How Does Attention Affect Revenue? Real Data Findings

So you have one here that says, attention doesn't move sales or other brand outcomes, studies find. This is from Ad Age.

Yeah, so, you know, the study was pretty much being that just because you get tons of attention, like on social media followers, you can get all the attention in the world for your brand, it doesn't mean that you're going to generate any revenue. And the example we gave earlier, this doesn't mean exploding topics went this way, but Someone broke down the SEO case study on how they released a lot of stats and data, built a ton of links, and grew their traffic from it. That's another form of attention. More attention doesn't necessarily directly correlate with more revenue. And we're not saying Exploding Topics was exactly that way. I think Brian did well overall, and he's a really smart entrepreneur and a marketer. But what people believe is, oh, I'm going to get all these followers. Oh, I'm going to— this campaign's going to go viral. And it does very little for a revenue standpoint. And Eric can actually share data on this. He's had a lot of viral clips. One of them was Your Rich BFF. And she talked about how you need to switch your job every 3 years.

Yeah. Right.

And she's like, if you don't switch your job every 3 years, you're missing out. Yeah. And that got what, millions of views?

That got like 3 million views. And then there's one I did that got 7 million views where we talked about the Loro Piana store in Italy.

Yeah, where Eric talked about how you can buy designer clothes like Louis Vuitton for pennies on the dollar, brand new, not used.

Yeah.

At this place called The Mall.

The Mall.

The Mall.it.

Yeah, The Mall.it. Neil even had the— Neil even called them.

Yeah, and I didn't like it.

Yeah, it was not ideal.

It was like all out of season stuff. And you can't pick what's on the website. I'm like, oh, this is too much work. I think it's great if you're going to go down there yourself and view it. But what else did you have that went viral? You had a lot of stuff that went viral.

Yeah, there's a handful that got a couple million views this year. There's like another one where our Shake Shack talking about, oh, like, you know, that was a funny interaction. But that's not gonna drive it. That got like 2 or 3 million views on it where we talked about the— you can buy the Shake Shack, you get a free chicken sandwich. And like, oh, I'm gonna get this.

Oh yeah, I didn't get the free chicken sandwich.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Yeah.

All right. So, and from all those combined, easily 10+ million views. A lot of attention. How much revenue did they generate you when you combine them all?

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How much revenue did they generate you when you combine them all?

Zero. So I might have gotten a text from— I got a text from like 4, um, 4 kind of marketing executives. They're just like, saw your stuff, good job. So pat on the back, right? That's about it.

But you got way more than 4 texts in total. Those are just from marketing executives.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got more texts than that. But and then like, you know, I went to like a YPO dinner and things like, oh my God, I see your reels, right? All the spouses are like, I see your reels. That's cool and all. And then remember the guy you met, Taejoon, the agency guy in New York, the Asian guy at HubSpot? Okay. So he walked up to me and said, I watch your stuff. So I think that was from one of the reels, right? So that's how that relationship happened. So as of right now, it's a donut.

It's a zero.

Yeah.

In other words, getting attention, if it's not the right type of attention, it can make you famous, but it doesn't necessarily drive you more revenue. And if you look at Eric's content now, he does not push out stuff like quit your job in 3 days because it doesn't drive revenue.

So my strategy has changed. If you want me to talk about that, like the strategy has changed where like, sure, I was doing all these interviews, it was cool, but it didn't feel right because what was happening was, and I love interviewing people because I love learning from them, but it puts them on a pedestal. It doesn't necessarily help my business, right? So what happens now is instead of me interviewing people, 80% of the time, I'm just focusing on me talking about business and I'm getting comments from people, right? It's not getting as many views, but people are like, oh, this is so helpful.

This is so valuable, right?

I'm just focusing on marketing and business. That's it. And then 20% of the time, we have Seth Godin coming on this podcast, right? Like, we'll do some of these interviews, right? But I'm only going to do it with business people. I'm only going to talk about business topics. I'm not going to talk about dating anymore. I'm not going to talk about finance. I'm not going to talk about this and that. I'm just going to focus in on business and marketing. And that's where it makes the most sense for me. Because sure, the dating guy, by the way, Dr. Orion Taraban, he is so well-spoken. One video got like 400,000 views, long form, which is a lot, right? The other one got like 150,000 or 160,000 so far. It's a lot. But you know what? It's not my customers. The people in the comments, they're fighting each other. It's men versus women, on and on and on and on, right? And I'm just like, it's cool, but it doesn't help with business.

