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

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

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

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

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)

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…
Marketing Product SparkToro

22 Minutes on Audience Intelligence: Slides, Video, & Q+A

Last week, I was honored to join Jeff Sauer’s superb Data Driven U for a class on audience intelligence. And, thankfully, kindly, Jeff gave me permission to share our class and the subsequent Q+A on this blog. I think it’s invaluable, but frustratingly difficult to understand the answers to questions like: What can I learn about my audience and customers…
Marketing

Why Marketing Flywheels Work

The first few years of my career were awful. Drowning in debt, losing nine out of ten pitches for new business, failing to earn clients. It felt like nothing I did moved the needle until I started my blog and slowly, very slowly… things changed. Gradually, more and more people visited my website (seomoz.org, which became moz.com). The content sucked,…