SparkToro Case Study: Increasing Product Usage and Educating Customers through Fan-Driven Content
TLDR:
Background: SparkToro is a B2B SaaS company, whose team includes two high-profile marketing influencers.
Problem: Despite their large public presence and great top-of-funnel traffic, SparkToro have struggled to articulate the value of their product, educate users on how to use their software, or improve conversions to their paid plans.
Solution: SparkToro invested into encouraging their biggest fans, which led fans like me (Mariya Delano) to promote SparkToro and create fan content about their product.
Results: my content about SparkToro got 32,616 views and 590 engagements; brought 3x as many directly attributable conversions as SparkToro's webinars; and increased sessions on several product pages by 162-397%.
Apply It Yourself: you can encourage your biggest fans even further by promoting their content, featuring them on your own marketing channels, inviting them to an ambassador program, or hiring them for official collaborations.
Background
SparkToro is a SaaS company that provides marketers with audience research data. (Such as information about public online activity of specific user groups, defined by what words they tend to use on their social media posts, what websites they visit, what social accounts they follow, etc.).
The company is comprised of three people: Rand Fishkin (CEO and prev. founder of Moz), Casey Henry (CTO), and Amanda Natividad (VP of Marketing). Both Rand and Amanda are fairly high profile in the marketing world. Rand has spoken at many industry events, shaped SEO's development as a field, authored three books, and has been featured in a wide variety of publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Newsweek. Amanda is a contributor to Adweek, writes a personal newsletter for 10,000+ subscribers, and has a combined social media following of 160,000+ people.
Thanks to their employees' high visibility in the industry, SparkToro never had a problem with generating top-of-funnel traffic and building general brand awareness. Both Rand and Amanda are prolific content creators and frequently speak as guests at marketing events and on podcasts. Basically, if you mention their names to any digital B2B marketer you can reasonably expect them to know who you're talking about.
Problem
However, despite their large platform and decent website traffic (average 8,124 views / day), SparkToro have struggled to showcase the value of their product.
While their website to signup rate is 9.5%, slightly higher than industry average (based on data from OpenView's 2023 Product Benchmarks Report), SparkToro's conversion rate from free to paid is less than half of industry average at 2.3%.
SparkToro's team themselves have expressed that many users sign up for a free account, run one or two searches, and then never return to the app again. And I've confirmed this issue in my conversations with marketers over the past year and a half: while many professionals have tried SparkToro, they don't really know how it can help them. Common sentiments include: "I'm not sure what I can use this data for," and "I couldn't run any searches relevant to my company."
Back in January, Rand and I talked about this issue on Mastodon. I theorized that SparkToro's users need to put in more work to interpret the data than with a classical SEO research tool. Rand agreed with my assessment, replying:
"this is a superb distillation of the educational challenge with our product (and, more broadly, the whole idea of marketing through sources of influence)."
So, how could a scrappy MarTech SaaS startup with a small 3-person team, like SparkToro, educate their large audience about the value and use cases for their software without investing significant resources into product-focused content?
Solution
SparkToro's solution? Encouraging a single superfan (me).
Yes, really. SparkToro saw a significant lift in product awareness, usage, and qualified traffic thanks to content created by a single person who was neither affiliated with the company nor financially incentivized to promote them.
This entire campaign was created with no budget, little coordination or effort required on SparkToro's side, and yet created a ripple effect across all of SparkToro's marketing campaigns and product usage.
Strategy: Fostering Emotional Attachments Through the Fan Engagement Matrix
As I discussed in my recent conference presentation, B2B companies should engage fans across a mix of four types of activities:
Fan Communications – (low emotional resonance, one-to-one) where employees interact with individual customers and fans in a personalized, but relatively neutral way.
Fan Advocacy – (high emotional resonance, one-to-one) where employees interact with customers and fans in deeply meaningful, unique ways, such as promoting them or spending significant time on getting to know them.
Useful Content – (low emotional resonance, one-to-many) where the brand creates content that educates their audience and helps them learn something new.
Emotional Content – (high emotional resonance, one-to-many) where the brand creates content that fosters parasocial relationships by encouraging emotional investment and resonance.
My model of a fan engagement matrix.
SparkToro's team do an incredible job in cultivating emotional attachments to their brand and their employees' online personas. In my case, I became a superfan because SparkToro engaged with me across all four categories:
Fan Communications
SparkToro's team have always responded to me whenever I've mentioned them or their product on social media, sent questions to their customer support email, or made jokes in their webinar live chat.
Compilation of some interactions between me and SparkToro's team, as seen on my slides for B2BSMX.
