The B2B Playbook [repost]: #55: Rand Fishkin - Why Marketers Need To Play The Long Game And Be Helpful, The Limitation of Personas, How To Start Creating Demand
Our guest this week almost needs no introduction!
Setting aside the fanboying from us, our guest share some real marketing wisdom that we’re sure everyone can benefit from!
Rand Fishkin, probably well known to most of our listeners, is the founder of SparkToro - an audience research tool that we’ll get into more in the episode. He’s also the Cofounder of Moz, one of the world’s largest SEO companies.
He and the team at SparkToro are doing amazing things to help the little guys when it comes to audience research and doing the type of marketing that just doesn’t work for the big boys in town. And that’s a good thing!
He generously share some of his view points, which we couldn’t agree more with here at The B2B Playbook.
Some key highlights:
- Paid channels’ incentive right now is attribution, not conversion!
- Demand generation is infuriatingly hard, if not impossible to measure. So that’s why most marketers don’t do it, and as a result it’s a huge opportunity because costs are low and inventory is high.
- Personas can be limiting, as they often don’t reflect the breadth of people within a collective group. They should be broad and diverse, but they’ll still allow you to understand where they get their information from and how the groups are made up. That type of personas are truly useful.
- When you change the fundamental question at the core of your marketing strategy, you open up the possibility for a more effective, long term and valuable relationship. When that transactional nature fades into the background and a value giving relationship is had, lots of things improve. Think of a tinder relationship vs meeting someone through friends.
- A ton to learn from classic marketing thinking, but the world is nuanced and requires a tailored approach.
- Value building events offline, particularly small ones, are immensely satisfying and rewarding.
Tune into this week’s episode for more!
Links To Mentioned Resources:
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