Sparktoro is a tool designed to help marketers and researchers identify and understand their target audiences by aggregating data from public web and social profiles. It addresses the challenges of accurately finding and engaging the right customers by providing insights on where they interact and what content resonates with them. The beta launch features three core functions: audience intelligence, audience comparison, and competitive analysis, with a focus on making market research faster and more efficient.

1. Exploring
Rand Fishkin | Cofounder & CEO | July 2019
A behind-the-scenes peek at SparkToro’s beta version:
what it does, how it works, who it’s for

2. Sections in this presentation:
I. What problems is SparkToro built to solve? (3)
II. Who is SparkToro for?
III. A look at SparkToro’s three core functions
IV. Example use cases
V. Access, pricing, and feedback

3. What problems is SparkToro
built to solve?

4. Marketing 101
Your
Company
(or client)
The Right
Customers
For Your
Product
Where They
Engage,
Listen, Read,
Watch, etc.
In order to reach
this audience
You need to do marketing
in these places

5. The Core Issue…
Your
Company
(or client)
The Right
Customers
For Your
Product
Where They
Engage,
Listen, Read,
Watch, etc.
Figuring out these
connections is incredibly
time-consuming, expensive,
and worst, inaccurate.

6. How It’s Done Today:
The Right
Customers
For Your
Product
Surveys:
Informal and formal, with varying
degrees of cost and accuracy, but
always a long lead time, and
frustratingly low response rates.
Interviews:
A key part of customer research,
but incredibly hard to scale, and
self-reported engagement is rife
with misinformation.
Online Sleuthing:
Visiting hundreds of your customers’ social accounts or websites
to see what they follow, engage with, and listen to – it’s a good
way to learn the field, but immensely time-consuming and
problematically biased by the people you pick.

7. What if, instead…
The Right
Customers
For Your
Product
Audience Intelligence
With a single search, get access to
aggregated data pulled from tens
of thousands of public web and
social profiles for any audience
What this group of people…
…listens to
…reads
…watches
…follows
…engages with
…uses to describe
themselves
…attends
…talks about

8. How Does SparkToro Do That?
Twitter
Profile
We crawl billions of
web pages and social
accounts, then build
connections between
those whose profiles
match. This gives us
a significant amount
of data for each
profile in our index.
Website
LinkedIn
Page
Facebook
Page
Instagram
YouTube
Profile
Medium
Blog
We DO NOT use any
personally identifiable
information. Instead,
we aggregate &
anonymize data like:
Bio + job title
About page content
Websites shared & linked-to
Social accounts followed
Words and phrases used
Hashtags and topics posted
A Single
SparkToro
Profile’s
Data

9. How Does SparkToro Do That?
With 70 million+ profiles,
we can, in seconds,
process thousands of
profiles that match nearly
any criteria, and extract the
most-commonly shared
attributes of that group.
4,424 profiles that talk about
“yoga” in Portland, OR
Most common words used
Most followed accounts
Most shared websites
Most listened-to podcasts
Most common hashtags
Etc.

10. Now, We Can Answer Questions Like:
What Instagram accounts are popular with marine biologists?
What podcasts do teachers in Canada listen to most?
What hashtags are popular with wildlife photographers vs.
portrait photographers right now?
What words and phrases do fly fishing enthusiasts use to
describe themselves?
Where are the biggest geographic concentrations of people
who talk about vinyasa yoga?
# of matching profiles in our
database (as of 7/2/19)
1,328
85,827
21,012
100,682
3,580

11. This is Exactly How SparkToro Works!

12. We Can Search These 70M+ Profiles in Several Ways:
Content of their social
& web posts/shares
Words & phrases
from their bios/titles
What/who they follow
What they share, link-
to, and follow
Tags used in social &
web posts/shares