This responsiveness, together with the clear warmth and enthusiasm of their communications, encouraged me to reach out and promote SparkToro more.
While some B2B brands might ignore posts like mine completely or respond from a faceless customer support handle, SparkToro would always interact with me and other customers like real humans who deserved their time and attention.
Fan Advocacy
Compilation of some shoutouts for me and my work from SparkToro's team, as seen on my slides for B2BSMX.
As I began talking about SparkToro and engaging with their team members more on social media, they began helping me in my own career and promoting my work to help me gain a larger audience.
Essentially, the reason why promoting me was beneficial to SparkToro was the same reason why I wanted to continue promoting them in the first place: we were both marketing through sources of influence. As Rand points out in this graphic, instead of simply creating content for potential customers, one can also choose to target "amplifiers" – people and groups with access to existing audiences made up of potential customers.
For me and Kalyna Marketing, SparkToro and their team are "industry influencers" with large followings in the B2B marketing world. For SparkToro, I am a "customer evangelist". Essentially, in return for borrowing their audience, I provided SparkToro with social proof on why their product is valuable to marketers and agency owners like myself.
Useful Content
I learned a lot of my current content marketing practices from SparkToro's content. For instance, I regularly link clients to Amanda's "Zero-Click Content" blog post; I've attended nearly all of SparkToro's webinars or "Office Hours" in the past year; and I follow both Rand's and Amanda's LinkedIn posts.
Emotional Content
SparkToro are phenomenal at fostering parasocial attachments through content that feels emotional, real, and fundamentally human. In a world where most B2B brands copy their competitors' stale content, SparkToro's content is a breath of fresh air.
I truly fell in love with SparkToro when I attended their virtual event last November. Just watch this highlight reel and notice the amount of smiles, laughter, and warmth emanating from both the hosts and speakers! And I know I wasn't the only attendee left in awe: another attendee, Joyce Chou, drew an artwork of all the speakers and posted it on LinkedIn to express her appreciation.
Tactics: Authentic & Enthusiastic Fan-Created Promotion
So, how did I thank SparkToro for their investment into fans like me? I acted on my newfound sense of sincere love for SparkToro and their team. Which meant promoting them at every opportunity I could find.
Note: I was never commissioned, in any way requested, or compensated for any of this promotion. I did all of this work because I care about SparkToro, I adore their product, and I deeply care for their team members. The only budget for this fan campaign was... brand love.
Here's a semi-exhaustive list of promotions that I've done for SparkToro since December 2022 in public marketing channels:
Social Media Posts
February 11, 2023 - "My husband is currently explaining how to do audience research with SparkToro to my teenage brother and I am extremely confused."
February 16, 2023 - showing a fun example of unexpected SparkToro results.
Between March and April, 2023 - LinkedIn post with questions that content marketers should use, including a recommendation for SparkToro.
March 24, 2023 - LinkedIn video "there’s actually a tool exactly for that, and it’s my favorite marketing software — SparkToro."
March 26, 2023 - LinkedIn video "SparkToro gives you context, tells you why something might work, and helps you challenge your assumptions."
March 30, 2023 - recommending SparkToro for a university marketing class.
March 30, 2023 - LinkedIn video showcasing my "rants and raves" framework using SparkToro.
April 8, 2023 - showing that I got a Google Search snippet for "SparkToro use cases".
April 17, 2023 - a funny anecdote from running SparkToro searches.
April 24, 2023 - a LinkedIn post expressing my love for SparkToro after I had some wine.
April 28, 2023 - a LinkedIn post where I surprised a new friend by dressing up as Rand Fishkin.
June 28, 2023 - a thread explaining why I don't like most SEO content, using examples about SparkToro.
June 8, 2023 - LinkedIn post about audience research shouting out SparkToro.
June 28, 2023 - Mastodon post about a Notion template I made for SparkToro data.
June 28, 2023 - LinkedIn post about my Notion templates, including a shoutout to SparkToro's Amanda Natividad
August 6, 2023 - LinkedIn post announcing that I'm headed to speak at B2BSMX, where I would speak about SparkToro.
August 9, 2023 - LinkedIn post about the B2BSMX conference, mentioning that I spoke about SparkToro.
Podcast and Event Shoutouts
March 16, 2023 - my first live conference presentation at SaasOpen in NYC, where I mentioned SparkToro as one of my main examples.
July 26, 2023 - my guest appearance on The Long Game podcast, including mentions of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin, and Amanda Natividad.
August 9, 2023 - my second live conference presentation at the B2B Sales and Marketing Exchange in Boston, where I centered the entire talk about my love story with SparkToro.
