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It happened again.
Some friends of mine sent me yet another screenshot of a so-called "growth hacker" bragging on his LinkedIn profile about all the views he's making.
You might think, "Is that wrong?"
Well, Yeah! Especially because he's also boasting about:
The 'impressions' he got on social media.
His organic traffic.
The PR mentions.
The problem is that I see every day online businesses that get lots of traffic but that are struggling in reality.
That's because views, traffic, and impressions are just one variable in the whole equation.
Same for open rates, and so on.
The problem is that you don't know how much they convert or how much budget they've used to produce those results (because they don't tell you those things.)
For instance, a competitor of mine came out saying that he got 80k/month in organic traffic in a few months for his website.
That sounds great!
But what about:
I could tell you that I made
The truth is one; all those metrics don't matter.
What really matters are the sales you got.
That's because, for a human brain, it's hard to optimize for lots of metrics at the same time.
That's what Phil Knight, Nike's founder, was doing.
When the swoosh brand was just a startup, at the end of the day he was tracking only one metric: Sales.
He could have checked how many new influencers were talking about Nike, but he didn't. Why?
Because at the end of the day, if you don't make more than you've spent, that means nothing.
With the limited attention we all have, every additional metric that you try to optimize will steal YOUR attention for what's truly relevant to you.
And attention, along with time, is one of the most scarce (and thus most precious) resources you have at your disposal.
That's why when I hear bragging about impressions and traffic, it all sounds to me like the childish locker room discussions we all had with friends in 8th grade.
It all sounds like, "My genitalia is longer than yours."
But for those of us who lost virginity, we all learned that the length of our genitalia doesn't matter much.
The same is valid with traffic and views (without conversions.)
Some friends of mine sent me yet another screenshot of a so-called "growth hacker" bragging on his LinkedIn profile about all the views he's making.
You might think, "Is that wrong?"
Well, Yeah! Especially because he's also boasting about:
The 'impressions' he got on social media.
His organic traffic.
The PR mentions.
The problem is that I see every day online businesses that get lots of traffic but that are struggling in reality.
That's because views, traffic, and impressions are just one variable in the whole equation.
Same for open rates, and so on.
The problem is that you don't know how much they convert or how much budget they've used to produce those results (because they don't tell you those things.)
For instance, a competitor of mine came out saying that he got 80k/month in organic traffic in a few months for his website.
That sounds great!
But what about:
- The budget did they invested?
- The starting point of the website (Domain Authority, and so on)?
I could tell you that I made
- 3 million views in the first year on social media for my brands without spending a dime.
- 21k/month organic traffic with a $500/budget (in a few months.)
The truth is one; all those metrics don't matter.
What really matters are the sales you got.
That's because, for a human brain, it's hard to optimize for lots of metrics at the same time.
That's what Phil Knight, Nike's founder, was doing.
When the swoosh brand was just a startup, at the end of the day he was tracking only one metric: Sales.
He could have checked how many new influencers were talking about Nike, but he didn't. Why?
Because at the end of the day, if you don't make more than you've spent, that means nothing.
With the limited attention we all have, every additional metric that you try to optimize will steal YOUR attention for what's truly relevant to you.
And attention, along with time, is one of the most scarce (and thus most precious) resources you have at your disposal.
That's why when I hear bragging about impressions and traffic, it all sounds to me like the childish locker room discussions we all had with friends in 8th grade.
It all sounds like, "My genitalia is longer than yours."
But for those of us who lost virginity, we all learned that the length of our genitalia doesn't matter much.
The same is valid with traffic and views (without conversions.)
- You can have all the traffic in the world (Siffredi like genitalia) but have no dates/no conversions.
- You can have lots of traffic, impressions, and sign-ups (but of low quality) = dating people no one wants to hang out with.
- If you're rich (have a big marketing budget), it's not really growth hacking, you're paying for all that traffic (paying escorts or gold diggers.) If you spend 1 million in ads to make 1.1 million in revenues, you do have a million-dollar business (dating a model), but you're still broke and losing money (she doesn't really love you.)
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