Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research
There isn’t actually anything “wrong” with best practices. Best practices are general guidelines for what to do in order to ensure a general baseline…
Digital Agency New Business Still a Concern, Referrals Still Rule for Lead Gen and Are Sales Pipelines Finally Recovering?
Recently, Rand and I released the results of the State of Digital Agencies survey for 2025. Our goal of this annual survey is simple…
Why Everyone Prompts AI Differently (Even When They Want the Same Thing)
Recently, I ran a tiny experiment. I asked eight mom friends — people very similar to me socioeconomically and with kids around the same…
NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products; marketers should take care when tracking AI visibility
Editor’s Note: Watch our free webinar discussing the findings here (no ads). The Problem: For the last few years, companies have been investing inordinate…
Vibes Meet Facts: Write Like the Smart Human You Are, Not the LLM Making Stuff Up Again
If you were to perceive the world based on a skim of my Threads feed this morning, then you would be convinced that absolutely…
Starting today anyone can analyze any (describable) audience in SparkToro
Until now, if you wanted to research an audience with SparkToro, you needed to choose a particular website, a search keyword, or a URL…
How to Overcome the “Link in Comments” Problem on LinkedIn and Other Social Platforms
Those pesky, anti-link, pro-native-content social platforms are at it again, muzzling the visibility of links anywhere and everywhere they can. Sure, they occasionally let…
Where Agency Revenue Is Heading: Fewer Big Retainers, More Mid-Market Retainers, and Longer Engagements
Recently, Rand and I released the results of the State of Digital Agencies survey for 2025. Our goal of this annual survey is simple…
The 5 Big Trends that Will Dominate Marketing in 2026
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…
Our Top 5 Blog Posts in 2025 to Help You With Your Marketing in 2026
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?…