Imagine you could get 10,000 people in your target audience in one room and ask them:
– What keywords have you been searching lately?
– Which social networks do you use most? Least?
– What social accounts do you follow?
– What Subreddits do you post in?
– What podcasts do you listen to?
…and have these answers actually be accurate?
But it almost didn’t.
In fact, the team had to reconceptualize and rebuild it from scratch when Elon took over Twitter (and effectively shut down their API).
Which is why I wanted to talk to Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s VP of Marketing.
Previously, Amanda led marketing and content for companies like Naturebox, Fitbit and Growth Machine.
If you’re a solo marketer OR work in a SaaS that has a highly stressful culture, you’ll want to read this.
I sat down with Amanda to get a behind-the-scenes look at how SparkToro gets customers, plus how they have grown sustainably with a “chill work” philosophy.
I can’t wait for you to apply these insights to your own company.
What you’ll read here are words. Some Amanda’s. Some mine.
— Brendan
Below, we’ll explore:
- The top ways SparkToro gets customers
- The 2 categories of internal marketing strategy pitches
- How to hire and retain top marketers (like Amanda)
- Why SparkToro shelved their podcast (despite sunk cost)
1. How far out do you plan your marketing in detail, and how has that evolved over the years?
Honestly, not very far. But it doesn’t mean we’re not mindful.
There’s no editorial calendar (or if there is, it’s not rushed).
No 2-blogs-per-week checkbox marketing.
BUT, we have the overall strategic product things mapped out pretty closely.
Instead, we have existing programs that we support ongoing:
- 5 min whiteboards (every 2 weeks)
- Audience research newsletter (every 2 weeks)
- Office hours (every 4-6 weeks)
- SparkTogether (yearly)
We have existing systems in place that we can support.
There’s no need to plan 2 weeks in advance because we have cross-departmental team members we have to plan along with.
We can tap into trends a lot better this way, too. We can stay fresh and trend-jack better, too.
2. Do you use OKRs (e.g. objectives, key results, 70% goals, etc.) in some form?
Not too often.
We do track churn, growth rate and ARR.
But we don’t internalize them and bear the weight of churn and revenue numbers.
Our personal value isn’t defined by SparkToro’s ARR.
It doesn’t help me do my job to worry about that.
We risk obsessing about moving the number and losing sight of the programs we know work well at the cadence we know it works.
Instead, we track KPIs for things we do ongoing.
Ex: Office hours signups (total and how fast we get them) and newsletter open rate and reply rate.
The bigger question about these numbers is “How does this number help us do better?”
If it doesn’t, we don’t worry about it.
3. For marketing strategy, who comes to these meetings, who runs the meeting, and how often do you meet?
There are no marketing meetings at SparkToro.
There are 2 categories of marketing strategy pitches:
- Obvious → we’re obviously gonna do this thing. I’ll get it going.
- Ex: Newsletter since we have a big list of emails. 2x monthly since we want to focus on quality over quantity.
- Big Idea → I have a creative idea that I think might work.
- Ex: SparkTogether because we want a big marketing initiative that builds affinity with our audience.
For the obvious ideas, it’s all handled over email.
For big ideas, it’s also email and then (if needed) somebody proposes a call.
We are good at email and do a few rounds of thinking that happens ahead of the call. Calls aren’t for live brainstorming (with no paper trail).
The whole team (Amanda, Rand and Casey) get together at least 2x per year, with once a quarter being the ideal.
SparkToro has published both a primer and a retrospective about Chill Work that are absolutely worth reading.
4. How many marketers do you have? How has that team changed over time?
1 + a marketer CEO
5. What is the difference between average marketing leaders and those who are able to attract, hire and retain top talent?
I don’t have direct reports, but what attracted me to SparkToro was (obviously) the people: Rand & Casey.
More broadly applicable is that the type of role I was looking for included a lot of autonomy.
Being at a certain point in my life and career means I can’t do the endless weekly meetings with a dozen teams.
I’m also not into people management, the typical path for most marketers.
If you’re a high contributing employee, it can be hard to progress in your title and income.
This may also mean I’ll never be a “true” large-scale CMO.
Second, I want a strong sense of ownership over what I work on.
Figure out who the types of people are that you’re going to hire.
Ex: You aren’t going to attract a high level IC by promising they can hire and build a team down the road.
6. What’s your primary tool for tracking tasks and campaigns? And for production?
There’s no spreadsheet or project management app.
With a small team, they keep commitments low and adhere to the programs they’ve committed to.
Although for some major initiatives with lots of moving parts — like our recent product relaunch, we’ll mark tasks in a Google Sheet to make sure we don’t lose track.
7. Is there something unique or philosophically core to how the marketing team and leaders think about acquiring customers?
We think a LOT about our audience.
When we do big research pieces, we’re very aware that it doesn’t directly turn into customers.
When we think about acquiring customers, we think about product and features to better cater to our core customers of agency owners and employees.
What’s going to be most valuable to our most valuable customers?
Sometimes I forget that what we create has to be focused on agencies.
When, day to day, you talk more to solo consultants or other software marketers, you can forget who might be your best customer.
We’re *very* aware of the different types of audience members and customers we have including their needs and potential for amplification.
Ex: Consultants are most likely to be amplifiers and evangelists (versus agencies) for us.
We still aren’t 100% sure why, but we’ve seen how much more likely they are to promote us publicly.
8. What were the best performing channels for you? Did that change over time?
In addition to the programs we already talked about (blog, email, office hours, events), SparkToro also invested heavily in free tools like their fake followers audit.
Early on it drove a lot of traffic and the people we got already got the value of what we offered.
It also felt right to give people something for free ahead of a trial.
Unfortunately, the free tools were killed by Elon/Twitter when they raised the cost of the API astronomically.
One of the best for us right now is events, including Office Hours and SparkTogether.
Events allow SparkToro to:
- Build a relationship in real time.
- Live, ongoing feedback at scale.
- Engage on social and email.
Events span across almost every channel, honestly.
It’s a big reason we’re thinking about doing in-person events starting in the fall of 2024.
Maybe free in-person meetups?
One thing we’d love to do is launch a podcast. We tried to do one back in 2022 but it didn’t work out bandwidth wise. It’s expensive in terms of time spent conceptualizing, recording, and editing.
When you care deeply about time (as a resource) and not just money, that matters.
How to use this info:
1. Send a DM to your teammate: “Lindsay — I read about how Amanda from SparkToro gets customers with a small team. I thought there’s 3 things in there that might really help our team. Mind if I send them over?” Then send her this link.
2. Meeting with your boss: “We’ve been over-reliant on SEO in the past and have toyed around with the idea of working with more content amplifiers and influencers. I just got a behind-the-scenes look at how SparkToro’s thinks about that. Think we can do the same? If so, this might be worth bookmarking.
3. Linkedin Post: Why every company should adopt a chill work philosophy (make sure you connect with & tag Amanda!)
Thanks for reading!
This is the eighth part of a long series.
If you have a tip or feedback, I’d love to hear it.
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