Digital marketing strategies tend to revolve around familiar platforms like Google Ads, Linkedin and Facebook recimbing. These are reliable platforms with measurable results that you can assess for the return on investment. But are these commonly used strategies the best choice? Is it possible that by going beyond familiarity, you will discover opportunities that offer even better results?
On Podcast of data -based decisions, We talked to Rand Fishkin of his business, SparkA tool that helps marketing specialists to find exactly where their audience spends time so that they can be more strategic with their marketing efforts. Rand sharing by finding communities and niche channels that have great relevance for your specific audience, you can unravel noise and strengthen confidence.
Invest your time and energy more efficiently
The collection and analysis of the data help the marketing teams to direct their time, their money and their energy where they will have the most value. This was the key theme throughout our conversations on the Data -based decisions Podcast and our host and managing director Zondee Hou, the book, Data -based customization.
There is nothing more important when it comes to planning campaigns and marketing strategies than information on the public – we must know everything we can possibly on our audience, their content consumption behaviors and their favorite platforms.
Hiking shares that what Sparktoro does is helping you focus your marketing strategy in the right places. It gives users an image of the online habits of your target audience – the websites they like to use, the types of podcasts they listen to or the influencers they follow. Armed with this information, marketing specialists can be more targeted in their efforts.
“There are hundreds of billions of dollars in channels focused on the channels that claim to prove that their advertisements worked, as opposed to where our customers really spend time? Where do they get involved? Where do they learn from products and services? Where do they try to solve their problems? These are places that are almost always underestimated and that’s what Sparktoro tries to show you. “”
Rand shared excellent examples of Sparktoro users who have been successful with this redirected approach.
For example, a podcaster wanted to generate more sponsorship income and looked for guests who reach the public whose sponsors wanted to be in front. They used Sparktoro to search for influential people in space with popular X accounts or YouTube channels and contact to invite them as guers. These influencers then brought their audience to the podcast, which attracted sponsors, and therefore income from the podcast.
Another example that Rand has shared is an event organizer in the technological space that uses Sparktoro to find event speakers with an audience that will attract sponsors that the organizer can contact.
Both are excellent examples of how you can use audience data more effectively than invest in the more common approach to paid wide advertisements. For what? Because they focus on where the public is. In these two examples, data allow you to target potential prospects at the start of their customer journeys rather than later when they are more likely to meet your competitors.
Rely too much on paid advertisements in relation to understanding the wider customer journey
Rand sharing that a current error that marketing specialists make when thinking about data is to opt for channels that have a clear way to measure the allocation and return on investment rather than more relevant channels for your audience. For example, marketing specialists can focus too much on Google AD’s results when customers first hear about the brand elsewhere. Rand explained:
“A ton of what’s going on in Google is actually a response to something else. Thus, the people who made a research request in Google, was very rarely that a spontaneous thing at first time. It was like, oh, I heard about this software, so I went to Google and I looked for it and clicked on it. And of course, the attribution seems that Google has led all the value. No, Google was only the intermediary. “”
The tendency to rely on paid advertising, in particular on Google, Meta or LinkedIn, can be considered as a safer bet. It is clear and measurable. You invest, then the platform explains to you how this investment has borne fruit. These measures are both familiar and can be conveniently packed in reports to the stakeholders.
The danger here is based on this method too much and ignores the other parts of the customer journey. When marketing specialists focus exclusively on these “safe bets”, it is easy to fall into an optimization model for what is easy to measure rather than exploring other areas that could be more effective.
The reality is that your customers can hear about your solution or your brand elsewhere and simply come to Google to find you. Anyway, if they click on a Google ad, you can see this as a victory for Google announcements when really, they were already a committed track using Google as an intermediary. Although the result can be the same, you can miss by exploding what happened before coming to Google and using it as a new avenue for your marketing.
For example, a new track may have heard of a solution or service like yours mentioned on their favorite industry podcast or by a conversation at a conference. If you knew these places that your potential audience was before coming to Google, you can use this space for more strategic marketing. This person who came to Google after a conference could have been five people instead if marketing had focused on the conference instead of simple Google advertisements.
Invest in zero marketing click on to generate results
Rand shared an excellent example in the Podcast on Chartr, a data narration company that has decided to focus on a specific Reddit community for its marketing. “R / Datasbeautiful” is a subdreddit where users publish and discuss data visualizations. Chartr has simply started publishing data graphics without real brand effort or appeal to action. The objective was to engage the community – people who could be interested in the same kind of thing that Chartr posed.
The best part for his marketing team? It was both more efficient and cheaper than investing in paid advertising.
This is an excellent example of zero click marketing, a term invented by Amanda Natididad, vice-president of marketing of Sparktoro. This marketing method moves on the provision of the value directly on the platforms that your audience visits – without forcing them to click on your website. By creating content that is held alone, you can hire users where they are already.
Imagine to share a insightful article on LinkedIn, creating an infographic worthy of discussion for RedditOr publish a video series on YouTube. The objective is not to bring users back to your site, but to create credibility and recognition in spaces where your audience is already spending time. Over time, this strategy helps to establish confidence and loyalty, assuring you that when your audience needs a product or service, your brand is in the lead.
Align the data strategy with your goal
Ron clearly indicates that he is not against paid advertising on social platforms and Google, he says that if it works for you, then great. But alternative routes deserve to be explored beyond the more traditional and wider approach.
“If you find expenses, there is really value, don’t let me stop. But if you think of yourself, the 10% of the highest expenses I make in these places probably do not bring me incremental customers, which is almost always the case, perhaps redirect this towards more creative, thoughtful and data marketing forms. »»
His advice to manage your data strategy is to think about your main goals and the problems you are trying to solve.
For example, if you try to understand how people think of your product, investigations and customer interviews are your best bet. If you want to know which specific websites visit your audience, these same surveys and interviews will probably lead to biased results, and this is a tool like Sparktoro can help.
His separation message in his conversation with ZonTee on the podcast is knowing that the data does not tell you everything. It can discover a lot about your audience and help you direct your attention more effectively, but there are also a lot of things that data are lacking.
“I am not saying that not being focused on the data, but I think it is useful to be responsible in your recognition of the problems that the data can solve and what it cannot solve.”
Part of Sparktoro’s strategy is to conduct regular customer interviews. They help discover new ideas and ideas that data cannot really capture. For example, the data can show you where people click in an application, but that does not give an overview of what people who do not use the application want or what they are frustrated. In this example, the simple fact of looking at the data in the application and optimizing your strategy leaves you aside a dead angle. Instead, by learning more about your wider customers and experiences, you can refocus your marketing efforts and your commercial strategies.
Redefine your marketing approach
Rand conversation is a key reminder that getting better results in marketing is not only to hunt numbers; It’s about being strategic with your attention and investing it where it makes the most meaning. The data alone will not pilot the results unless you use it to enlighten your strategies and get closer to your audience by establishing significant connections with the content.
Do you want to know more about Rand Fishkin? Listen to his episode on our decisions based on Podcast data.
And, for a more in -depth dive in the impact of data in marketing and business, consult the rest of our limited series featuring zontee hou in a conversation with the main leaders of organizations like Salesforce and IBM, exploring how the data influence not only marketing strategies but also corporate culture and interfunctional collaboration. Find out more about personalization based on Zondee’s book data and obtain an exclusive discount here.
Catchez the eight episodes here.
