An interview with Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro, and previously co-founder of Moz

An interview with Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro, and previously co-founder of Moz

1. Tell us about yourself.
I'm the co-founder of SparkToro and, prior to that, Moz and Inbound.org. I've been a marketer and an entrepreneur for my entire career -- the last 17 years -- and have made a lot of mistakes from which I hope others can learn :-)

2. Did you choose to become a marketer?
Not entirely. I fell into marketing after entering the tech world as a web designer, but I love the combination of technical and creative processes required to succeed, and truly enjoy the people in the marketing world.

3. What do you think one should do to align their marketing goals with their business goals?
Tie marketing goals explicitly and directly to specific business goals, then show (as best you're able), how metrics improvements in marketing correlate (or cause) improvements in the business goal.

4. Your views on why MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) may not be ideal:
My basic contention is that many customers and amplifiers of your business and work will likely judge your product on their initial experience. If you release something that's barely viable but doesn't truly astound and impress, you're likely to burn the opportunity to re-earn that customer's business in the future. Worse, if that person might have been an amplifier of your company or a promoter of your product/service, you've lost the opportunity to reach their audience with a message of endorsement.

5. What would be some of the biggest challenges in marketing in the next few years?
The major web properties are all moving to a model of sharing out less traffic and keeping more for themselves. That makes many web marketing activities much more difficult, and mean that fewer people and organizations will benefit from the popularity that Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. have achieved. Rather than spreading the wealth of traffic and linking across the web, we're seeing consolidation and closing of gates to keep people on their platforms.

6. What's your favourite ad? Why?
A favourite ad is far too difficult, but I really enjoyed this concept from Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m89djlGgzIQ

7. Are there any marketing gurus you've been inspired by?
Hmm... Not sure they'd call themselves "gurus," but a few folks that have certainly inspired and impressed me lately include Purna Virji, Emily Grossman, Tara Reed, Everette Taylor, Camille Ricketts, 

8. What do you think is the most senseless marketing campaign? Why?
Hard to name just one, but I think politics is an area where a ton of marketing activity, advertising spend, and media effort of all kinds is placed, but with a very low return on investment. At most, 2-3% of the electorate seem to ever shift their votes in the United States, yet fewer than 40% of eligible voters even bother to cast ballots. Clearly, it's a field with perverse incentives, incredibly illogical thinking, and horrific bias of all kinds, yet I can't help but feel that most of the marketing dollars spent are done senselessly, too.

9. What's your favorite social media platform? why?
I still love Twitter. It's a wonderful place to engage with people and organizations, to form connections, to get help with problems, to socialize around professional, political, and interest-based issues. If the platform could work to solve its horrifying abuse and harassment problems, I think it would have a very bright future indeed.

10. What phone app do you use most?
Gmail :-) But right behind that is probably Twitter, Pocket, Lyft, Reddit, Fitbit, and Instagram

11. What do you do when you have free time?
My wife and I socialize a lot! We have so many wonderful friends in Seattle and the cities we frequently visit that our calendar is often booked up for months in advance. I love seeing people, eating good food, sharing stories, and being supportive however we can.

12. Is there a software product you love?
Many! I'm a big fan of Excel and Powerpoint -- still gold standards for much of the work I do. Google Drive has also proved invaluable, and for my new company, a few others like Gusto, Typeform, Docusign, and Carta have been invaluable.

13. What productivity hacks do you use?
I try to run 100% of my communication through just two channels -- my calendar and my email. If it's not in those two, it doesn't exist for me (or, at least, I don't prioritize it). That helps me stay mostly on top of everything I need to get in a day without falling too far behind.


