By “What response rate do you get with cold outreach?” In a recent SparkToro Office Hours, someone asked me this question. It’s at least 80%. Earlier this year, I had a 100% response rate with a batch of messages. My approach? I invest serious time qualifying my lead list and researching my audience before I send
Hustle Culture vs. Chill Work
By A few weeks ago, Wil Reynolds and I were on a video call together. I think I joined in a couple minutes after him, and the discussion was already starting: Someone on the call: “… just hustling” Rand: “Ugh, I hate hustle culture.” Wil: “Yo, Fish*, can you define hustle?” Rand: “Easy one. Hustling is
The Incentives to Publish No Longer Reward the Web’s Creators
By 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
Welcome to SparkToro’s Marketing Architect: Amanda Natividad
By Every few years, I stumble across a human being whose personal values, professional work, and communication style so perfectly resonates with my own that I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy that we don’t get to work together. I do my best to keep those feelings in check, soldier on, amplify their work,
NEW in SparkToro: Demographics (also, our pricing tiers are changing tomorrow)
By Friends, I’ve got great news. If demographics data is valuable to your market research, targeting, persona-building, or marketing tasks, SparkToro just became your best friend. Much of the information you might have relied on in Facebook’s old Insights tool (before the Cambridge Analytica scandal) or Twitter’s Analytics (before they inexplicably pulled it) is now accessible
There Are Four Kinds of Keyword Research; Make Sure You’re Doing the Right One(s)
By 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,
The “Marketing is Evil” Problem.
By “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
Who Will Amplify This? And Why?
By 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
SparkToro’s Year One Retrospective
By On April 23rd, 2020, at what felt like the worst time to start a new business in a hundred years, SparkToro launched for the first time. The world’s attention was anywhere but on a new software product, yet Casey and I felt we didn’t have much of a choice. We needed revenue. We needed to
NEW in SparkToro: Content and Profile Text Insights
By 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