Doesn't help one bit. And with Eric focusing on interviewing entrepreneurs and marketers, and they're talking about only business advice or marketing advice, sure, he's still quote unquote putting up on a pedestal and is elevating their brand. But at the same time, he's building relationships and those relationships are in his space and it can cause more revenue.

By the way, you know, that's what I did 11 years ago when I started the Leveling Up podcast. All I did was I interviewed business people and marketing, right? And then that actually led to business, right? So, I was doing that way before, like, that was before Tim Ferriss even had a podcast. If you have something working, here's the lesson, you should continue doing it, right? Because if I continue to— by the way, that was before the 20 VC podcast. I could have gone in that direction too if I wanted to, right? Because I was talking to VCs at the time too.

Yeah.

It could have gone in any direction. But the lesson here again with business is you have to stay consistent, right? And so now I'm like, Back to what I was doing before, which is kind of ironic, right? But it's, that's why when Neil says it takes 10 years to build something, I'm like, it takes 10 years of focused work to get there. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. If you don't focus, everyone always asks, how long does it take to build a personal brand? Long time.

Okay.

How many days do I need to be consistent with posting content? And I'm like, every day.

Yep.

It doesn't work.

It's like working out. You got to pay rent every day.

Yes. It's like, oh, I worked out for a year and then I stopped for 6 months. Well, yeah, all your results went away.

You got to start from scratch all over again.

That's why you got to keep doing it and you can't stop or it just does not work.

All right. So, I'm going to continue on here. So, you have one over here on marketing is no longer a regional game, it's a global-first game. See, I don't want Neil to look at his phone so I'm just picking from the iPad because I think it's rude to you guys. So anyway, go ahead.

I'm coming back from an event in Dubai and when I was there, Dubai really has It really is a melting pot of people from all these different countries. Like people say that about the US, but not really. Like Dubai is really like a melting pot of people from like the most random countries that you can think of, right?

Yeah.

As well as the major countries you can think of as well. And they're all coming there. It's a hub. They're all learning how to, you know, I was at an event where they're teaching about entrepreneurship and marketing and people are trying to figure out how to grow. And I remember when I got started out as an entrepreneur, Businesses were always like, okay, I'm going to, you know, with me, I'm going to raise money, I'm going to go create an analytics company, and I'm going to go sell into corporations.

You?

That was me back in the day. And you're talking about, I've been an entrepreneur for 23, 24 years now. So when I first got started, raised money, you're like, okay, what are the big companies in San Francisco or in New York that I can get meetings with and sell to? Nowadays, when businesses are started, especially with entrepreneurs, and this wasn't the case 24 years ago, People are trying to figure out how they can scale globally from day one. And they may not go after every single country or region, but they're trying to get customers from everywhere, or anywhere that they can, that'll pay them money. And that wasn't the case when you and I first started, right? Even when you started Single Grain, it was—

I never started it.

That's true.

Your cousin did.

When you bought Single Grain and you took it over, your focus was just, hey, US, and specifically, you were actually Getting a lot of customers from San Francisco. And you're like, oh, let me go after the startup ecosystem. Now you get customers from wherever they are in the world, as long as it makes you money and it makes them money.

The world's catching up, right? Because remember, maybe like 13, 14 years ago, we started working on Elance. We started hiring people on Elance, right? The quality— the talent wasn't quite there. But then when you hire people offshore now, the talent's catching up very quickly. So my point of saying all this is that the world is catching up. And then people are doing more commerce with each other. And that makes a lot of sense. So I— and by the way, me being in— you were just in Dubai. I was, I was just in Thailand. I was just in Japan. And Japan has its own way of doing things, but they certainly like, they're up there. You know what I mean? I think they're the 3rd largest economy in the world. Um, I believe they're the 3rd largest.

They're either 3rd or 4th.

Yeah, something like that.

I know the big ones are US, then China, and then the next 3 are— and I don't know the order— Japan, India, and Germany.

