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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAfter calling out Adam Robinson, CEO of RB2B, on LinkedIn, Clark Barron agreed to debate him<\/a> this week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, Robinson has mastered this form of marketing – conflict, drama, intrigue. He has also called out 6Sense and posted cease and desist letters.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNice post!\u201d comments have turned into the popcorn emoji. It\u2019s wildly entertaining. But does it work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The short answer, in this case, is \u201cyes, it works.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems like Adam Robinson is doing it perfectly, and his target audience is probably all LinkedIn junkies like you and me who could be potential users of his product, which is a good product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, his numbers are growing like crazy, hitting $2M ARR like 6 weeks after hitting $1M ARR.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n How much of that is due to LinkedIn feuds, and how much due to the unique value of his product? Who knows, but I think we can safely assume some of the attention he\u2019s garnering here is being siphoned into actual user and revenue growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything that follows in this essay will debunk the idea that attention for attention\u2019s sake is valuable, but I wanted to highlight an example that actually does work and why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Robinson, first off, is very good at this. He\u2019s a great copywriter, understands LinkedIn as a platform and the audience there. He\u2019s also reaching highly relevant audiences. His product is also always front and center in the conversation, unlike other creators who speak more broadly about marketing or business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This means that attention, when combined with relevance (both audience and product alignment), translates into business outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, so good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, mere attention doesn\u2019t mean much. Just because someone knows about you doesn\u2019t mean they will purchase from you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is obvious to anyone who does SEO \u201cthe right way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve talked before about the \u201ctraffic trap,\u201d<\/a> where you drive a bunch of traffic with TOFU content that doesn\u2019t drive business value (no matter which generous attribution model you use), and because you\u2019ve driven traffic, growing that traffic becomes the goal and primary incentive to the degradation of your revenue strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This may sound like a strawman argument. Surely, you\u2019d think, marketers would use critical thinking and instead of just growing the traffic line, they\u2019d ask, \u201cis this content relevant to my target audience?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you underestimate the power of incentives, which form the crux<\/a> of nearly all human decision making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen it at companies I\u2019ve worked at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was at CXL (many years ago), like half of our organic traffic came from a post targeting the keyword \u201cvalue proposition.\u201d I imagine a significant portion of searchers were college students studying for a test, because it certainly didn\u2019t convert in any meaningful way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I literally just got off the phone with a friend who told me this is what happened at the very large company he joined. Two old blog posts drove the vast majority of traffic, barely contributing to the business, yet because they held such power, holding their SERP position became a critical priority for the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oof. Opportunity cost<\/a>, meet sunk cost fallacy.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It takes courage to alter your path at this juncture. Gaetano just did this with a client<\/a> heavily reliant on glossary pages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s the harm in keeping these pages?\u201d Even if they don\u2019t drive conversions, some traffic is better than no traffic, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n No, because traffic growth is proximate<\/a> and revenue growth lags, and it\u2019s much easier to set your goals on proximate metrics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And eventually, this company gets tired of content & SEO teams reporting on increasing traffic and then they fill out our lead form<\/a> with the context, \u201cwe\u2019re growing traffic but not growing leads, can you help us?\u201d And then we have to tell them to prune their pages, adjust their organic strategy, and essentially, change their philosophy regarding the utility of content. Which is great for us, I suppose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, so assuming you\u2019re with me regarding SEO, surely social media reach has to be looked at differently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To an extent, yes. Because your audience targeting is mediated by an algorithm, you can only guess at the relevance of the content (whereas you can do a ton of research and analysis before producing any SEO-focused content). <\/p>\n\n\n\n But still, it\u2019s not clear that attention alone results in business value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This post from James Zayner explores this in relation to content creators versus the brands they represent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For what it\u2019s worth, I think HockeyStack\u2019s product marketing is pretty clear, though I actually haven\u2019t seen any of their media \/ creator initiatives (only their UGC dashboard templates<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the foundational point is true. Which is, as Seth Godin put it in Purple Cow,<\/a> \u201cKmart has plenty of awareness \u2013 so what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re just going to have to believe me when I tell you the successful people I personally know are pretty much invisible online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ryan Holiday, in Ego Is the Enemy<\/a>, observed the same:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost successful people are people you\u2019ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n All press is good press<\/a> if you\u2019re P.T. Barnum, but for the rest of us, the quality of attention matters more than the quantity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I could probably get a lot of attention by screaming and flailing wildly in a bar, but it\u2019s not going to get me a date. Instead, I\u2019ll certainly attract the attention of a bounce who will promptly remove me from the