a single source, nothing corroborates it

Budget most of the copy for explaining the category

Nobody searches for a thing they cannot name, so a genuinely new product spends its marketing on teaching what it is before it can persuade anyone to buy. Expect the early customers to have almost nothing in common with each other, which makes a single consistent line the hardest part of the job rather than a formality.

The method

1. 01

   If you are the first product of your kind, budget most of your effort for explaining the category, because nobody is searching for a thing they cannot name.

2. 02

   Write the positioning knowing your customers may have almost nothing in common, and accept that it makes onboarding copy hard.

What it returned

• Rand Fishkin points out that no one types a query for audience influence data that does not come from surveys, so how SparkToro is framed decides whether it sells.

• Rand Fishkin lists a dozen real SparkToro customer types, from a podcaster hunting for guests to a board of trade's economic development staffer and a consultant proving a TV series' audience to networks, and calls consistent positioning the hardest part of the company.

Sources

• SparkToro's Year One Retrospective - SparkToroRand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · A Look at Marketing & Traffic · undated
• Privacy Stories: Sparktoro - Fathom AnalyticsRand Fishkin · usefathom.com · Privacy Stories: Sparktoro · 2021-05-13