β Expect a quick email when new episodes are released every other Wednesday π
Together with HockeyStack
How I connect TOFU marketing to activity to revenue at Gong and Clari.
I've spent years explaining to my CEO and executives how content marketing drives the business forward. β AKA answering: How does LinkedIn/podcast/etc impact revenue?? β βTo make that easier for you, I partnered with Hockeystack to create my TOFU dashboard. β It helps founders, marketers, and content strategists: β > Track engagement and potential leads across critical channels > Better allocate resources and maximize ROI from marketing investments > Prove the value of investing in social, podcasts, newsletters, and search β βCheck out the dashboard here.
If you were anywhere near social media, you saw it: 50 influencers simultaneously sharing Notion avatar profile pics causing a true LinkedIn feed takeover. β And good lawd did people have feelings about it π β After scrolling through approximately 1,739 hot takes, three things became crystal clear: β 1) Most people don't understand brand marketing... at all
2) Folks are confusing "I don't like it" with "this is bad marketing."
3) There's LOTS of speculation on the $$ for influencer campaigns β To be clear, I'm biased. I participated because
-I use and like Notion -I think the campaign is cool -I wanna have more fun on LinkedIn this year β (Oh and to be clear, Notion did NOT pay me for this breakdown. Just too good to pass up.) β βAs Brendan Hufford put it...β β People on LinkedIn: B2B doesn't have to be boring!!! β Notion: Here are some fun avatars you can makβ β People: NO, NOT LIKE THAT.
β Pure comedy. β Today Iβm going to break down the campaign into three parts:
The strategy
How they pulled it off
Tips for running successful influencer marketing campaigns
These avatars were already VERY popular in Notionβs community, so they used this as a jump-off point for a broad campaign (smart). β I am not on Notion's marketing team, but Iβm 99% sure this is a brand campaign. β βMeaning conversions were NOT the main goal. β The goals were dead simple:
Maximum reach
High engagement
Brand sentiment boost
Getting people talking
TLDR: They just want people to know and like them more.
As a refresher:
Brand marketing is about recall. β βThe goal is to build long-term brand awareness and emotional customer connections. β
Direct response marketing is about conversions.β βThe goal is immediate action and measurable results. β Iβm sure the Notion social media team had to explain to many internal stakeholders: Weβre not measuring success by product sign-ups. β β BTW: We can find out first-hand on Monday. AJ Eckstein (Creator Match founder) is hosting a webinar on Monday with the Notion team who ran this whole thing. I signed up to see how close my analysis is β you can register too if you're curious.
How it Worked
Hereβs what they asked participants to do:
Pre-launch:
Influencers created custom Notion avatars
Posts went through approval
Upload βloadingβ profile pics (Jan 3-7)
Launch day
4. Change profile pic to Notion Faces (keep until Jan 12)
My guess is they invested ~$300k. β I saw posts floating around that participating influencers got $10,000 each. β Sheesh, I wish! β Letβs say each creator got $5,000 β $5,000 x 50 creators = $250,000 β Plus Creator Matchβs fee and other expenses (like the cookies they gifted influencers). β Letβs lowball and assume each post got 15,000 views. β 50 posts x 15,000 = 750,000 impressions. β But if you stop your ROI there, youβve failed Brand Marketing 101 with Prof. Reed. β
Why this is campaign is brilliant β and totally worth the money
Traditional influencer campaigns are usually just one-off paid posts. This was different β The genius lies in four things:
The creative was different and unique
It sparked conversations on LinkedIn
It proved B2B marketing can be playful
It made people FEEL something
The best brand marketing sparks emotion and discussion. And boy, did Notion deliver. β Love it or hate it, you couldn't ignore it. That's what great marketing does. β But hereβs the REAL success factor: People were talking about it. β βThatβs what great brand marketing does!! β βYes, impressions matter. But starting a conversation and earning mindshare is even more impactful. β But again, it is hard to measure it perfectly on a dashboard. β Notion didn't just run an influencer campaign β they created a cultural moment in the B2B space. β And that's worth way more than any immediate conversion metric. β What do you think about the campaign? β βSound off here β and see what others are saying.
Holler at you next Saturday, Devin
β
PS: This post took me ~2 hours to write. If you enjoyed it, you can help me grow this newsletter by forwarding it to one marketer who wants to get better at content marketing.