13. Real Talk…
I hate when founders say “our solution can work for any problem!” That’s never
the truth. So let’s get serious about where SparkToro works well and doesn’t.
SparkToro’s Audience Data Works Well When:
We have 300+ profiles that match the audience you’re targeting
(more if the audience’s behavior is very diverse, fewer if very similar – just like election polling)
Your audience is clearly definable and self-describes using a few, searchable words or
phrases
(SparkToro’s great for reaching “bartenders” or “marine biologists” – they use those words to describe themselves; it’s not so great if
you’re targeting “homebuyers seeking new, energy-efficient windows” because that audience won’t self-describe in a searchable way)
OR your audience talks about the interests/topics that identifies them as potential customers
(Great for reaching people who are fans of DIY, 3D-printing because they tend to talk about that! But, not so great for targeting “parents
buying their children’s first computer” because people rarely broadcast that intent)
Your audience uses English in their online social + web profiles
(we do index some non-English profiles, but the vast majority of our dataset is English-centric in this first version)

14. Who is SparkToro For?

15. SparkToro is Built Primarily for Marketers
Content & SEO Pros
• SparkToro’s tools can
turn days of frustrating
research into seconds
of at-a-glance lists that
will show you precisely
which publications and
people reach your ideal
customers.
• Outreach, guest content,
and amplification
sourcing just got WAY
easier.
PR + Social Media Pros
• Where to get coverage
& whom to engage with
is all too often a battle of
opinions and personal
experience.
• SparkToro’s tool turns
frustrating arguments
about where to reach
any given audience into
productive, data-
driven plans.
Marketing Strategists
• When planning your
marketing strategy,
the ability to research
dozens of audiences
in seconds with
instantly-applicable
insights is invaluable.
• So, too, is the ability
to call BS on a bad
marketing plan!
Advertising Professionals
• Where to invest beyond
Google & Facebook is a
constant quandary, but
also a huge opportunity –
because that’s where your
competition isn’t playing
• SparkToro provides cold,
hard, audience numbers
for any searchable group,
so you don’t waste budget
in the wrong places.

16. But, Lots of Other Folks Can Benefit, Too
CEOs & Founders
• Knowing more about
your target market before
you make key decisions
(which customers to
pursue, what products to
build, go-to-market plans,
etc.) can vastly improve
your results.
• SparkToro makes
previously inaccessible
customer research just
a few keystrokes away.
Sales & Mktg Leaders
• Your marketing plan is
based on where you
believe your target
customers (and their
influencers) engage and
what they care about.
• SparkToro adds
crucial, customer-
centric data to your
strategy, so you can
prioritize the right
channels and tactics.
Authors & Creators
• Where do people who
want your work spend
time, who do they listen
to, what do they follow?
• Figuring that out is a
time-consuming, often
ignored part of every
creator’s process. But,
getting your work out
there matters.
• SparkToro makes that
research process easy.
Product Managers
• You need your finger
on the pulse of your
audience – what they
talk about, pay
attention to, and
engage with.
• SparkToro gives you
fast access to a wealth
of customer research
that would otherwise
take months to
assemble.

17. A Look at SparkToro’s
Three Core Functions

18. Our Beta Launch Features Three, Connected Tools:
Search for any audience and
see shared characteristics
about them, along with
who/what/where they
follow/listen-to/engage-with

19. Plug in any two groups and see the overlap between them, and the shared
vs. unique characteristics they possess. These are particularly useful for
marketing strategy presentations and pitch meetings
Our Beta Launch Features Three, Connected Tools:

20. Enter your own website/social handle, a
rival’s, or anyone’s, and see information
about their audience’s characteristics and
behavior – killer for competitive intel and
comparisons.
Our Beta Launch Features Three, Connected Tools:

21. Audience Intelligence
Start by choosing which way to research the
audience about whom you’d like to gather data.
Then enter a descriptor,
a hashtag, a website, or
a social account, and hit
“Search.”

22. From these 15,541 profiles
that recently talked about
“craft cocktails” on their
social + web profiles,
SparkToro extracts a
boatload of statistically
sound, anonymized,
aggregated, actionable data.

