Key Takeaways:
A charismatic founder can accelerate growth, but they aren't a growth strategy.
Founder-led marketing is an advantage, but companies should also invest in building their own audiences, channels, and repeatable growth mechanisms.Going viral doesn't mean reaching everyone. It means reaching beyond your existing audience.
Focus on consistently creating content that resonates with your target audience, with occasional breakout moments that attract relevant adjacent audiences.Paid marketing should amplify what's working, not compensate for what's missing.
Don't rush into paid acquisition expecting immediate revenue. Build organic traction first, then use paid marketing to amplify, test, and learn.SEO and AI search optimization start with the same fundamentals.
The fundamentals of effective content haven't disappeared in the AI-search era. Clear, useful, well-organized, audience-focused content remains the foundation.The best marketing strategy starts where your audience already spends its time.
Don't start by asking what content you should create. Start by understanding your audience, where they spend time, and how you can become part of the conversations they're already having.
Welcome to The Setlist podcast. Today I'm speaking with Amanda Natividad, co-author of Zero Click Marketing and chief evangelist at SparkToro. Enjoy!
What marketing looks like inside a very small startup
Erica (08:15): You wear so many hats at SparkToro, and you've also written Zero Click Marketing, which is coming out. Everyone should get the book. How long have you been with SparkToro? Were you there from the beginning?
Amanda (08:41): Not quite. I joined about a year after SparkToro launched.
Erica (08:48): But it was still very much in startup mode. Would you consider it a startup or small business today?
Amanda (09:02): I would. We're a mature, very small startup, so it's a little bit of both. We're still scrappy, and I think that's part of our culture. Technically, I'm not a full-time employee anymore; I'm a part-time contractor. But my heart is still with SparkToro. It's my team.
All three of us—Rand, Casey, and me—roll up our sleeves and do the work. We're not the kind of people who just decide what should happen and send someone else off to execute. We all contribute to strategy, but we're also doers. Because we each have a lot of experience, I'd say we each operate like a team of three or four people.
Erica (10:30): You might not have been there on day one, but joining a year in is still pretty close to the ground floor. How did you approach marketing when you were building something from the beginning? And has your approach shifted over time?
Amanda (10:52): That's interesting. I haven't thought about it in a long time. I joined in 2021, I think, with the title “marketing architect.” Rand and Casey encouraged me to pick whatever title I wanted and think outside the box. I chose that because I saw the work as helping shape what the team—and potentially other teams—could become.
We were so early-stage that, even though I was hired for marketing, I knew I'd be doing customer service, product work, and some sales-related work, too. Rand and Casey were the co-founders, and I was the only employee. It all felt foundational.
From the beginning, I thought of myself as the marketing and customer success person. Those functions felt closely connected, especially at that stage. I asked myself how I could help build a good customer success function. A lot of my early focus went into turning existing content, and creating new content, into support materials: help articles, FAQs, videos, and better onboarding.
The other thing I kept in mind was that SparkToro had a pretty unique advantage: Rand Fishkin. He'd probably cringe to hear me say it, but he's essentially a godfather of SEO and content marketing. He taught so many of us SEO, even people who don't realize that their understanding of the field traces back to his work. He invented Domain Authority, which became a familiar way for marketers to assess websites.
That meant we had very Rand-led marketing. People discovered the company and the product because they already knew him. That's unusual, and it was a tremendous advantage. But I was also thinking: How do we make this more sustainable? How do we keep the marketing from being too dependent on Rand?
It's something we still struggle with. I'm not saying we solved it. Several years in, it's still difficult because if a post is going to reach more people when Rand publishes it, why wouldn't we have him publish it?
Founder-led marketing versus a sustainable growth loop
Erica (14:37): Do you think a startup needs a charismatic, well-known, or well-networked leader to gain traction?
Amanda (14:58): I don't think you need one. It obviously helps. It's a bit like having generational wealth: having the connections and advantages makes things easier. But what's ultimately more important is an enticing, healthy growth loop.
Here's the downside of being so founder-led. If Rand doesn't post, or if he goes on vacation and actually checks out for a week, our marketing is a little bit on pause. Rand and I talk about this all the time. Our marketing can feel like pushing a boulder in a straight line. We're not pushing it uphill, but we do have to keep pushing. If we stop pushing, the boulder stops.
It works well for us, but it doesn't sustain itself. The most effective kind of business growth happens when you build a growth loop or mechanism that's more like pushing the boulder downhill.
Erica (16:30): What would you do to build that? Let's say Rand didn't exist and SparkToro had been co-founded by someone without that kind of following. What would you have done differently?
