Category: Marketing

Industry Marketing Psychology Tactics

Too Few Marketers Grasp the Difference Between Strategy vs. Tactics; We Need to Fix That

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Look, I get it. For (at least) the first decade of my career, I, too, foolishly conflated strategy and tactics. I’d say things like: “we need to be strategic with our paid search spend,” or “let’s get tactical with the pricing tiers.” Did I sound smart? No. Did I *think* I sounded smart? Yeah, probably. Here’s the short version: Strategy…
Advertising Industry Marketing

The Creator Economy Is Far From Overblown

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I came across Alex Kantrowitz’s The Creator Economy Was Way Overblown in my weekend reading. It’s well-written, but completely wrong. Here’s an excerpt of the core arguments: “After years of hype, the Creator Economy is slamming into reality. Influencer programs are shuttering. Investment is drying up. And worsening economic conditions are threatening to crush creators and the tech infrastructure behind them. While…
Industry Marketing Predictions Tactics

Why Marketers Should Follow Their Audiences, Not Predict the Future

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s 2017, and you convince your executives to be early adopters of the #Web3 trend. Blockchain-based product investments, marketing with NFTs, perhaps your own crypto coin. It’s fun, interesting, and it feels like you’re ahead of your competition on a rising tide that will lift all ships. Only trouble is, your target audience—the people you hope will become customers—aren’t adopting…
Events Industry Marketing Psychology

Should You Raise Your Rates and Only Take Paid Speaking Gigs? Not So Fast…

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Over on Mastodon, SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin and Seer Interactive CEO Wil Reynolds were chatting about the blind advice of “Raise your rates!” and “Don’t speak for free!” They floated the idea of a co-authored blog post, and I (SparkToro’s VP Marketing Amanda Natividad) promptly chimed in. This blog post was written by all of us, with quotes from those…
Industry Marketing Predictions Tactics

Why Marketers, Creators, and Brands Should Start Using Mastodon ASAP

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I joined Twitter in June, 2007. It turned out to be a very smart move; over the next decade, that network had a massive impact on my professional success. Some of that is because I did interesting or valuable things, but a lot of it was a combination of timing and serendipity. There are plenty of articles about why you…
Marketing Personal Tactics

How Rand Makes Those Split-Screen Videos You See on LinkedIn and Twitter

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Several times a week, I post videos that look like this on (usually) LinkedIn and Twitter: They tend to get a lot of engagement (in this case, 10,000+ “impressions” which translates to a respectable 2,880 “viewers” according to LinkedIn). And inevitably, I get comments, DMs, or emails that ask “how do you make those split screen recording videos?” It’s easy…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro Tactics

NEW: Audience Tracking is Now Available in SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Since our launch in 2020, SparkToro has helped thousands of marketers uncover the most popular demographic and behavioral attributes of their target audiences. Emphasis on “most popular” 😉. That data is undoubtedly valuable: it helps folks know where and how to reach their customers online. But, in the two years SparkToro’s been active, we observed a handful of our smartest,…
Data Marketing

Which 3rd-Party Traffic Estimate Best Matches Google Analytics?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In July and August of this year, SparkToro solicited (via Twitter, our email newsletter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram) voluntary sharing of Google Analytics data from the web marketing community. Over 1,000 participants shared their websites’ traffic (through GA’s oAuth function) with us. We then acquired metrics from four providers of traffic estimate data—SEMRush, Datos, SimilarWeb, and Ahrefs*—and compared these against…

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