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If someone inherits millions of dollars from his or her parents and then goes on to pour it into a business, he or she may be able to build a successful enterprise. Similarly, if a company has a large amount of capital to spend on marketing, there is a good chance of a successful result. But where is the genius in this approach? And how can it help the person who doesn’t have a million dollars to sink into a start-up business? The answer is that there is nothing remarkable about this kind of experience and that it will not be very instructive to anyone, except another person who has inherited a large windfall.

Anyone can buy customers given enough money or credit, by spending huge amounts of money on advertisements and promotions. Anyone can build their business if given unlimited capital, and many have, using millions of dollars in some instances, of stockholders’ equity in the process.

There is however, another way to go about marketing your business. It is applicable to businesses with limited capital, and also those that have vast cash reserves and wish to continue to grow. It doesn’t require you to spend a lot of money, rather it relies on your knowledge about what motivates people to buy something or choose one product over another. Once you have this knowledge you can successfully enter many if not most fields without spending a fortune on advertising.

You can call this marketing without money, cheap marketing, marketing on a shoestring, clever marketing, or better yet, it is actually genius marketing. It is genius marketing no doubt, but you don’t have to be an Einstein to learn how to do it. All you need is willingness to cast aside pre-conceived ways of doing business and to follow the examples of others who have achieved their marketing goals without spending a fortune. It comes down to setting aside traditional marketing philosophy and learning a technique that goes far beyond such outdated methods.

Let me give you an example of just how easy some of these methods are. I have a small story included on my website, where a large firm had just spent $110,000 on a three month advertising and marketing campaign, blitzing a particular city in the United States. They did not experience any difference in volume of business and actually believe that they did not earn an extra dollar from the exercise. I had just given a three hour seminar to 2,000 people in the magnificent Hilton Waikoloa on the Big Island in Hawaii. It was 1997, at a 5 day corporate retreat for a major American real-estate group. They were long days and I was heading back to my suite at about 2:00 a.m. While waiting at the elevator, a very jovial character standing beside me jumped to life with the statement:

‘OK Mr. Marketing Guru, I loved your seminar, but if you’re so crash hot, what do you think you could do specifically for me, that would make such a big difference in so short a period of time?’ 

The elevator doors opened and we got in, and I wanted to be brief, as I had been up since 4:00 a.m. He was the managing partner of a large independent legal firm. I asked him three or four pertinent questions in just a few minutes. Then I told him that of would give him just one idea in about 30 seconds. I went on to tell him that I thought if he could not make an extra $1,000,000 from it in the next 12 months, then he is either inept at his profession, or otherwise I am inept at describing the strategy ……… maybe because I am somewhat tired.

He listened intently at what I had to say which took me about one minute, I must admit, because I got so excited at the possibilities for this firm. Both he and his wife slowly looked at each other and their bottom jaws almost hit the floor. How much could you make from that one idea Johnny, I asked ……. maybe $1,000,000???? He remained silent for a moment, then looked at me and said no---lots more than that! I immediately asked him how much it would cost to get that extra income. He thought for a moment and said, maybe $2,000. I agreed. We briefly exchanged business cards and the following day arrangements were made to visit his offices in Florida for a week, the following month.”

While I ended up implementing a vast range of marketing tools at little or no cost, the important thing was being able to show how this new marketing mindset works. It allows all the staff to get involved and continue implementing their marketing without having me in the office all the time.

Over the last 25 years I have seen many businesses go broke simply because they sunk a lot of money into advertising campaigns that did not work. My approach is to look at what everyone else is doing, and then do it differently. Marketing is not a “campaign”. Marketing is a way of business life. It is something you do all the time, whether you realize it or not. It’s a mindset and it is easy once you understand that. Lots easier than having to regularly sit down and strategize a “campaign”, or to spend a fortune on direct mail, or advertising and hope for the best.

Instead of relying on a big budget to get results, you can reach your target audience without spending anything or by spending very little. This applies to the one-person start-up as well as to large corporations, which oftentimes needlessly spend their shareholders capital on wasteful marketing schemes.

Just to give you an example, you can get tons of free advertising by writing articles related to your field of activity and publishing them on other websites and in the electronic newsletters of other organizations. You may be a start-up with ten people on your own mailing list, but if you can get your article published on a list that has 100,000 readers then your new business will get a shot in the arm. This gives you substantial credibility that no amount of money can buy, and you gain leverage on both your time and your money. These are two crucial elements to any marketing philosophy, and the first two that I discuss with every single client.

There are a lot of people hawking marketing materials today, and one of the problems with this is that this information-overload often leads to confusion in the mind of the starting entrepreneur. The answer is get out there and do it……but you do not need to do too much. You might identify one hundred different ways to do some marketing, and then wonder how you do it all. You don’t! Not all at once anyway. Just start out with enough that you can manage, given your time and resources. Then as that brings success, do more, and so on. This understanding seems so often to elude some of the most astute minds in business. I have for years shown businesses how to achieve considerable marketing success by implementing only as much as they know they can handle, at any one time.

It is an ongoing process and not a campaign!

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