The best data source to understand what is popular in B2B media

Marketers struggle with AI reliability and accuracy. Charlie Grinnell is Co-CEO of RightMetric, a strategic research firm specializing in external data intelligence for competitive marketing insights. The discussion covers treating AI as a "frenemy" that requires structured data inputs, building automation workflows through iterative testing, and validating AI outputs by asking it to explain its reasoning process. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Charlie Grinnell, the co-CEO of Right Metric, which equips marketers with external data signals that AI needs for true accuracy. And today Charlie is going to explain what we are getting backwards when it comes to the relationship between marketers and AI. All right, Charlie, I want to move on to our lightning round where I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about marketing and AI and specifically you being like the world's expert in external data sources. I'm going to totally pick your brain about that. Are you ready?

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  Okay, let's fire away.

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  All right, here we go. What is the best data source to understand what's popular in B2B media?

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  So there's no silver bullet, but I like SparkToro because it shows what specific audiences are reading, watching, and listening to. I think that is the gateway for B2B.

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  All right, this is a self-indulgent question because I'm always looking to understand. We produce mostly B2B media for brands.

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  Yeah.

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  And we've got our data sources that we think are useful. A lot of what we're doing is scraping the web, looking at other publications and seeing the topics they're writing about. What is different between SparkToro and some of the other B2B data sources that you like?

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  Yeah, so I think SparkToro does a really good job of aggregating in different data sources. So while there might be a thing out like, you know, this is looking at content. SparkToro is able to pull in podcast listening. It's pulling in content stuff. It's pulling in social channels. It's pulling in creators that, that, you know, over-index in affinities for that audience, et cetera, et cetera. It's pulling in people who identify as a very specific niche job title. And so that level of granularity at scale right now is quite hard to find. And I think the sum of the parts starts to paint a really good picture of where does that audience spend its attention?

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  SparkToro is a wonderful tool. Rand's been a guest on this podcast. It's well-built. It's great data. Give me a deep cut. What else are you using?

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  A deep cut? So we are using SimilarWeb for our web traffic data. Again, it's kind of them or Global Web Index are kind of the two. So it's, you know, do you like Pepsi or do you like Coke? We like SimilarWeb. We think that their, their team is, is really advanced. The stuff that they're building, they're shipping really quickly. Their data is good. From a video perspective, we use Tubular Labs and they kind of have the, you know, they're the de facto lead in, in video intelligence. And Tubular, you know, they were very early and they have full unrestricted API access to all of the social platforms from a video intelligence perspective. And there's a lot of things that you can glean from there. And as video kind of starts to

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  take over the internet and, you know, an extension of the world, that is a very, very powerful data set.

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  When you say video, video. Intelligence, you mean what's happening on YouTube? What's happening on all the platforms?

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  All the social media video platforms. So Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, et cetera. So, yeah. And again, if we think about YouTube being the world's largest streaming platform, like, there's a lot that we can learn from what's actually driving views there, what's being produced over time, you know, what creators are really leading things, who's growing, who's shrinking, et cetera, et cetera.

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  And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Charlie Grinnell, the CEO and co-founder of Rightmetric for joining us. If you'd like to contact Charlie, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile on our show notes or visit martechpod.com. You can also visit his company's website, which is rightmetric.co. Charlie also has a weekly newsletter that tears down the external data world, giving the latest on what's working in marketing, content channels, audience, competitors, a whole bunch of great stuff. Rightmetric.co/newsletter. And if you haven't subscribed yet to this podcast and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube, and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today.

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  But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.