Category: Marketing

Advertising Data Marketing Tactics

What if Performance Advertising is Just an Analytics Scam?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
“What the pandemic showed is we can take marketing down to zero and still have 95% of the same traffic as the year before. So we’re not going to forget that lesson.” – Brian Chesky (via Campaign) In 2020, AirBnB cut $542 million of performance advertising spend and saw no measurable falloff in attributable sales. They continued this ad-slashing practice…
Marketing Psychology Startups Tactics

The Incentives to Publish No Longer Reward the Web’s Creators

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s been almost two months since my last post here. For those of you who pay attention to the digital marketing world, the infrequency of updates may be missed, but it’s likely familiar. Many, many web creators (those who publish, in any format, on their own sites rather than big tech’s platforms) who historically published content with great frequency are…
Data Marketing SparkToro Tactics

There Are Four Kinds of Keyword Research; Make Sure You’re Doing the Right One(s)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Keyword research is broader than you might think, friends. If you’re in a rush, just click below to jump to that section: Keyword research for SEO/PPC(to learn which terms have search volume in Google and how much)Keyword research for social media marketing(to uncover hashtags, topics, phrases that get used/earn visibility on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, et al.)Keyword research for…
Advertising Marketing Psychology Tactics

The “Marketing is Evil” Problem.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
“I hate marketing.““Marketing is evil.““Marketing doesn’t work.““Marketing doesn’t work on me.““I’ll never buy from a company that markets to me.“ My best argument against those kinds of reflexive, anti-marketing takes is this: people create wonderful things to help one another, to entertain, to make art, and yes, to make money, too. But just because something is wonderful doesn’t mean anyone…
Marketing Psychology Tactics

Who Will Amplify This? And Why?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
You’ve created a stellar email newsletter, but few subscribe. You’ve launched an intriguing podcast, but listeners are nonexistent. You’ve published an exceptional blog post, a compelling research report, a remarkable webinar, a top-notch video, a stunning visual… but the audience just isn’t showing up. In my experience, four root causes are to blame: You’ve produced something of low qualityYou’ve produced…
Advertising Data Marketing Product SparkToro Team

NEW in SparkToro: Content and Profile Text Insights

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
What does your audience talk about online? How do they describe themselves? What hashtags do they use? Prior to social media aggregation software, answering these questions was a maddeningly manual, lengthy process. Unfortunately, most of those products are exorbitantly expensive, enterprise tools. After SparkToro’s launch last year, we were somewhat shocked to find: A) How valuable these text insights were…
Advertising Marketing Psychology Startups Tactics

When Choosing Marketing Channels, Visualize the Curve

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Business Owner: “We’re launching a new company/website/campaign and want to buy ads that can get us some customers. Once that’s working, we’ll invest in content and SEO.” Marketer: “So, no one’s heard of your brand, and you don’t have any existing digital marketing, but you’d like to start with ads, then invest in content and SEO?” Business Owner: “Yup! That’s…
Advertising Data Marketing Product SparkToro

SparkToro Now Has 50% More Podcasts

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
The Short Version: Every SparkToro search you perform now contains far more podcasts. That’s because we’ve made more connections between podcasts and their (or their host’s) social profiles, and also because SparkToro’s podcast index has grown substantially, to more than 600,000 unique shows. If you’re building Lists in SparkToro, you’ll also find that more than 80% of the podcasts in…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro Startups Team

One Customer Feedback Email Changed Our Startup’s Trajectory

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Building a new company means constantly managing one’s emotions. The high highs of days when everything’s golden inevitably give way to the low lows when you’re certain it’s all doomed. At the end of February, Casey (my cofounder) and I were in that latter boat, nervous about how signups for our 10-month old startup had slowed to a trickle. Here’s…

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