Category: Marketing

Marketing

The Fastest Way to Understand Your Audience Without Talking to Them

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
“Talk to your customers” is one of the most common pieces of advice in marketing. And it’s not wrong. But it’s also not always realistic. Maybe you don’t have direct access or contact information for these folks. Maybe your team doesn’t prioritize customer interviews. Maybe you’re a founder wearing seven hats, or a marketer who doesn’t have a warm list…
Marketing

No, I Will Not A/B Test That

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Marketers love to talk about A/B testing. Heck, I’ve said it too. It sounds prudent. Responsible. “Test before you commit! Don’t waste resources!” But the longer I work in marketing, the more I believe most A/B tests are a waste of time — at least for small and medium-sized businesses. More often than not, these tests are just procrastination disguised…
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:…
Marketing

The Internet Needs Less Fighting, More Invisible Subtweets

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
I guess we can’t really say “subtweets” anymore because Twitter is now X and tweets are now blandly called “posts.” But we all know in our bones what a subtweet is. It’s a unique description for the subtle shade thrown someone’s way on a text-based social media platform. Someone you know (or hate?) writes about the importance of waking up…
Advertising Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

Getting Executive Buy-In: How to Tie Audience Research to Business Strategy

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
It’s a tale as old as time, or uh… for as long as you’ve been doing digital marketing: You’ve uncovered powerful audience insights that you fully believe will transform your company’s approach, but when you try to share them beyond the marketing team, eyes glaze over. Executives nod politely before steering the conversation back to quarterly targets and sales forecasts.…
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…
Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

How to Turn Audience Research Into Content Ideas

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
If you’ve ever stared at a blank content calendar wondering what to create next, you’re not alone. Even the most prolific writers* sometimes feel like they’re running nonstop on the content creation hamster wheel… even after ideas dry up and writer’s block sets in. But while continuing your creation habit can build momentum, sometimes the best content ideas aren’t hiding…
Data Marketing Research SEO

New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
For years, two questions have dominated both marketers’ interest and the media’s coverage of Google Search: Are AI Tools taking market share away from Google? Is Google search growing, flatlining, or declining? I’ve seen wild speculation that Google’s market share is down 5-10% since ChatGPT’s launch, and heard anecdotes across my feeds from people claiming that they never use Google…
Marketing Startups

ROI vs. VOI: Smart Marketers Look Beyond the Numbers

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Most of us default to Return on Investment (ROI) for measuring marketing success. It’s the tried-and-true metric that quantifies financial returns. Money in, money out. But we all know the messy reality of attribution. The prospects who subscribe and unsubscribe from our newsletters, who toss us a LinkedIn like now and then, who eventually Google us one day because they…

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