Citations and Brand Mentions Across Long-Form Content
Early January, 2023 - testimonial from Rand Fishkin at the top of my newsletter "About" page.
January 23, 2023 - my newsletter essay quoting Rand Fishkin's blog post on marketing attribution.
February 11, 2023 - my newsletter essay "Why Marketers are Afraid of Kindness" that was inspired by a conversation with Rand, where I quoted one of SparkToro's blog posts and wrote explicit thank you notes for both Rand and Amanda.
February 21, 2023 - my blog post about AI writing tools that cites a SparkToro blog post.
April 27, 2023 - my newsletter essay "Why Love IS Good Business" where I shared the story behind my SparkToro guides and initial results.
May 19, 2023 - my blog post in collaboration with Carina Rampelt from Fenwick, where I recommend using SparkToro for content research.
May 26, 2023 - my blog post about Google's SGE launch where I use SparkToro as the example for my first screenshot.
June 6, 2023 - Rand Fishkin's testimonial on Kalyna Marketing's rebranded website.
June 14, 2023 - my newsletter essay "Marketing at the End of the World" where I dedicate an entire section to Rand's book, "Lost and Founder".
June 28, 2023 - my Notion template based on SparkToro data and a blog post from Amanda Natividad, in Notion's official gallery.
August 4, 2023 - my Search Engine Land debut, where I quoted Rand Fishkin as one of my main sources.
August 7, 2023 - my most recent newsletter essay, where I link to one of Amanda's newer blog posts.
August 11, 2023 - my resource packet from B2BSMX including a variety of SparkToro-related links.
Videos
March 14, 2023 - a long video walking through SparkToro vs SEO keyword research tools.
March 30, 2023 - rants and raves framework video.
June 6, 2023 - a video explaining audience research and shouting out SparkToro.
Dedicated Series of Long-Form Product Guides for SparkToro
All of these guides were published on April 6, 2023.
Blog post thumbnails for my five SparkToro guides, as seen in my B2BSMX presentation.
Part 0: Introduction to the Project and a Love Letter – introduction, reference point to locate other articles in the series, and a short essay on why I love this software so much.
Part 1: How I Use SparkToro for Content Marketing Projects – a practical walkthrough of how I (and the rest of our team) most often tend to use SparkToro when working with clients on content marketing projects.
Part 2: Marketing, PR, and Personal Use Cases for SparkToro’s Data – a large list of use cases with suggested tips, approaches, and further reading. Includes PR, Paid Ads, Networking, Pitching, Journalism Research, Competitor Analysis, and more.
Part 3: Why SparkToro Requires A Different Marketing Approach – a manifesto on why we think working with SparkToro requires a radically different approach to marketing work and software.
Part 4: What The Heck Is All This Stuff? A Reference of SparkToro’s Features – mini software documentation listing all of SparkToro’s features, interfaces, and options.
Social Media Posts About SparkToro Guides
April 6, 2023 - LinkedIn announcement for SparkToro guides.
April 6, 2023 - Mastodon announcement for SparkToro guides.
April 13, 2023 - LinkedIn post about updated guide on how to think about SparkToro.
Between April and May, 2023 - LinkedIn post about my "cooking framework for MarTech" like SparkToro.
July 30, 2023 - LinkedIn post about updated SparkToro documentation
SparkToro Consulting Service
After the guides got published, we got a lot of interest in providing SparkToro consulting. So in early June, when we launched a full rebrand of Kalyna Marketing's website – we introduced an explicit SparkToro consulting service.
Results
Even though my audience was practically nonexistent at the start of 2023 and I was largely unknown in the B2B marketing industry, my promotional efforts for SparkToro got surprisingly good traction.
You can take it from SparkToro's CEO himself:
Why This Worked
Why did my fan-created content perform so well? Because it was sincere.
I put my heart and soul into every single shoutout, article, video, or social media post. And my genuine enthusiasm and love for this company and their product was contagious.
Here are some public comments that I heard after publishing my SparkToro guides:
“This is GREAT.”
“It’s about time someone did this.”
“Just what I needed.”
“A great series of guides.”
“Thank you for creating this resource.”
“Love this.”
“Wow, what a gift.”
Even better, I would still get messages and hear from marketers about my guides and videos nearly five months after publishing them. My fan-created content was memorable, helpful, and emotionally resonant for thousands of B2B marketers looking to try and learn SparkToro.
Increase in Traffic
SparkToro's Website
Note: all data about SparkToro's website traffic was taken from their Google Analytics. Massive thank you to Rand Fishkin for providing me with temporary access for the purposes of creating this case study.