    Zoho Desk Resources

    • Desk Community Learning Series


    • Digest


    • Functions


    • Meetups


    • Kbase


    • Resources


    • Glossary


    • Desk Marketplace


    • MVP Corner


    • Word of the Day


      • Sticky Posts

      • 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

        Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.
      • Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

        Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage
      • Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

        According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,
      • How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

        Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the
      • The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

        Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

      Zoho CRM Plus Resources

        Zoho Books Resources


          Zoho Subscriptions Resources

            Zoho Projects Resources


              Zoho Sprints Resources


                Zoho Orchestly Resources


                  Zoho Creator Resources


                    Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                      Zoho Campaigns Resources

                        Zoho CRM Resources

                        • CRM Community Learning Series

                          CRM Community Learning Series


                        • Tips

                          Tips

                        • Functions

                          Functions

                        • Meetups

                          Meetups

                        • Kbase

                          Kbase

                        • Resources

                          Resources

                        • Digest

                          Digest

                        • CRM Marketplace

                          CRM Marketplace

                        • MVP Corner

                          MVP Corner




                          Zoho Writer Writer

                          Get Started. Write Away!

                          Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                            Zoho CRM コンテンツ






                              ご検討中の方

                                • Recent Topics

                                • Introducing automation and utility conversations in WhatsApp marketing

                                  We’re excited to announce the addition of two new features to our WhatsApp integration: Automation and Utility conversations. These enhancements will allow you to streamline your marketing efforts and engage with your customers more effectively by automating
                                • Extracting data from cells in zoho sheets for zoho books

                                  I am currently uploading my bank statment in excel format to zoho workdrive. I would like flow to extract certain data and send it to zoho books. Would scripting in zoho flow be able to help me with this? By this I mean should I attempt this in zoho flow
                                • Within the Basic KPI component in Analytics, it is impossible to set "next" day range as a filter

                                  Hi there, I am currently setting up a deal dashboard for the Sales team. While it is possible to filter deal records to show records that were created LAST X days only, it looks like a NEXT X days Closing date filter is not available. Would it be possible
                                • Pulling Specific Products from Sales Orders in Books to a CRM Record

                                  We currently process orders directly through our website (woocommerce) as well as through manual sales orders in zoho books. When an order comes through the website, all of the individual products from that order show up in the CRM record of that customer.
                                • Você já viu os cursos do Zoho Mind?

                                  Pessoal, Tem uma plataforma da Zoho chamada Zoho Mind, muito interessante os cursos e vídeos tutoriais que lá possui. Para a turma do Zoho Creator, tem uma dica de Buscar dados em Formulário, segue o link e clique em Zoho Creator. https://www.zohomind.com.br/#/videostutoriais
                                • Como gerar gatilhos para pagamento de impostos no Zoho Books?

                                  Olá Pessoal, boa tarde! Gostaria de saber como vocês estão escriturando os impostos a pagar no Zoho Books. Vi que temos a opção de Bills, porém se eu escriturar nesta aba do Zoho Books para gerar lembretes de tempo de vencimento por exemplo vai refletir
                                • Subform Time field to string.

                                  Good afternoon All. I have a Subform 'Delivery_Receiving_Hours' that captures Day (Dropdown), Time_Open (Time), and Time_Close (Time). I need to capture this data and send it to a multiline field in the CRM. The code, posted below, below will capture
                                • workflow for bounced email gets triggered, but email is status = opened

                                  Hello, I have a workflow that sends me an email if outgoing email are bounced. Now I got some kind of this emails, but the corrosponding contacts have status = open at the email. Why this bounce-workflow is triggered? Reports > Email Reports > Bounce
                                • Data export

                                  I need to export our customer's data and projects' data for our purpose but am unable to export full data i only get around 3160 projects and around 2k customer can you please help me to get full data, please
                                • Adjusting Physical Inventory

                                  Not getting very far with support on this one, they say they are going to fix it but nothings happened since November. Please give this a thumbs up if you would like to see this feature or comment if you have some insight. Use Case: Inventory set to be
                                • Zoho Marketing Plus : Un outil tout-en-un pour la création de pages, la collaboration et la gestion du calendrier marketing

                                  Nous sommes ravis de vous présenter trois nouvelles fonctionnalités puissantes de Zoho Marketing Plus s’enrichit désormais d’un page web (l'éditeur de pages), qui vous permet de créer des pages attrayantes et à fort taux de conversion pour vos campagnes
                                • Grouping payments to match deposits

