Category: Marketing

Data Industry Marketing Tactics

Email is the Most Consistent, Reliable Marketing Channel on the Web and I Can Prove It

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
This is a very short post to say: If you’re not investing in your own email marketing list, you’re making a bad choice. Social media engagement rates have plummeted the last 15 years. Ad engagement, too. Google CTRs have fallen massively the last decade with the rise of zero-click searches. The visibility of TV and print advertisements have died off…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Predictions SEO

How to Future-Proof Your Marketing for an AI-Centric Search World? | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Today, Google’s search results still look (mostly) like lists of snippets and links, e.g. But, plenty of search marketers and industry observers suspect we’re in the closing days of this format, and the future holds something closer to how AI-tools like ChatGPT and Bard answer user-inputted prompts, e.g. If that’s the case, what can/should marketers do to give themselves a…
5-Minute Whiteboards Analytics Marketing Tactics

The 3 Big Problems with Asking “How Did You Hear About Us?” | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Marketing attribution is dying. Ad blockers. Privacy laws. The death of third-party cookies. Keyword (not provided). Dark social. It’s an attribution-trained marketer’s nightmare. Knowing which channels and tactics truly had an influence on every sale is next to impossible. Unfortunately, many folks think the remedy lies in a simple survey question at the end of a signup or checkout process.…
5-Minute Whiteboards Advertising Marketing

If Your Marketing Mix Doesn’t Match Your Customer’s Journey… You’re Gonna Have a Bad Time | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Imagine that you have perfect knowledge of how every potential customer starts their journey to learn about the kinds of solutions your business offers. And that in that hypothetical, 25% of those potential customers learn about solutions in your space by typing keywords into Google. That’s a pretty reasonable average across most industries, but… guess what? You’re putting 75, 80,…
5-Minute Whiteboards Agencies Marketing Tactics

Why the Worst Search Marketers Start Content Strategy with “SEO Keywords” — 5-Minute Whiteboard

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m worried. Worried that thousands of agencies, in-house practitioners, and even marketing leaders who should know better are STILL prioritizing their content efforts based primarily or entirely on keywords for search. I get it. 10 years ago, that practice worked. It still technically works in a number of fields. Prioritize keywords, create content, publish, get links and ranking signals, earn…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Predictions SEO

5-Minute Whiteboard: Is Generative AI in Search Results the SEO Apocalypse?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In the not-too-distant future, we’ll look back at the days when a full 1/3rd of Google searches resulted in a free click to the open web and marvel at how good we had it. For the last few months, Google’s been telegraphing that generative AI answers will soon appear in search results. These pieces of content will be drawn from…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Psychology Tactics

5-Minute Whiteboard: Why You Can’t Just Crank Up Marketing to Get More Sales

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
CEO/Sales Leader: “Hey marketing team! We’re behind on our quarterly sales goals and only have 3 weeks left. Do some marketing why doncha?! Crank up them SQLs!“ Marketer: “Yeah, that’s not really how this discipline works. It’s a long lead cycle between awareness, branding, and conversion, and…“ CEO/Sales Leader: “Sorry exec team. Marketing underperformed and that’s why we didn’t meet…

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