Yeah. And so I guess the question is, how do we make this actionable for people?

Whether it's your SEO or whether it is your website, you got to use hreflang so you can let search engines and browsers know what pages are for what people in different languages in different regions. You got to translate and transcribe. You can have ChatGPT help you and then have a human go in there and modify it just to make sure it's relevant for that region.

Dude, you know what I did in Japan?

What?

I pulled out ChatGPT and I said, hey, when you hear me speaking, when you hear English, translate to Japanese. And when you hear Japanese, translate to English. And we had a full-on conversation and just kept going back and forth. So it works really well for that.

That's cool.

Yeah. Sorry, go continue.

And did it do it in voice?

Yeah, it did it in voice.

That's cool.

Yeah. So you can do it in any world now.

Yeah.

Any world, any country.

So you would speak and they would translate to Japanese in voice right then and there for the other person? Yep.

Yep. So it was just going back and forth. It's, um, it's, it's not as quick as it could be right now, but it was quick enough. And then, um, cause we were in line, right? So my friend David wanted to buy a new Rimowa bag and we're in line at Rimowa. He's like, why do we have to wait in line? Right? Da da da. And so I asked her in Japanese, like, why do we have to wait in line? Right? And then I was like, he wants to just buy that one over there. Can he do that? She's like, no, he has to wait in line. And then, but, um, you know, you're going to go upstairs and you'll find a nice one.

That was it.

And then I said, I said, and I said, thank you.

Yeah. And then the other thing you have to think about is like, if you have a physical product, where are you going to end up getting it produced? For example, I have a buddy who owns a company called Legion Athletics. They sell protein powder.

Yeah.

You can't take protein powder built in the United States, forget food regulations and all that kind of stuff. But you can't just randomly go to like Japan or Australia and be like, okay, we're gonna make the product here in the US, ship it over there, and then sell it there. Well, you just paid an arm and a leg for shipping. And the currency exchange in Australia is way lower. Ideally, you want to figure out how to make it in Australia and sell it right then and there because you'll save quite a bit of money on the shipping costs. That would just kill your profit.

Right. As a side note, by the way, of Legion Athletics, the protein bar, I think you recommended the peanut butter jelly.

It's great. Not peanut butter jelly though. I do the chocolate peanut butter cup.

Oh, I did the peanut butter jelly bar.

It's great. Oh yeah, you got to try the other one.

Okay, fine.

And then warm it up in the microwave for like, no joke, 7 to 8 seconds. Most delicious bar you ever taste. That's a protein bar? Yeah. But even if you don't warm it up in the microwave, it tastes delicious. But when you have a moment and you warm it up for like 7, 8 seconds or 10 seconds, dude, it straight up tastes like candy.

All right. All right. Fine. I'll do it. I'll do it. I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host's agency. So NP Digital. Neil Patel Digital. What they do is they do a whole host of marketing services and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you could just go to mpdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. So did you see that there is— by the way, this I got from the mastermind. This is from the guy that had 7, 8 businesses. Have you heard of parasite partnerships before?

No, but before you go on to parasite partnerships, let me guess, the person has 7, 8 businesses is proud how they have 7, 8 businesses and they're doing well.

Yes. And that used to be me back in the day, you know, but it's— I'm telling you, you go to the experienced entrepreneur, they're just like, yep, done that before. That's not the way to go. And I think he's realized that now.

Better, better.

And I don't think he's late. He's in his mid-20s. But anyway, so you know what parasite SEO is, right? Yeah, let's explain it. So parasite SEO for— let's use Forbes. So Forbes has a very strong domain authority. So their website's very strong. And so for them, whatever they tend to publish, right, tends to rank well. And so they actually have a company that partnered with them and started creating all these affiliate pages, right? That's an example of parasite SEO. They're leveraging their domain authority to rank for things like credit cards, or insurance, all these like high-paying affiliate type keywords, and they get paid a lot of money, they make a lot of money. I forgot how much it is per month. Do you remember?

I think it was $400 million a year, but they got whacked.

