SparkToro

The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide on the Internet 2023

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 like the politics of tiki…

Why Digital Marketing Agencies Have it Tough in 2023 | 5-Minute Whiteboard

3 months ago, a dear friend’s agency closed for good. 2 months ago, another close friend had a round of layoffs at their firm. And in just the last two weeks, I talked to four agency owners who reported their first revenue-declining year in the last five. It’s rough out there for a lot of digital marketing agency owners. My…

The Final Chapter of My First Startup

I’ve told this story only once before.  Never in writing. Never on video. My voice was shaky and I barely stumbled through it.  But with a few years of distance I think I’m finally ready.  Here goes… For 17 years I had one job. A job that defined my adult life, my self-worth, the majority of my friendships, and entirety…

How to Future-Proof Your Marketing for an AI-Centric Search World? | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Today, Google’s search results still look (mostly) like lists of snippets and links, e.g. But, plenty of search marketers and industry observers suspect we’re in the closing days of this format, and the future holds something closer to how AI-tools like ChatGPT and Bard answer user-inputted prompts, e.g. If that’s the case, what can/should marketers do to give themselves a…

Why the Least Measurable Marketing Channels Tend to Perform Best: 5-Minute Whiteboard

Content marketing, social media, events, PR, and marketing through sources-of-influence have consistently produced remarkable results for the companies I’ve run, and yet, most big businesses invest 1/1,000th the effort and dollars in these tactics that they do in digital advertising. Why? Measurability and scalability. Let’s dig into this challenge (and how you can invest better) with this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard.…

The 3 Big Problems with Asking “How Did You Hear About Us?” | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Marketing attribution is dying. Ad blockers. Privacy laws. The death of third-party cookies. Keyword (not provided). Dark social. It’s an attribution-trained marketer’s nightmare. Knowing which channels and tactics truly had an influence on every sale is next to impossible. Unfortunately, many folks think the remedy lies in a simple survey question at the end of a signup or checkout process.…

If Your Marketing Mix Doesn’t Match Your Customer’s Journey… You’re Gonna Have a Bad Time | 5-Minute Whiteboard

Imagine that you have perfect knowledge of how every potential customer starts their journey to learn about the kinds of solutions your business offers. And that in that hypothetical, 25% of those potential customers learn about solutions in your space by typing keywords into Google. That’s a pretty reasonable average across most industries, but… guess what? You’re putting 75, 80,…

We Analyzed Millions of ChatGPT User Sessions: Visits are Down 29% since May, Programming Assistance is 30% of Use

Generative AI, and ChatGPT in particular have been catnip to the tech press, the mainstream media, and the conversations of professionals in nearly every field. How is it going to disrupt your work?! Will AI replace you? Are Hollywood writers, real estate agents, dog walkers, and anesthesiologists even useful anymore? In concert with the fine folks at Datos, whose opt-in,…

Two Announcements: SparkToro V2 Coming Soon and Brendan Hufford (Temporarily) Joining the Team

How is it only August? It feels like two years since January. Especially here at SparkToro, where the year’s had so much upheaval, despite our attempts to maintain Chill Work. Shortly after our pricing change in February, Twitter/X’s new owner announced a bevy of pricing and access changes to their API, including the deprecation of data SparkToro’s infrastructure relied on…

Why the Worst Search Marketers Start Content Strategy with “SEO Keywords” — 5-Minute Whiteboard

I’m worried. Worried that thousands of agencies, in-house practitioners, and even marketing leaders who should know better are STILL prioritizing their content efforts based primarily or entirely on keywords for search. I get it. 10 years ago, that practice worked. It still technically works in a number of fields. Prioritize keywords, create content, publish, get links and ranking signals, earn…

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