Category: Tactics

5-Minute Whiteboards Analytics Marketing Tactics Zero Click

The 7 Marketing Problems Pinball-Shaped Buyer Journeys Create

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Last week, I showed you how Internet buyer journeys have transformed from the cleaner, more predictable funnel model of the 2000-2015 web into something shaped like a ball bouncing around a pinball-machine. These modern buyer journeys bounce back and forth between channels and content in ways that can’t be readily modeled nor cleanly attributed (despite what your analytics tool tells…
AI/LLMs Product SparkToro Tactics

NEW in SparkToro: Take Action combines real audience data with LLM magic to give you actionable marketing takeaways

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Let me lay out the biggest challenges folks tell us they have with SparkToro in 2025: The audience data y’all provide is interesting, but I don’t know what to do next Making the connection between our audience’s behaviors and our marketing actions requires a lot of extra work (export SparkToro report, analyze, make assessments, upload to other systems, etc.) My…
5-Minute Whiteboards AI/LLMs Content Marketing SEO Tactics

We’ve Learned More About How to Appear in AI Answers

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Thanks to some recent experiments and research in the marketing world (and an unfortunate, manipulative attack by a Reddit mod), we’ve learned a lot more about how to influence the answers AI tools provide. This is particularly relevant for those seeking to have their brand names (or websites) appear when ChatGPT, CoPilot, Claude, Gemini, or others are asked for “the…
Marketing Tactics

Content as a Service (CaaS): The Framework That Aligns Marketing with the Business

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Marketing often treats content like a vending machine. Sales needs a case study, so you fill in the template. Check the next row on the spreadsheet, write a blog post about that keyword. Insert a Jira ticket, get a graphic version of that blog post. That’s how you end up “keeping the lights on” with content… that does nothing. Because…
Marketing Tactics

Care to Comment? Why, Yes, I Do: How to Get Quoted in the Press

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
It’s always, “How do we get mentioned by ChatGPT?!” and not, “How can we be worth mentioning by ChatGPT?” Fortunately, this blog post is your guide to bridging that gap. Journalism is now the most cited source in AI-generated responses to current event queries, according to a new report by Muck Rack. And well more than half of websites receive…
5-Minute Whiteboards Data Product SparkToro Tactics

How to Use SparkToro + LLMs to Do Marketing Magic

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Most folks who follow me know I’m a bit of a late adopter and skeptic of AI. Yes, it can do some impressive things that takes humans a long, painful amount of time to replicate. But, they’re also stereotype machines whose reasoning and capabilities, especially in the creative and novel needs that marketing demands, isn’t replacing even 1% of jobs…
Industry Marketing Psychology SEO Tactics

Seriously, please stop with the new acronyms. It’s still SEO: Search Everywhere Optimization.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s a day ending in Y, which means my social feeds are filled with people attempting to rebrand the acronym “SEO.” Look, I ain’t here to rain on your parade, so if you love calling it AIO or GEO or EIEIO, be my guest. I haven’t been an SEO for more than seven years, despite what all the “top SEO…
Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

You’ve Done the Audience Research… Now What?

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Our friend Tommy Walker, founder of The Content Studio, contributed the following, superb, much-needed article; thank you sir! Tommy was the Editor-in-Chief at ConversionXL, the first marketing hire at Shopify Plus, and Global Editor-in-Chief at QuickBooks. As a 20-year career veteran, his methodologies have contributed to 10-figures in revenue, and have become integral to developing category-defining brands. You’ve just wrapped…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Product Tactics

Want better marketing output from your AI Tools? Give it real data about your customers.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
An overwhelming number of marketers are using AI tools to bolster their campaigns, their tactical output, and even their strategic ideas. I don’t actually recommend all of those (AI can seriously mislead you on strategy, and using it to write anything you’re going to publish directly is a recipe for unsubscribes), but there are some clever, high-quality marketing use-cases out…

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