23. You can use these tabs
to view lists of social
accounts this audience
follows, websites they
visit, podcasts they
listen to, and shared
characteristics.
By default, SparkToro
orders the accounts,
websites, and podcasts
an audience follows by
the percent of the
audience doing so. In
this example, 25% of
those who talk about
“craft cocktails” are
following or engaging
with Imbibe Magazine’s
social accounts.

24. Compare Audiences
Enter any two audiences and hit
Compare Audiences (you can
also compare different types of
queries, e.g. “frequently talks
about” vs. “describe themselves
as”).

25. The comparison report
shows characteristics and
following behavior of the two
groups, and how they
intersect (or don’t). E.G.
People interested in “craft
cocktails” have very different
online behavior to those who
have “bartender” in their bio
or job title.

26. Profile Search
Search by website or social handle

27. Traffic data (via
Jumpshot), social
followings, commonly
used words, phrases,
and hashtags are all
here. Use this for
competitive intelligence,
industry comparisons,
or analysis of your own
audiences.

28. Example Use Cases

29. Empowering Creators with Glowforge
The Problem
Where can Glowforge do brand marketing, PR,
press outreach, and influencer marketing to
reach people who might buy their machines.
The Solution
Glowforge surveyed their customers and asked
them to describe themselves and why they
bought and used the 3D laser printer.
With those responses in hand, SparkToro can
do an amazing things.

30. Etsy Makers
Perhaps not surprisingly,
many Glowforge customers
sell on Etsy. And lots of them
use the words “visit my Etsy
shop” (or a variation) in their
profile. One SparkToro
search later, Glowforge can
see exactly who those sellers
follow and amplify.

31. Podcasts: A High Opportunity Channel?
An overlap in Glowforge’s customers and those
who follow the “Nation of Makers” campaign,
social account, and events yields a ton of
opportunities for creative marketing, e.g.
sponsoring or being a guest on podcasts like
these (which reach a high percent of potential
Glowforge customers)

32. Making Text.io a Recruiter’s Must-Have
The Problem
Textio offers an amazing API and set of tools to
help make language more inclusive, less biased,
and more effective. One of the key use cases is
for recruiters creating and editing job postings –
the right tweaks can massively boost the number,
quality, and diversity of applicants.
The Solution
Reaching recruiters is hard, especially if you
don’t already know the industry intimately.
Thankfully, SparkToro can show Textio’s
marketing team exactly where this audience is
on the web, what they listen-to, read, follow,
and consume.

33. What Recruiters Visit
Some of these sites are already
known to Textio, but others,
especially the more niche, smaller-
traffic sites, are ripe with opportunity
for advertising, content partnerships,
guest contributions, and links that
could send traffic and boost search
rankings.

34. Once a Campaign Works
If Textio runs a campaign with
Ere.net and finds it effective, more
opportunities are just a search away!

35. Amplifying Great Content to the Right People
The Problem
FreshChalk’s Adam Doppelt put an extraordinary amount
of work into crawling 150,000 small business websites
and extracting numerous, fascinating insights, data
points, and correlations with their performance in Google
Maps & search rankings. Unfortunately, Adam doesn’t
have a good sense for who to reach out to in order to
amplify this exceptional work.
The Solution
Knowing that he’s got a lot of data of interest to SEO
professionals, Adam can search SparkToro to uncover
where that audience engages, who they follow, and
what they’re amplifying so he can effectively target his
own content outreach campaign.

36. Key Amplification Targets Uncovered
A few SparkToro searches later, Adam’s got dozens of high
quality targets that reach exactly the people and
publications he needs. He sends some email introductions,
shares his work, takes the input of these thought leaders,
and has a remarkable launch.

37. Boom!
Adam’s social and email outreach results in coverage and
links from dozens of websites in the local, small-business
marketing world. And when he shares the next part of the
study (on the impact of web hosts), he can repeat the
process!
Screenshots from Moz’s Link Explorer

38. The Competitive Worlds of Skincare & Makeup
The Problem
Glossier’s brand is beloved, but expanding
inorganically to new audiences has massive
costs due to entrenched competition.
The Solution
Using SparkToro, Glossier can uncover
undiscovered, smaller, niche sources of
influence to reach their beauty-focused
audience.