The first marketing hires Amanda would make
Amanda (16:40): Let's imagine I had a more traditional marketing budget and enough headcount to hire a couple of people. I'd start by thinking about how to build a foundation of really healthy organic efforts.
My first hire would probably be a really good social media person. Someone who understands the platforms and algorithms, but most importantly, knows how to make resonant, sticky, interesting content.
The content doesn't have to go viral constantly. In fact, expecting that isn't sustainable or reasonable. But I would want someone who knows how to make it happen at least sometimes.
I push back on the idea that social media people don't need to know how to go viral. If you're responsible for social media or top-of-funnel content, and you can never engineer some kind of virality, that's a skill issue. I'm not saying you need to do it every week. But being capable of doing it sometimes signals that you understand how to create content people find genuinely compelling and want to engage with.
Erica (18:49): What does going viral even mean these days? Are we talking about a billion people? How do you define it?
Amanda (18:58): That's a good question, because everyone has a different mental model. Some people think of a million likes. I don't think it needs to be that.
Erica (19:04): If I see a couple hundred likes on a LinkedIn post, I'm thinking, “Hot damn, we're doing good.”
Amanda (19:10): I agree. I don't think we should always use hard numbers, but numbers can give people a benchmark. If you can repeatedly get more than 50 likes, for instance, that's good engagement, especially now. Attention is increasingly scarce. Just getting impressions is harder. We're saturated with content.
You could set a rough numerical benchmark for virality—something like a thousand likes, shares, or reposts—but my actual definition is different. Virality is when something spreads beyond the core audience it was intended for.
You don't always need that. What you do need is consistent engagement with your core audience. If you sell to performance marketers, for example, you should regularly create content that performs well with performance marketers. Every once in a while, though, maybe that content spreads to organic marketers, email marketers, or CEOs. That's what I mean by going viral: breaking out beyond the original group.
Erica (21:06): So reaching adjacent audiences.
Amanda (21:07): Ideally, yes. If you publish something for performance marketers and CEOs or CFOs start engaging with it, perfect. But if some random first-grade teacher sees it and has a strong negative reaction, that's probably not the audience it was meant for. If it gets that kind of response from someone totally outside the intended audience, you may need to think about whether the content was actually a good fit for anyone.
Erica (21:42): I have another question about that social media hire. Would they create content for the company profiles or for individual people at the company?
Amanda (21:53): Ideally, the company profiles. If more people inside the company can become recognizable faces, that's great, too. I love that. But I'd want someone willing to bet on the company channels and grow them.
My expectations for engagement and virality would be lower for a company page than for a personal account. People like engaging with people. That said, if running a company page is your job and the content only gets two likes, you need to ask why it's not working. I'm not expecting thousands of likes on every company post, but there needs to be meaningful engagement. I'd also consider whether a paid budget could boost some of the posts, increase impressions, and help grow the page.
Erica (22:46): Outside of social media, who would you hire next? What's the next play?
Amanda (22:53): I'd love to work with a really good performance marketer again. Organic marketing is my bread and butter, and I do my best work when I have a strong paid-marketing counterpart.
I know how to run Facebook ads. I can do some search ads and PPC. I know enough to ask good questions, push back, and advise on decisions, but it's not my primary area of expertise.
I'd want someone who understands what I do and can play off it. They might look at a successful organic piece and say, “That would make a great paid campaign.” And I could use what we learn from paid campaigns to inform future organic content.
I can't tell you exactly which paid channel I'd invest in without knowing the business and its audience. But that kind of complementary expertise is the second hire I'd want.
When a small business should—and shouldn't—spend on paid ads
Erica (24:04): Do you think paid campaigns should be part of every small business's strategy? At what point do they make sense? A lot of people see ads as a huge expense without much return, and they can hurt a company that doesn't have other pieces in place.
Amanda (24:40): I think paid starts to make sense when you're financially comfortable spending several thousand dollars without needing an immediate return. I don't mean you should be happy to lose a lot of money. I mean you understand that ROI might take time and that you'll need room to figure out what works.
If you hire someone, give them $10,000, and say, “If that doesn't come back into the business in two weeks, you're out,” you probably can't afford that investment yet. You need to be able to tolerate some uncertainty and wait for results.
It also helps if the spending creates other valuable business outcomes. Let's say you spend $1,000 on Facebook ads hoping to drive conversions, but you also use the campaign to A/B test your messaging. Even if the immediate revenue isn't great, you've learned something useful about your copy. That's an additional return on the investment.
The third piece is having some traction already. If you're starting completely from scratch and your LinkedIn page has three followers—two are you and the other is your mom—I wouldn't recommend immediately hiring a paid media person to get you followers. You need to build the basic content foundation and get some organic momentum first.
