VP Marketing at SparkToro | Can keep hydrangeas alive in a vase for 10 days

I'm currently VP Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. I also co-host the Meme Team podcast, where Sonia Baschez and I discuss the marketing logic behind viral moments.

I've spoken at conferences like AdWorld, MozCon, and SaaStock. I've guest lectured at Columbia Business School, Cornell University, Stanford University, and University of Washington. In my spare time, I teach Content Marketing 201 which I host on Maven. I'm also a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist.

Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of my profile to see the top 100 lists that I am not in.

Perhaps this is a sign of the times...

Last year, I was getting a lot of requests from hiring managers looking for full-time employees. Lately, many of those requests have dried up, but I'm starting to get asks for freelance individuals.

You know what that means: TIME FOR A SHINY NEW FORM.

Hit me up if...

🖐 ...you are a freelancer looking for opportunities.
🤝 ...you are a potential hiring manager.

I'm building a rolodex of all kinds of freelancers — web designers, graphic designers, programmers, marketers, and more. I only do double-opt-in intros, and I love seeing good people win.

But you know what LinkedIn does with links. 😏 

**EDIT**

It's getting too hard to follow-up with people directly, so here's the form: https://lnkd.in/dz2u8ZmF

Feel free to share this with friends too!

Amanda Natividad

I'm currently VP Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. I've spoken at conferences like AdWorld, MozCon, and SaaStock. I've guest lectured at Columbia Business School, Cornell University, Stanford University, and University of Washington. In my spare time, I teach Content Marketing 201 which I host on Maven. I'm also a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist.

Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of my profile to see the top 100 lists that I am not in.

VP Marketing at SparkToro | Originator of "Zero-Click Content"

If you need something uncontroversial to discuss with your relatives at Thanksgiving dinner... you could always talk about B2B sales.

Search visibility isn’t just about keywords anymore. It’s about credibility.

Here are the 3 levers modern marketers need:

- Content: Create reference-worthy insights (like on your blog).
- PR: Earn citations from trusted domains and creators.
- Authority & credibility: Get mentioned in the right context (podcasts, articles, newsletters).

When ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity summarize an answer they don’t just reward who ranked highest on Google. They reward who’s been cited, mentioned, and trusted across the web, which means...

Content creates the reference-worthy material AI tools quote.

PR earns you those citations in third-party articles and expert pieces.

Credibility compounds over time when the same names keep showing up in trusted contexts.

If you want to future-proof visibility, you need a strategy that blends:

- Audience research (who your people already trust)
- Content marketing (what they find useful)
- PR & outreach (where your name appears)

That’s the new influence stack — and it’s how you’ll stay visible when clicks disappear.

PING! You ship that super interesting, well-written blog post. People love it. Traffic spikes, comments roll in… then things start to settle down.

PING! You fire off a hot take on LinkedIn. Debate flares up in the comments, your audience piles in… and then that, too, starts to cool.

PING! Your newsletter hits inboxes. Your favorite subscribers reply, you get a fresh wave of attention… until the noise dies down again. But before things calm down a little too much, you have to think about the next campaign to keep people engaged.

That’s marketing today. It’s a pinball machine — and you’re on the flippers, keeping the ball in play and sending it screaming back up the slanted playfield.

(Yes, it's exhausting.)

If you want to dig into what that really means for your marketing strategy, watch Rand Fishkin’s latest 5-Minute Whiteboard over on the SparkToro blog.

Good news: you don’t need a 40-page audience research deck to pick your next content channel.

You can "guess and test" your way there. Here are two paths marketers can take:

1) Use tools (like SparkToro) to see where your audience actually hangs out

2) Or, when you don’t have budget/access, run a thoughtful guess-and-test experiment instead.

What “guess and test” looks like in practice:

Step 1: Make a reasonable guess.
In B2B, assuming your audience is on LinkedIn is usually a safe starting point.

Step 2: Start tiny.
Record a short, limited-series podcast in a meeting room. Spin up a short LinkedIn series. Run a scrappy webinar. Nothing that needs a studio or a 3-month plan.

Step 3: Watch for directional signals.
Are the right people engaging? Do guests/partners share it? Is sales hearing “I saw your post/podcast…” on calls?

Step 4: Decide.
If you see traction, then invest more deeply. If you don’t, kill it without guilt and try a different format or channel.

Your job isn’t to be perfectly right upfront. Your job is to learn quickly enough that you know where to be excellent. (Of course... a tool like SparkToro can help you do all this a heckuva lot faster. 🙃)

I recently joined Dreamdata's Attributed podcast where we got into how Dreamdata did exactly this with their podcast and other “un-attributable” stunts that still clearly moved the needle. Link below.

*taps mic*

This is the space where we do borderline-cringe life updates, right? Oh good, I came to the right place.

This is the first year I can honestly say:

I’m not burned out from obligations. I’m burned out from wanting to do everything.

In 2025, I:

- co-hosted and then stepped back from a podcast
- finished a book after stalling at 85%
- helped ship product and a conference
- volunteered at school
- tried to be "on" for my family and work at the same time.

On paper, that’s doing the most. In reality, it’s also what made me ask, almost daily: Do I actually want to be doing this?

I wrote a year-end reflection about turning 40, loving all the things, and realizing that 2026 has to be about doing less, while still doing a lot.

If you’ve ever burned out from the things you chose, not what was forced on you, this might resonate.

Your favorite food & drink gift guide is back! Steal this gift idea for your significant other...

Buy the Hot Ones 10-pack and plan a date night in. Make plain chicken wings (or order them from your fave local restaurant!), and get the water and milk ready. Most importantly, you and your partner each come up with 10 questions to ask each other. 

Then try to answer through dabs of hot sauce and tears during Da Bomb.

We have a bunch of other delicious ideas from small and local shops you (likely) haven't heard of yet. 

Plus, we even have a gift idea for someone you hate. 😂

I was chatting on Meme Team about Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and I keep coming back to this:

The headline isn’t just record-ish spend. It’s how we’re making spending feel painless.

Adobe’s latest numbers show Cyber Monday hit about $14.25 billion online and Black Friday about $11.8 billion, both up YoY. The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to surpass $1 trillion — yes, TRILLION — for the first time in 2025. 

But the behavioral story also reveals two things:

1) Mobile dominance: Purchases done on phones now make up more than half of online sales.

2) Buy Now, Pay Later everywhere: Millions of Americans use BNPL plans, and 41% of them made at least one late payment in 2025, according to Lending Tree.

This is frictionless checkout + “future me will deal with it” financing.

And it’s happening while the average U.S. credit score has slipped to ~715 in 2025, the fastest annual drop since the post-2008 era.

Marketing takeaway:
If your growth strategy relies on impulse alone, you’re riding a risky wave. The winners will be the brands that pair convenience with trust: transparent pricing, smarter bundles, easier returns, and messaging that helps people feel good about the purchase after the dopamine fades.

Anyway, more on the latest Meme Team podcast. Full segment below.

taplio

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