Yeah, they got whacked. So after Lars wrote that piece, they got whacked, right? And I don't think he was trying to whack them. But that's— that tends to be what happens when someone gets exposed. So anyway, parasite partnerships is what this guy does with the 7 businesses. And he'll just reach out to people with high domain authority and say, hey, like, we'll do the same thing we did for Forbes, but we'll do it for you. And they'll just put it on like a subdomain I believe, and then they can maybe take it away if they want. And so I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting. So a lot of people in the affiliate space, they do parasite partnerships where they just try to find high domain authority websites and do that. And so I think this might work for a little longer. I think it's not a long-term play, but it's an interesting way to partner up with people to say, hey, I can get the same result I got for Forbes and get it for you, right? It's an interesting angle. Like, that's not something we would do today, but I wanted to throw it out there.

Yeah. So I'm a little bit confused on the difference between parasite SEO and parasite partnerships. Are they pretty much doing the same thing as parasite SEO?

Yeah, but parasite SEO is like, maybe you're just— it's parasite partnerships, you're specifically going out there to seek partnerships to do parasite SEO.

That's what it is. Got it.

Yeah.

So it is parasite SEO, but they're first doing the partnership.

Yes.

To replicate the Forbes playbook.

Yes. That's what it is. So I like— I thought that was interesting. I was like, I haven't heard of it that way before. So we wanted to throw it out into the ether. But I don't think it's a long-term play. What do you think?

I don't think it's a long-term play. I don't know how the Forbes deal was set up, but a lot of these deals are set up in which they're just paying the host, right? Host being Forbes, and they just get money on an annual basis. A lot of them are not set up on a rev-share deal.

Yeah. By the way, since we're talking about SEO, I want to talk about Exploding Topics unfair 24,330 backlink play. So it says Brian Dean just sold his SaaS company Exploding Topics to Semrush. The secret growth strategy? Linkable assets at scale. Like, I don't know about that. But let's, let's continue on here. This is written by Mark Webster. So he says, here's the genius strategy. Create 555+ statistics posts. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Statistics posts tend to do well, like trends do really well as well, right? So for example, he has AI stats, 766, 767 referring domains, Gen Z stats, 228 referring domains. Okay, number 2, leverage his business positioning. His niche is trends, he can create stats on any topic relevantly. Okay, I mean, that's like a form of programmatic SEO. Number 3, there's, there's Neil's about to fall asleep. Number 3, replicate past success. Brian's previous wins at his previous business, Backlinko. Google CTR stats, 6.2K referring domains. Email marketing stats, 750 referring domains. 4, build a link earning machine. It's almost like he designed exploding topics to passively earn thousands of backlinks. And so look, at the end of the day, he just means create stats type posts or trends type posts, and those tend to get a lot of links. I find that to be true, probably same thing for you.

Yeah.

And so I wouldn't say that's the reason they got acquired. I think it was helpful, but I don't think it was the reason they got acquired.

No, and a lot of those pages drive traffic. They do not drive as much revenue as one may think. So growing your website's traffic for let's say a SaaS app, which is what Exploding Topics is, and let's say he grows from 100,000 visits a month to a million, I'm just making it up, and he's 10x his traffic. His revenue is not going to 10x. He'll be lucky if his revenue doubles from that. He may see a 5, 10% lift in revenue, but Getting more people to type in, you know, trend software analysis, or I'm making up a keyword here that's probably not the best keyword, but anything related to what his software sells, that is going to generate way more revenue even if you're getting way less traffic.

And to be fair, we're not poo-pooing on— like, this strategy is good. It helped with his domain rating, which helped him get more users at the end of the day. Like, it's a good thing for him, right? But just understand that this is a marketing play to get more attention. It's not necessarily going to help you drive more revenue out the gate.

So yeah, and Brian's smart and he knows that doing this isn't going to necessarily drive you, you know, more revenue on the same type of traffic that you're getting to your homepage, but it's getting you more brand visibility, getting more links, and it's causing your homepage and the rest of the site to rank higher for your money terms, which then helps him generate more revenue indirectly.

So that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and go to school.io/agency if you want to learn more about the Agency Owners Association, and we will see you later. In fact, you know, I'll tell you what, Neil and I will be recording in Germany. I didn't even tell him this yet. We will be recording in Germany. I found a podcast studio, so, you know, that's another way you can make the most of your trips. So yeah, bye.