                                  Is there a way to group multiple invoice payments together so they match credit card batches and grouped deposits in the bank account? Basically, we are creating invoices for each of our transactions, and applying a payment to each of the invoices. Our payments are either credit cards or checks. We want to be able to group payments together so when our bank account reflects a credit card batch made up of many transactions, or the deposit we took to the bank that has multiple checks from different
                                • Employees can not add some expenses suddenly

                                  Zoho expense was working fine and whenever there was a new merchant, it would automatically add and also the same auto added in Zoho Books (due to merchant-vendor sync) untill now. From today, it is having problems in searching the existing vendors and
                                • Zoho email setup in office365

                                  When i am trying to setup zoho mail setup using my domain in office365 and it is not working and it says that we couldn't log on to the incoming (IMAP) server and please check your email address and password and try again. I was able to login using my
                                • iOS 10: Caller ID new feature?

                                  Hi, in the update history of the iOS App (for iOS10) - v.3.2 - i found the point "caller identification" has this feature been deactivated again? i cannot find anything on my iphone on how to activate this feature. or does it just work from the beginning?
                                • Recommendations to store meeting notes for easy access from Contacts, Accounts & Deals module records?

                                  I would like your advice on how to achieve this use case for my organization. It’s related to where/how best to store meeting notes from a conversation with Contact(s) working at an Account (Company) in the context of a Deal. The ideal solution (from
                                • Bank reconciliation. Match Transaction -filter

                                  When matching an imported bank statement file we only get a match if it is an excact match on both amount and date. Then a suggestions comes up with a very broad selection regarding amount, and no default "between" dates. I can then go an manually adjust the filter, and have to put in from-to amounts and dates. How do I set a default from-to date?  As an example, I would like the date to be +- 3 days, Thanks.
                                • Added new staff but does not appear in other organization list

                                  Hi, I added the new staff under Sales Manager in the contacts, but it does not appear in the other organization list where I need to create a contact, and I can't select the newly added Sales Manager
                                • Integrating Calendly with Zoho Calendar in Zoho Mail

                                  I moved my office into a business incubator space that uses Calendly for meeting management and events. Calendly doesn't have a integration with Zoho Calendar and vice versa. I was directed to Zapier for integration but it doesn't have an integration
                                • Map fields from module X to a lookup field in subform in module Y

                                  Hi there In the 1st screenshot attached, you can see a subform in myLeads module. You can see that there is a number already filled there - that is the 'Property ID' and it is a single line field. It is the 'Property ID' of an entry I have in another
                                • 🎄 Jingle, Mingle, and Automate: Spread Christmas Cheer with Zoho Desk Auto-Replies! 🎄

                                  Hello Everyone! Welcome to this week's episode of the Community Learning Series. Christmas is in the air, and I’m sure we can all feel the jingle and the mingle of the season! The folks at Zylker Techfix are no exception—they’re busy with holiday plans
                                • how to create a new line in string in Client Script?

                                  I want to show an alert using client script, I need to add a new line in String, I assume I can use \n\n inside a string, but unfortunately it doesnt work ZDK.Client.showAlert("First Line \n\nI expect this is in second line");
                                • Surely it's time Inline editing from views

                                  I think the first request I found for in-line editing from grids was approximately 12 years ago - that post was locked because it was suggested Zoho sheetview solved the problem. However, it's now 2024, and in-line editing from grids is just a basic expectation.
                                • Multi branding issue with sender addresses

                                  Hello, I'm currently working on a project involving two (seperate) brands. Named 'Windeck' and 'Prolance'. They've chosen CRM Plus and I'm currently working on CRM, SalesIQ, Social and Marketing Automation. So far, I'm able to make enough separations
                                • How to Replace an Assessment in a Job Opening on Zoho Recruit

                                  Hi everyone, I’m currently using Zoho Recruit and would like to replace the assessment linked to a specific job opening. I want to remove the existing assessment and add a new one. What is the best way to do this without losing any important data or affecting
                                • Is there API Doc for Zoho Survey?