Between April 1, 2023 - August 3, 2023 SparkToro's website received:
Average Time on Page: 57.62 s
Average Daily Views: 8,124.
In the time period when my guides and associated social media posts were getting the most traction (April 6 - 15), SparkToro's average daily traffic rose by 5.5% (or 450 additional daily views).
While most of my impact is difficult to attribute, SparkToro's referral traffic shows the following data for visits sent from kalynamarketing.com directly:
Views: 44
New Users: 29
Sessions: 81
Average Time on Page: 7 min 32 s
Free Accounts Created: 9
Free-to-Paid Conversions: 1.
While these numbers might seem small, here are some reference points:
According to SparkToro's blog, they receive 1,200 free sign-ups per week and 2.3% of those users convert to paid plans.
Referrals from Instagram, where SparkToro and all of their team members have active accounts, brought in 354 views and 9 free conversions (the same amount of conversions as Kalyna Marketing).
Referrals from Goldcast, where SparkToro hosts their webinars, brought in 247 views and 3 free conversions.
Mariya Delano's and Kalyna Marketing Analytics
Here are some statistics aggregated across my own channels (exclusively for SparkToro-related content) from April 1 to August 23, 2023:
Total Views (excluding search impressions): 32,616
Total Engagements (reactions / comments / shares): 590
Website Analytics for SparkToro Guides:
Views: 2,005
Visitors: 1,234
Average Pageviews Per User: 1.62
Average Time on Page: 1 min 5 s
Search Console (for SparkToro Guides):
Impressions: 27,500
Clicks: 104
Average Position: 11.3
Search Keywords: 235
Video Views: 740
Live Conference Attendees: 100+
Lift in Product Awareness
It appears that my guides and associated promotion increased the usage of SparkToro's product.
The amount of sessions on product related pages on SparkToro's site saw a significant lift in April of 2023 compared to March of the same year:
Second-click sessions on the "/product" page: +268%
First-click sessions on the account registration page: +25%
First-click sessions on the product dashboard page: +397%
First-click sessions on the pricing page: +162%
First-click sessions on the free account sign-up page: +212%.
Overall, it appears that traffic coming to SparkToro's website in April was significantly more qualified and quickly went to product or sign-up related pages, as opposed to their more typical user journeys that tend to center their blog or free tools.
Community Shares
While I cannot pull up specific numbers for this, I've seen my SparkToro guides and videos referenced across a variety of other marketing channels, shared by people who are neither part of Kalyna Marketing nor SparkToro.
Here are some examples:
Ten Speed's newsletter using my SparkToro videos as an example
Conclusion: Nurture Your Superfans
When you encourage your biggest fans and show them genuine support and care, they might surprise you.
I don't think that anyone on SparkToro's team or I could have ever predicted any of this. If SparkToro didn't make me feel accepted and cared for, I probably wouldn't have become such a heavy user of their product. If their team members didn't encourage my work, I might have never written a single post about them. And nobody would have expected me to sit down and write 23,000 words of detailed guides about SparkToro's product, let alone that those guides could do so well.
If you take one lesson from our story, please consider: fostering brand love in your biggest fans can become the most wonderful surprise for your B2B business. When you show customers that you care about them, their thoughts, and their success – they will show you how much they care about you 10 or 100 times over.
Implement Our Playbook for Yourself
While I don't have any further campaigns or collaborations planned with SparkToro at this time, I think that a similar playbook can be successful for other brands, especially in the B2B SaaS space.
If you'd like to try out a similar fan-driven marketing strategy for yourself: here are some ideas on how you could expand beyond our example:
Incorporate a marketing plan for fan-produced content.
Spread out social media posts beyond the initial publication;
Invest additional resources for repurposing or promotion through ad spend;
Feature that content within your own site. (For example, if a fan creates product tutorials, you could include them in your product's help center or onboarding sequence).
Invite fans onto your own platform. Beyond sharing your fans' content, you could invite those fans to:
Speak at your company's live or virtual events; (For example, see HubSpot.)
Guest post on your blog;
Write a section for your newsletter.
Introduce an official ambassador or customer advocacy program. If your brand has more than a few superfans, you can:
Scale your fan engagements with a formal ambassador program. (For example, see Notion.)
Hire fans to produce content for your brand. If you'd like to collaborate with fans on content more formally or fully publish their work on your brand's platform:
Hire them!
Treat this as an extension of your freelance or agency content creation engagements.
Would You Like Some Help?
And if you'd like some expert guidance in working on fan-driven marketing or creating content in collaboration with your biggest fans, our team at Kalyna Marketing can help you do just that!
Fill out a contact form here or send us an email: hello@kalynamarketing.com.