39. Small But Powerful
Glossier’s previously effective
campaigns with sites like WWD and
BusinessofFashion are vastly less
expensive than those with bigger
players like Vogue, Harpers, or
InStyle. Digging into those sites’
audiences can reveal more
opportunities to market smarter than
the competition.

40. Avoid Bad Investments
Too many brands spend big on
partnerships and advertising because
they think it’ll reach the right audience
(but doesn’t). With SparkToro,
Glossier can know, in advance, what
percent of an influencer’s audience
are likely to be a match for them.
E.G. Smaller audiences, but a higher
percent of the people Glossier wants
to reach.
Versus: Bigger audiences that don’t
have the same level of reach to that
group.

41. Finding New Fans of the Theatre
The Problem
Reaching new theatre-goers who’ll make the
trek to Southern Oregon is no easy task. But
the OSF needs to find the next generation of
play and musical fans to continue its
remarkable work.
The Solution
By understanding their existing, passionate
audience on the web, the OSF can identify
hitherto-unknown affinities and use those to
uncover new opportunities to reach a theatre-
likely audience.

42. OSF on the Web
The web audience for OSF
tends to be younger, more
artistic in their careers, and
follows numerous national-
theatre-related accounts.

43. The Usual Suspects
As with many SparkToro
searches, the top results
are relatively obvious (if
you already know the field
well). These sources are
likely expensive to
advertise with, hard to get
into, and (because of NYC-
centric geography) might
not be the best choices. But
what if we scroll down…

44. Something Different
These sources of influence
are unique, and many of them
might offer opportunities for
editorials, press coverage,
guest content, advertising,
sponsorship, or partnerships
that could expose the OSF’s
work to an exciting, new
audience.

45. Social Influence
The social accounts writer/
theatregoers follow is not what
you’d expect… And might reveal
some exciting opportunities for
cross-promotion, amplification, or
partnership (especially given the
OSF’s existing connections)

46. Competitive Intel
By plugging in other regional theatres
in the Northwest, OSF can see where
their followers engage, and consider
advertising and marketing campaigns
to reach them in those places.
E.G. Inviting the writers/critics from
these publications to Ashland for
some shows might be a killer tactic.

47. Access, Pricing, & Feedback

48. How Can You Get Access?
STEP ONE: Visit SparkToro’s “What We’re Building” page and enter your email

49. How Can You Get Access?
STEP TWO: We’ll send you an email
link to take a short survey

50. How Can You Get Access?
STEP THREE: During the beta period (July/August), we’ll ramp up to a few hundred beta test users.
If beta feedback is positive, we’ll likely launch in August or September.
If beta users are less excited, we’ll make the product more robust before launching publicly.

51. Preliminary Pricing (Likely to Change)
Tier Price
# of Searches
per Month
# of Results
per Search
Custom
List Creation
Export
Functions
Free $0 5 3 No N/A
Basic $175/month 100 50 Yes
Up to 50
rows
Premium $250/month 400 All Yes All
Unlimited $500/month
Unlimited
(single account access)
All Yes All
Agency $Variable
Unlimited
(avail to multiple accounts)
All Yes All
7-Day Unlimited
$350/week
(non-recurring)
Unlimited
(single account for one week)
All Yes All
We’re offering a very unusual feature in SaaS pricing: one-time billing for a week of unlimited use. This is because, in our research, we
found many folks only do this type of customer research once per 6 months or year. And it helps agencies with project-based billing, too.

52. We’d LOVE Your Feedback!
Was something in this presentation unclear?
Is there critical information missing?
Do you have use-cases for SparkToro that we haven’t considered?
Or, any broad advice for us about the product, data, or launch?

53. Thank You!
From Casey, Rand, and Family
Please send any feedback
to rand@sparktoro.com