                                  Hi everyone, Is there API doc for Zoho Survey? Currently evaluating a solution - use case to automate survey administration especially for internal use. But after a brief search, I couldn't find API doc for this. So I thought I should ask here. Than
                                • Email Campaigns overview page is missing SENT DATE and # people sent to!

                                  I would like to see the date the email campaign was sent, so I can understand and track when each email campaign was sent. Right now, unless you go to a contact who received a campaign, you cannot see when the campaign was sent (!!!!!!). So, if my boss
                                • SEO recommendation of H1 tag for website tittle

                                  The exact words are “ It is good practice to place the page title inside the H1tag.” Now I already have one H1 tag on my website but it is not website tittle. In the SEO recommendation that is clear too that I have h1 tag on my page. Now I don’t know
                                • How to choose other payment methodes than creditcards

                                  We have connected stripe as a payment provider in zoho books, booking, commerce and checkout. In stripe we selected al major payment methodes for Belgium (mainly bancontact). However, at checkout customers seems to have only the possibility to pay with
                                • Introducing Zia LLM: Zoho’s in-house Generative AI solution for CRM's AI capabilities

                                  Hello everyone, We're excited to announce the launch of our in-house Large Language Model (LLM) by Zia to power our AI offerings. What is LLM? LLM stands for Large Language Model, a powerful AI technology that processes and generates human-like text based
                                • How to call a Creator function which is in a different Creator application?

                                  How to call a Creator function which is in a different Creator application?
                                • Can the code in my "Successful form submission" WF be invoked from a function?

                                  Can "Successful form submission" be invoked from a function? Data gets into a form manually and programatically. My code in "successful form submission" is good and I want to reuse it/call it, from another function which does Insert Into How to achieve
                                • Kaizen #169 - Serialization and Schema Management in Queries

                                  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series! In Kaizen #166, we discussed handling Variables in Queries and associating the query in Kiosk. This week, we will discuss Serialization and Schema management in Queries. Business Scenario
                                • Introducing Keyboard Shortcuts for Zoho CRM

                                  Dear Customers, We're happy to introduce keyboard shortcuts for Zoho CRM features! Until now, you might have been navigating to modules manually using the mouse, and at times, it could be tedious, especially when you had to search for specific modules
                                • Feature Request: Notebooks within notebooks (Tree-like structure)

                                  Dear Zoho! I already migrated all my stuff from Google Keep, Im really fond of Zoho Notebook so far. One thing that could make the service much more powerful is multi-level notebooks (or tree like structure). For example, entering into Notebook named
                                • Can't get authorization for Sandbox environment using the self client

                                  Hello, After creating a self client, and following the client-credentials method (as it's not optimat to manually generate a code for every 10 minutes), after inputting the sandbox org id for SOID parameter, im getting the error: "error": "no_org". For
                                • Create landing pages from Zoho Marketing Plus

                                  Hey everyone, Over the last few months, we've introduced various features and enhancements to bolster the marketing capabilities of Zoho Marketing Plus and make it simpler for everyone. To that end, we're excited to announce that Zoho LandingPage is now
                                • Custom service report or Zoho forms integration

                                  Hello, So far the experience with Zoho FSM and the integration with Books has been good, however there are limitations with service reports. As with my business, many organisations send technicians to different types of jobs that call for a different
                                • Email tracking subdomain

                                  The Email Tracking configuration screen of the ZeptoMail asks for a subdomain. I have gone through the documentation but could not find more information about how that subdomain is used by ZeptoMail to track the emails. Can someone throw some light about
                                • Chart View group X-axis values above a value

                                  I have a data set with X values ranging from 0 up to 300-400, the Y values are an AVG of the values for the given X. I am interested in the values at the low end of the scale, say 0-10 and want the X values 10 and greater to be grouped into a single category
                                • Next Page