"Those that struggle for traction are always under 40%, while most that gain strong traction exceed 40%. Of course progressing beyond ""early traction"" requires that these users represent a large enough target market to build an interesting business."

"In contrast, the measurement that Sean and Rahul popularized is a leading indicator. It predicts retention."

"I think measuring a business's health is an ever-evolving process and journey. Not a destination."

"It's pretty straightforward. To measure product-market fit, I recommend setting up an always-on measurement."

"Remember, don't stop after that point. You need to measure this as you scale up constantly."

"Increase response rates. Early on in your journey, you'll need to be quite aggressive to get a response from your users."

"Rand's alternative to product-market fit is the Customer Adoption Spectrum (CAS)."

"This visualization says that you have strong product-market fit with group B, and you still have more work to do in the other groups."

"Either you give up on those other groups because group B is big enough for now, or you need to evolve your product positioning/messaging to better attract and convert those other groups."

"While I love this view, there is one specific reason I believe this framework is less potent than the product-market fit methodology. Conversion metrics aren't the end all be all."

"Rand's right that if interpreted as a destination, product-market fit is not well suited to capturing the evolution of businesses. Having said that, I can't entirely agree with Rand's assertion that product-market fit is designed/meant to be interpreted as a destination."

"Our data covers social networks like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and more, illuminating what an audience talks about."

"By following and engaging with the sources of influence that reach your target audience, you can find the content pieces from those publishers that are earning engagement, and pick up the language, styles, authors, subjects, positioning, foci, and more."

"Step 3: Find the Unexecuted-Upon Gaps Where Interest is High, But Competition is Low"

"Topics that earn discussion often earn engagement, and those that earn engagement often earn traffic, subscribers, and search rankings. And that, my friends, is the formula for content marketing success."

"Problems included a lack of buy-in, of use, and in application."

"But perhaps more severe was the disconnect between the goal of a persona (i.e. to take action based on the data in them) vs. the lack of actionable data."

"Everyone is bidding for the same traffic, so breaking through the noise and generating high ROI means you need every advantage you can get."

"Over the last few years, Facebook and Google have both taken away a lot of the data and targeting options, leaving advertisers at the mercy of their infuriatingly-difficult-to-use, in-house ad targeting tools."

"What advertisers need is data about what their target audiences do in online platforms, and SparkToro, thankfully, fits like a glove."

"I’ve received emails and notes from early customers telling us they’ve seen their Facebook and Google (and Twitter) ad accounts earn 2-5X the ROI just from selecting better audiences in the ad builders."

"But all of these existing platforms had a huge missing piece: audience-specific reach."

"But what I always wanted to know was who reached a greater percent of a specific, targeted audience."

"But do they have greater traffic or more reach with the audiences you’re trying to reach?"

"One of the best ways to start is by analyzing your own social account and website against key competitors:"

"Quite possibly the most unexpected of applications for SparkToro’s data has been in the keyword research world, where several clever marketing professionals have started using the tool’s results to outsmart their competition with topics and keyword targets that would otherwise remain invisible."

"Run both the websites and the topics list through an SEO keyword research tool like Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Ahrefs"

"Uncover searched-for words and phrases that wouldn’t otherwise be on your radar (and that your competition is unlikely to ever find if they don’t employ this methodology)"

"A) Keep improving the product for our long-term customers, delivering features and upgrades that make their marketing lives easier"

"B) Attract, mostly through our industry’s sources of influence, both long-term and one-time customers."

"Many will use and get value from the product, then quit after a month or two… but… come back again when they need an audience research problem solved (even if that’s 2, 3, or 5 years away)"

"Most surprising to long-time followers of my work (i.e. my previous startup, Moz) is the complete lack of SEO."

"As you can see, we get a whole lot of folks coming “direct” to SparkToro. Most of that (we think) is a combination of dark social and dark email (i.e. folks who click links in social & email apps)."

"Our very popular, monthly Office Hours, a live webinar series. Each event has between 500 and 1,400 attendees, and garners rave reviews"

"Our bi-monthly Audience Research Newsletter run by Amanda that has more than 50,000 subscribers"

"Product-focused blog posts, tweets, LinkedIn posts, presentations, and more"

"For now, the biggest lesson is that ~2/3rds of marketers who try an online tool will rely on their prior experiences and pre-conceived notions vs. reading copy."

"First: Audience Tracking Over Time"

"Second: Coverage of German and Spanish Language Profiles"

"One of my biggest missions in life these days is to prove to other investors and other entrepreneurs that our structure is worthy of consideration by many of those who currently pursue VC or decide to entirely bootstrap."

"Keep costs very low, potentially hurting our possibly growth rate, to maximize profit"

"With the exception of three salaries, healthcare, and AWS cloud charges, SparkToro costs almost nothing to run. Gross margins exceed 85%, and we think may get as high as 95%+ over time."