Create good content is important, but if no one's ever gonna read it then it's not gonna give you any backlinks.

It goes both ways.

The average content marketer is lazy, wants to write one article and have it get zillions of views.

The average content marketer writes spammy articles that exactly zero people are interested in and wonders why it is so impossible to get backlinks.

If that content marketer created articles that people were interested in they could prime the pump on social media or with paid advertising and it would create a chain reaction of getting more links... (e.g. "going viral")

The average content marketer however can't do that because they are 100% self-centered and can't even imagine what other people would find interesting.