SPARKTORO: CREATING MARKETING KARMA

Morning!I hope you've had a smashing week. It's been a busy one over here - a common theme nowadays. Nonetheless, it's the weekend (finally). So, time for a deep dive into a new marketing strategy.

This week's breakdown is a concept I had never heard of until recently. I first heard Amanda Natividad and Alex Garcia talk about it on the 30 Minutes Of Growth pod and I've been obsessively researching it since.

It's a simple concept, but a genius strategy. Enjoy!

What you're in for:

- How SparkToro creates marketing Karma - Why you should do the same - How you can do the same

Est Read Time: 5 minutes

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Company Overview

Valuation: Unknown - Private

Revenue: Unknown - Private

SparkToro is an audience research tool that shows the websites your customer's visit, social accounts they follow, and hashtags they use.

They aren't a huge company. So much so, that I couldn't find any stats on their valuation or revenue - other than the fact they recently raised $1.3M. So, how is a company so small being talked about by hundreds of different creators and companies I follow?The answer to that is great marketing. A lot of this is down to the exact strategy I'm breaking down today.

Breaking Down The Strategy

As a marketer, when I first began growing my agency I thought the biggest driver of growth would be the content I put out to my audience: LinkedIn posts, Tweets, Newsletter articles, and PR. They were the classic metrics that I'd seen work for others. But I can now reveal that all those combined have brought me about 20% of my clients.

The other 80%? Referrals and recommendations.

Current clients, old clients, friends, connections, followers. It was the relationships I'd built with each one of these groups that have built the business. It was me giving that had the biggest ROI. Whether it was favours, answers or whatever it may be. The biggest ROI for my business was simply giving, free of charge.

Then this week, I came across Amanda talking about how SparkToro has a whole marketing strategy around simply giving. She called it 'Permissionless Co-Marketing'.

It's essentially the inverse of earned media. You make a deliberate effort of aligning yourself with other brands by promoting them in your work and in return, you earn goodwill and potential reciprocation.

As I said, it's a simple concept. Let me explain the technical side of how SparkToro does it.

SparkToro split it into 3 goals, but honestly, I think it gets a little overcomplicated when you do that. At the end of the day, the whole concept is about combining other brands inro your marketing - free of charge. You can see general goals, strategies, and tactics SparkToro focus on in the graphic above. But, I want to give you a specific example of how SparkToro has gone about achieving each goal whilst aligning themselves with a brand as they do it.

1. Demonstrating the value of SparkToro whilst giving a platform to Morning Brew

Nothing sells your product or service more than people seeing its value first-hand.

But when SparkToro's VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad (she's been getting a few shoutouts today) was speaking on a panel at Growth Summit - rather than pulling up any old case study, she specifically mapped out how SparkToro could benefit Morning Brew.

It was a clear example that demonstrated SparkToro's value in the most relevant context possible. Whilst also giving Morning Brew a little shoutout.

- Showed SparkToro's value- Handed a favour to Morning Brew

10/10 use of permissionless co-marketing.

2. Becoming a key player in their niche whilst showcasing Similarweb

So when SparkToro co-founder, Rand, was doing a demonstration on how to use SparkToro - rather than just showing SparkToro in play, he did a demonstration of how you can use their product alongside Similarweb to get great insights on your audience.

- Showed SparkToro's value- Handed a favour to Similarweb- Roped SparkToro into the conversation as a key player in the nicheAnother 10/10 play.

You see how both times there is absolutely no need to give the other brands a platform, but SparkToro does it nonetheless and there are a million other ways to do it too:

• During a podcast interview, shout out an up-and-coming SaaS tool that listeners would find useful.

• When writing a blog post, explain why another B2C brand’s email marketing strategy is successful.

• While presenting at a conference, include slides with examples from a brand with affinity to your own target audience.

To sum it up, well actually, I'm going to steal Amanda's summary here:

It's as simple as that. Give to people in your niche and over time they'll give back.It's essentially marketing karma. Summary of strategy:- They identified brands they wanted to be aligned with- Promoted those brands in their marketing/work- Through amplifying others, their work was amplified more. - A rising tide lifts all boats

Now, you know what SparkToro does, but how can you do the same?

How To Implement It

First off let me be clear, this doesn't mean you should run to LinkedIn and post:

Although I'm not against it, that isn't what this strategy is about. It's about making high-quality relationships (with the people you want relationships with) by giving something first. If you do the above, I'll be grateful, but will I really see you as an adequate person to do business with? Probably not. On the other hand, there was a perfect example of someone who used 'Permissionless Co-Marketing' that was similar to this just last week. Renee (a subscriber to this newsletter, Hi Renée!) posted this:

This is literally a perfect example of the strategy in play.

- She added value to her audience- Amplification of me was smoothBut more importantly:- She cleverly explained why I use an emoji in my subject line. Showcasing her clear in-depth knowledge of email marketing.- She aligned herself with a familiar name in the industry (me). I write newsletters, she copywrites emails. It's a very similar thing.Now, if I'm ever looking to work with an email copywriter, I'll think of Renée. But that won't be the case for just me. My audience who saw "Niall Ratcliffe commented" will think that too.

A simple post, but a great amplification of her brand, her work and now she has the reciprocation of me shouting her out in my newsletter.Talk about a perfect example. You won't beat this.On that note, I'm off to relax for the rest of the weekend. I hope you enjoyed.Your favourite northerner, — Niall

P.S. What did you think of this week's breakdown?

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This has been a breakdown of SparkToro's marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!