100% this. I think people who have not worked directly in marketing dramatically underestimate just how much of marketing at a big company is taking credit for sales that were going to happen anyways. People have performance driven bonuses/promotions/whatever, TRULY generating demand is very hard, taking credit for sales you didn’t drive is WAY easier, and most companies have very feeble checks and balances against this.
For example, talk to anyone running Google AdWords campaigns, they’ll tell about “branded” vs “unbranded” search terms, and how you should treat them all as one big bucket. They’ll say the unbranded terms generate demand, while the branded terms are the “closers.” This is PURE BS. “Branded terms” are literally someone searching for “Jira”, clicking the ad that takes you to Jira instead of the top non-ad link right below it, buying Jira, then saying “they bought it because of the ad.” Unbranded is people searching for “issue tracking software”, seeing a Jira ad, clicking it, then buying. That’s legit, but likely the CAC for unbranded is like 2-5x the LTV of the customer, and totally not worth it. But if you lump it together with the “branded” ads (people literally searching for your exact product, and randomly deciding to click the ad over the legit search result right below it), the CAC looks great. Marketing is FULL of BS like this.
If your competitors are advertising for your name, they will close many of your potential customers. Unfortunately, Google pushes everyone to do branded ads this way.
For example, talk to anyone running Google AdWords campaigns, they’ll tell about “branded” vs “unbranded” search terms, and how you should treat them all as one big bucket. They’ll say the unbranded terms generate demand, while the branded terms are the “closers.” This is PURE BS. “Branded terms” are literally someone searching for “Jira”, clicking the ad that takes you to Jira instead of the top non-ad link right below it, buying Jira, then saying “they bought it because of the ad.” Unbranded is people searching for “issue tracking software”, seeing a Jira ad, clicking it, then buying. That’s legit, but likely the CAC for unbranded is like 2-5x the LTV of the customer, and totally not worth it. But if you lump it together with the “branded” ads (people literally searching for your exact product, and randomly deciding to click the ad over the legit search result right below it), the CAC looks great. Marketing is FULL of BS like this.