking at you, Gartner,…
Marketing Startups Tactics

Your Next Launch Will Fail Without an Amplifier Strategy

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
When teams say, “We’ll build first and figure out marketing later,” they’ve already made their launch harder. That’s not a dunk; it’s an observation. Every time we separate “product” from “marketing,” we guarantee that one will limp behind the other. I was reminded of this when Rand said in a recent interview with Jacob Cook (for his students at Harvard…
Agencies Data Industry Marketing Research

The 2025 State of Digital Agencies: it’s still rough out there, but slowly improving; and is AI really a threat?

Rand FishkinBy Paddy Moogan
Introduction from Rand: I care deeply about the consulting world in digital marketing. These people are my friends, my colleagues, my fellow speakers, and my investors. Their fears, concerns, successes, and trends are bellwethers for our field as a whole. Is AI hurting or helping marketers? Is the Zero Click costing them clients or gaining them new ones? Are agencies’…
5-Minute Whiteboards Analytics Marketing Tactics Zero Click

The 7 Marketing Problems Pinball-Shaped Buyer Journeys Create

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Last week, I showed you how Internet buyer journeys have transformed from the cleaner, more predictable funnel model of the 2000-2015 web into something shaped like a ball bouncing around a pinball-machine. These modern buyer journeys bounce back and forth between channels and content in ways that can’t be readily modeled nor cleanly attributed (despite what your analytics tool tells…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Psychology Zero Click

The Pinball Customer Journey Has Replaced the Marketing Funnel

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I like the marketing funnel. It’s a great analogy, and has served me well for years. I *STILL* think it works reasonably well as a way to describe how businesses experience the various points at which they engage/interact with users before they become customers. But, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s a reasonable way to…

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