Maybe you're posting on LinkedIn, you have an Instagram presence, and you're running webinars. A couple of channels are already doing something. That's when you might bring in a performance marketer to amplify those efforts or figure out which ones can scale most efficiently.
Erica (27:27): I like that. And I'd add that even if you have 5,000 LinkedIn followers, you need to look at who those people actually are. Maybe you collected them over years and different jobs, and none of them match your ideal customer profile. In some ways, that's almost like starting from zero.
Amanda (27:58): I agree. That's a really good point.
What startups should prioritize with SEO, AEO, and content
Erica (28:02): So we have social media and paid marketing. Now I want to get into your expertise: content and organic growth. What should startups and small businesses consider when they're creating content, especially around SEO and AEO—optimization for AI search?
Amanda (28:29): If I were starting from the beginning, my first question would be: Is my website accessible? Can Google and other systems crawl it, retrieve its information, and understand it? That's the starting point, and it's relatively easy to evaluate these days, especially with AI tools.
After that, I'd focus on first principles rather than what's working in the algorithm today. Is the website legible? Can people read it easily? Is it clear what the business does and who it's for? Does it provide useful information?
Those are table stakes, but they're important. I wouldn't start by saying, “We need a keyword research strategy today.” Keyword research can be useful, but I'd treat it as a compass rather than the entire strategy.
You should understand the high-volume terms in your niche. Then ask: What's our point of view on those topics? What does our business have to contribute? The answers probably overlap with the foundational content you need for your positioning and marketing anyway.
For a shorter-term win, I'd think about generative engine optimization, or GEO. I'd make sure pages have a strong, focused topic and that they're easy to read and parse. That matters for machines, but it also matters for people.
The way I think about it is that machines are trying to mimic people. People appreciate content that's organized, easy to understand, and clearly focused. So those are sensible principles for both.
But the layer that informs all of this is the audience. Is the content written for the people you actually want to reach? Is it written in a way that makes them care? Are you publishing it on channels they already use? How can you turn one idea into multiple formats and place those ideas wherever your audience spends time online?
Why audience research should inform distribution
Erica (31:47): And how would a company find out where its audience spends time? I'm setting you up here.
Amanda (31:52): Well, have I got a tool for you! You can sign up for an always-free SparkToro account. It lets you run five free reports each month with a limited data set.
You can get a sense of which search engines and AI tools your audience uses, which social networks they're more or less likely to use compared with the average web user, which podcasts they listen to, what keywords they search on Google, and the prompt topics they're using with tools like ChatGPT.
Erica (32:26): I use SparkToro all the time for clients. I'm constantly assessing the data and using it to inform marketing strategies. We're redoing the Fan Club website, and I've been using it for that, too. For a startup, it's an invaluable tool. I'd highly recommend it.
Amanda (32:52): It can also be a fast way to learn how to speak your audience's language. If you're an agency meeting a prospective client, you want to be able to say, “I understand your market. I understand what your audience does online.” You might discover that they spend time on a specific design platform or in particular communities—things that would otherwise take a long time of working in that space to understand.
SparkToro can help you get up to speed and have that level of conversation much faster.
The one marketing bet Amanda would make today
Erica (33:24): There are so many more things we could talk about. You'll have to come back on the podcast. But I want to end with one question.
I think of marketing as a series of bets. We're always testing, iterating, and refining. There's never one golden strategy that we can turn on and then forget about. So if you were starting a business from scratch today, what would be your number-one bet for getting the word out?
Amanda (34:20): I'm more of a B2B marketer, so for me, I'd spend more time on LinkedIn.
Erica (34:34): And I'm assuming that means posting, engaging, networking, finding the right people in your audience, and interacting with them?
Amanda (34:47): All of that. I'd post very intentionally. I might even start by being straightforward: “I'm starting this business. Here's what I do, and here's who it's for. If that sounds like you, send me a message.” That's only a tiny part of the strategy, but sometimes it's worth being direct.
Then I'd spend time actively finding people in my intended audience, people I should network with, and people whose work I want to be adjacent to. I'd engage with their content in earnest: actually read what they're saying, think about where I can add value in the comments, and support their work.
I might even try some LinkedIn ads. When I launched the Zero Click Marketing podcast, I experimented with them a little. I spent around $100. I don't know exactly what the return was, but it was a fun experiment, and I'd consider doing more of that.
Erica (36:01): LinkedIn. I love it. Amanda, it's always fantastic talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm looking forward to reading Zero Click Marketing when my copy arrives.
Amanda (36:12): Thank you for having me. This was so fun.
