I have one rule before I ever pitch myself to join someone’s podcast or YouTube show, write a guest post for someone’s blog, or present at someone’s webinar or conference. I listen to, read, or watch their content. At least one show, a handful of their blog posts, or find and watch a recording of
Don’t just “Get a sense” for your customers. Make audience research actionable through revenue-lifting tactics.
By There’s nothing wrong with running a quick SparkToro audience search, scrolling around for 5 minutes, and coming away savvier and better-informed about a group’s behaviors and demographics. But, if that’s all you’re doing with the tool’s output, you’re missing out. Instead of telling you, I’ll show you. Let’s use the example of Klaviyo.com; a company
You Are Your Moat
By I don’t mind the generative AI craze. While some folks rail about the AI-generated comments that dominate their LinkedIn feed, I say, thank you for the engagement boost. Do these comments make social media a better place? Not really. But neither do the human-written, “Nice post, totally agree,” comments. (Though let’s be clear, I’ll take
Win the RFP: Nail Your Next Client Pitch With Audience Research
By Why do in-house teams hire agencies or consultants? It’s almost always for two types of expertise: Clients expect these tasks to be done more efficiently and effectively than they could with internal talent alone. SEO primarily for DTC brands. PR outreach for the IT space. Social media ads for clothing and beauty brands. Blog writing
SparkToro V2 is Finally Here. It Can Do Incredible Things for SEO, Content Marketing, PR, and Ad Targeting.
By It’s an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today’s launch—which we call “V2″—is the culmination of more than a year of work, including a complete rebuild of the infrastructure and data sources for our product. And though, for many months, Casey, Amanda, and I feared we might lose key pieces of
Embrace the High-Level Individual Contributor: How to Hire for This Unconventional Role
By I’m SparkToro’s VP Marketing and here’s how I spent a recent afternoon: I sifted through our Google Analytics dashboard. I was looking for our most popular pages and copying them into a spreadsheet so that we can keep track of what needs to be updated for the public launch of SparkToro V2. I included the
Where Web Users Spend Time vs. Where Traffic Referrals Originate
By “Most of our site’s traffic comes from Google, so most of our digital marketing efforts and spending should be on Google, too.” – An absolutely terrible way to invest in marketing On Monday of this week, I published a comprehensive look at how traffic flows on the American web. Unfortunately, some folks in the social
Who Sends Traffic on the Web and How Much? New Research from Datos & SparkToro
By In the era of zero-click platforms, native content, and walled gardens, does anyone still send meaningful traffic to the open web? Is Google responsible for 50% of all traffic referrals? 75%? Is social media sending half what search does? A quarter? Less? Are the major platforms sending less traffic overall than they did a year
The Zero-Click Email Strategy That Gets Us 40%+ Open Rates
By Ugh, I don’t want to give away my email strategy. Because it’s mine and it’s working really well for us. But since Rand recently wrote about how email is the most consistent, reliable marketing channel — and, well, he’s right — I’d be remiss in not helping you out. Our twice-monthly audience research newsletter goes
Email is the Most Consistent, Reliable Marketing Channel on the Web and I Can Prove It
By This is a very short post to say: If you’re not investing in your own email marketing list, you’re making a bad choice. Social media engagement rates have plummeted the last 15 years. Ad engagement, too. Google CTRs have fallen massively the last decade with the rise of zero-click searches. The visibility of TV and