I find most end-of-year prediction and crystal ball-gazing listicles to be trash. They don’t prove their assertions, use anecdotes rather than data at scale to back up their prognostications, and, worst of all, fail to grade their previous predictions (how the #$%@ else do you know if you can trust their current ones?!). And yes,
Our Top 5 Blog Posts in 2025 to Help You With Your Marketing in 2026
By Raise your hand if you remember these roundup posts! No? That’s just me? I was the only one paying attention to these in 2008? Come onnnn. We all love a good roundup post. This one’s like a “SparkToro Wrapped” except it’s not about you… yet it has everything to do with you. These are our
Your Next Launch Will Fail Without an Amplifier Strategy
By When teams say, “We’ll build first and figure out marketing later,” they’ve already made their launch harder. That’s not a dunk; it’s an observation. Every time we separate “product” from “marketing,” we guarantee that one will limp behind the other. I was reminded of this when Rand said in a recent interview with Jacob Cook
Never Ask an AI Tool How It Came Up with That Answer
By This post on LinkedIn by Britney Muller is, IMHO, the most important short piece on AI you’ll read this year. It’s so critical to understand what she’s saying here that I’ve focused this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard on explaining and demonstrating exactly the problem she’s so succinctly captured. If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini,
The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide 2025
By Hey friends! It’s been a crazy few months what with flutters hands, gestures to the burning tire fire just outside the window. The point is, December caught us completely unawares this year. We genuinely thought that November was followed by … Smocktober? We apologize for the delay on the gift guide this year, but fear
The 2025 State of Digital Agencies: it’s still rough out there, but slowly improving; and is AI really a threat?
By Introduction from Rand: I care deeply about the consulting world in digital marketing. These people are my friends, my colleagues, my fellow speakers, and my investors. Their fears, concerns, successes, and trends are bellwethers for our field as a whole. Is AI hurting or helping marketers? Is the Zero Click costing them clients or gaining
The 7 Marketing Problems Pinball-Shaped Buyer Journeys Create
By 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
The Pinball Customer Journey Has Replaced the Marketing Funnel
By I like the marketing funnel. It’s a great analogy, and has served me well for years. I *STILL* think it works reasonably well as a way to describe how businesses experience the various points at which they engage/interact with users before they become customers. But, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend
Welcoming Kristy Morrison as Chief of Staff
By Story time—late last year, I developed a painful, still-undiagnosed condition in my hands, likely from repetitive stress. Blah blah chronic pain, it’s hard to work, typing and mousework for more than 45 minutes in a row is unbearable, I’ve been to lots of doctors, followed lots of random Internet advice, whatever… I don’t really like
NEW: Upload your agency’s logo and customize your audience research graphs
By It’s new feature month over here at SparkToro (given we’ve just launched Take Action and the enhanced usage-graph visuals), and we’re continuing the streak with the long-requested addition of white labeled, exportable graphs. Now, with an Agency/Enterprise tier account, you can: It’s an especially nice upgrade for consultants and agencies who use SparkToro, but in-house