Seven marketing lessons learned from billion-dollar companies that you’ve never heard of. You’ve heard of TikTok.TikTok‘s one of the biggest companies in the world. It’s owned by ByteDance, which does over $58 billion in revenue. You’ve heard of Facebook, Google, Apple, and even Amazon, they’re all multibillion-dollar companies, and some of them are even worth over a trillion dollars.
But have you heard of Danaher? Probably not, but they generate over $29 billion a year in revenue. Have you heard of Fortive? They generate $7 billion in revenue each year. Have you heard of Ceridian? They generate over $1 billion in revenue. Look, there are a lot of companies that generate over$1 a billion dollars a year in revenue, and you’ve never heard of them.
Companies don’t have to be as well known as Nike to be successful. So let’s go over some marketing lessons learned from these multibillion-revenue-generating companies that you’ve never heard of.
Number one,
it’s easier to market multiple products than it is to market one product. See, big companies have multiple products, because it’s hard to generate all that revenue from just selling one thing. Now, a common example that you’re very familiar with is Apple. Apple has laptops, computers, phones, iPods, headphones, and the list goes on and on.
Similar to how it’s easy to generate more revenue by selling multiple things, the same goes with marketing. There is only so much search volume for terms like “laptops,” but if you combine that with the phone market or headphones and other things, it opens up more marketing opportunities. Now, if you look at companies like Fortiveor Danaher or even Ceridian, they have multiple products, which makes it easier to add more revenue and it makes it easier on the marketing as well.
Two,
it’s easier to market existing big markets. Have you heard of the word “TAM”?It stands for “Total Addressable Market.”For example, almost everyone in this world has a phone, or at least in America. According to PEW research,97% of Americans have some type of mobile phone. So it’s easier to market mobile phones because everyone has one or needs one will want one.
On the flip side, if you were selling SEO tools like me like I sell Ubersuggest, there are only so many customers for it. Not as many as people who want cell phones. So make sure you’re selling products and services that a lot of companies and people need. It makes it that much easier to market, as there’ll be more people to market to, which creates more volume.
Three,
the best marketing is word of mouth. It doesn’t matter how much money you have to spend on marketing, nothing beats word of mouth. The only way to get that is to either create amazing products or services. