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
The Chill Work Manifesto
By Shortly after Amanda Natividad joined SparkToro, she coined the term “Chill Work” to describe the unusually patient, mature, laid-back approach we take to building this business. And for the last three years, it’s become a bigger and bigger part of how I think about not only this company, but everything I do professionally. Today, I
What To Do When You’re Out of Ideas
By I’ve only been writing online as a marketer for about four years. And already, I feel like I’m out of ideas. You could say that it’s because I’m still in a postpartum fog. (Supposedly, it generally takes up to six months for hormone levels to return to pre-pregnancy levels and I’m five months postpartum.) But
The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide on the Internet 2023
By Here it is, our fourth annual edition! The first three were just practice for this masterpiece of culinary and imbibable magnificence. Because this year, our food and drink gift guide isn’t just the usual excellent selection — products we’ve used, received and enjoyed, and/or gifted — it’s also chock-full of pithy commentary on important topics