premises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So valence and the quality of attention or press matters. For me, and anyone in B2B marketing, it comes down to<\/a> reach (attention) plus three additional factors: targeting, timing, and trust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You want to target decision makers, building trust with them so that when they\u2019re in-market and ready to buy, they think of you and trust that you have the right solution for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have a podcast. We interview smart people and do Kitchen Side episodes where we three co-founders talk about SEO and growth issues of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The audience is small, but we\u2019ve acquired many clients directly from the show as well as heard it mentioned in the majority of interviews with employee candidates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I could, theoretically, grow my reach a ton, if say I (hypothetically) recorded an episode extremely drunk and said a bunch of outlandish stuff and personally insulted a bunch of thought leaders and companies in our industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most likely, I could even get more of my target audience (say CMOs) to listen to this particular episode. But I wouldn\u2019t want them to. I\u2019d pay them not to listen to it, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s easy to say \u201cB2B marketing should be more fun\u201d and many people do say this, and many B2B brands, especially the prosumer ones like Mailchimp and Jasper and startups trying to differentiate themselves, should be more fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But fundamentally, B2B marketing is boring because decision making at the enterprise is primarily based on risk aversion. I\u2019m not saying this is right or wrong. It\u2019s just the way the world is, and that\u2019s why B2B marketing isn\u2019t edgy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which, by the way, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not \u201cfun\u201d in its own way. Entertainment is a broad spectrum, and if you don\u2019t happen to like documentaries (Python tutorials), it doesn\u2019t mean that all content should resemble reality TV or game shows. Horses for courses! Sometimes I just want a tutorial telling me how to write an email sequence, not a narrative exposition brimming with personality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The great Gary V once wrote<\/a>, \u201cnumbers don\u2019t matter, influence does.\u201d Which is really obvious and the entire thesis of the essay summed up in a sentence. You have to first reach people to persuade them, but if you only reach them without resonating, it does zero for your business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It reminds me of a tangent Finn McKenty went on in our last podcast<\/a> talking about how he hates YouTube Shorts<\/a>, primarily because they drive views but have zero stickiness. People consume them in a zombified state, barely aware of whom they\u2019re watching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversely, visibility does matter. If you\u2019re not visible, you\u2019re simply not considered for opportunities (whether you\u2019re selling a product or service, or just trying to grow your own career). That’s the whole point of my Surround Sound SEO concept<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That, however, does not mean that you need to play the same game that everyone else plays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can find customers in many places. Most of them are still actually unsexy places like Google search, direct mail, and outbound calls and emails, despite the constant \u201cWorld Has Changed\u201d narrative in MarTech<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve done deals on the pickleball court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you have to be on LinkedIn or [insert channel here] to be successful? <\/p>\n\n\n\n No. Of course not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I know a 1,000 person agency with essentially zero active LinkedIn posters, and I know a $1M agency whose entire team is active and collectively has 100s of thousands of followers. That\u2019s not to say either is right or wrong, or that the smaller agency won\u2019t grow into a bigger agency. It\u2019s just that they\u2019re different and both can work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All things equal, attention is better than no attention. So on the margin, this 1,000 person agency would benefit from having a LinkedIn presence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But clearly they\u2019re also fine without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know another successful agency that does $25M in annual revenue after only like 6 years in business. The secret? The CEO knows all the Fortune 500 CIOs and sells directly to them, in person usually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is still attention, but in my opinion, the right kind of attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this reminds me of an essay I wrote a few years ago about brand awareness.<\/a> It\u2019s one of my favorite essays I\u2019ve written because I got to dive deep on another vacuous term everyone used without defining it. Here\u2019s a quote from the piece:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho gives a shit if lots of people are talking about you on social media if you\u2019re not selling products? <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the question here is, do you want to be rich or do you want to be famous? If you want to run a business, measure business metrics. If you want to be an influencer, measure your social media mentions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Attention isn\u2019t money. Money is money.<\/a> (Yes, I did write an entire essay inspired by a “Bored Elon Musk” tweet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In summary, attention matters but it\u2019s a terrible distal goal. In business, attention is a means to an end, not the end itself, and should be couched in audience and product relevance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want more insights like this? Subscribe to our <\/a>Field <\/a>Notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It struck me the other day that we may now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,184],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-content-strategy","8":"category-field-notes"},"yoast_head":"\nAttention vs Intention: Do Pageviews Drive Pipeline?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAll Press is Good Press?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a reason B2B marketing is \u201cboring\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Influence > Fame <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Attention is attention. Money is money. <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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