My favorite here was we found Google's assigned ads consultant, when we dug into their glowing numbers, got us a big traffic spike in school kids using google's search bar as a graphing calculator. We are a b2b graph analytics company.
In our case they're more "top of funnel". We make money generating leads. When optimizing purely for signups, we get a lot, but they're not the type of users that become leads. Its really just a google ads problem - we can tell google ads to focus on traffic that converts to leads, but there's not as much of that.
Imagine my new food delivery startup delivers ultra-premium, Michelin-star-quality, $100-a-head food and wine anywhere in the five boroughs of New York.
Any marketing to people who aren't in New York, or people who aren't rich enough to spend $100 a head on a meal, is largely wasted.
Worldwide viral coverage on Reddit and Twitter? Youtubers and podcasters singing my praises? Meh.
But sponsoring the New York City Ballet? I'll get far fewer hits, but the hits I do get will convert at a much higher rate.