You’ve heard of zero click marketing — and yes, you definitely heard it here first. We’re talking about creating standalone value in the platforms where people hang out, instead of dropping teasers and links in hopes that people will be compelled to click over to your site. It’s marketing where people already are and speaking
The Biggest Mistake We Make When Asking: “Where Are My Customers?”
By It’s January, and that means many marketers are tasked with a project to identify new channels and sources of influence for new potential investments. This year is likely more active than most given the decline of Google search traffic, the rise of AI, the Twitter exodus, and the meteoric growth of Threads and Bluesky. But,
Whoa. 5 New Data Features in SparkToro in 100 Days.
By If you blinked in the past four months, you probably missed at least one major SparkToro release. And that’s a shame, because every single one is hot like pizza supper. I’m gonna blow your mind. SparkToro is a three-person company with one engineer, Casey Henry. And yet, in the past 100 days, we’ve built all
3 Common Social Media Mistakes That We Don’t Talk About Enough
By You know it’s not scalable, but you do it anyway. You email your friends, “Hey, I just posted this thing on LinkedIn. Would you mind resharing it with your network?” Friend, some tough love: This has got to stop. It’s not that you shouldn’t ask for support. It’s not about reciprocation either. It’s that begging
Are your customers switching to AI tools (and how much)? SparkToro’s new Search & AI Tools feature has the answers
By There is a lot of activity moving to LLMs and generative AI tools right now, and for marketers, founders, and creators, the questions are almost always the same: Starting today, SparkToro has the answers. Using clickstream panels from our partners at Datos, we’re able to see when, where, and how much people who visit a
The State of Digital Agencies in 2024: Big Challenges, Bigger Optimism, and Is Remote Work Here to Stay?
By Introductory note from Rand: This extraordinary research was put together by the brilliant Paddy Moogan, who’s had a long career in marketing agencies, and now coaches other agency owners and runs The New Leader newsletter (to which I’m a subscriber). Paddy’s contribution here cannot be overstated – he’s assembled a mountain of survey data from
New Research: We analyzed 332 million queries over 21 months to uncover never-before-published data on how people use Google
By Google is a massive presence on the modern web. They’ve held 90%+ of the global search market share for 15 years. Even the rise of AI tools has been unable to budge that number (so far). They get <9% of all web visits, but send more than 60% of all referring traffic to other sites.
The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide 2024
By Everyone’s favorite food and drink gift guide is back with all-new picks! Same same, but different. It’s the 5th anniversary of this gift guide. Same rules apply: This time, we have a few recommendations that you can buy on Amazon or your local grocery or big box store because we realize this may be most
If your audience’s sources of influence and your marketing budget don’t align, you’re gonna have a bad time
By Yes, this is a rant. It’s a rant about where leadership teams allocate their marketing budget vs. where their potential customers actually pay attention. For most, that’s heavily in digital performance ads (Meta, Google, Apple, and if you’re in e-commerce, Amazon/Pinterest), a healthy amount in social media/brand ads (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, maybe Reddit), and then
Snackbar Studio Raised $2.15M Using SparkToro’s Funding Model (and we’re open sourcing the docs)
By Since SparkToro’s founding in 2018, I’ve been been passionately loud about our unique funding model (becase it’s a really good idea.) The model focuses on chill work, sustainability over growth-at-any-cost, and offers investors and founders a lower-risk way to benefit from long-term, profitable operation. Several companies and funds have used our structure to raise money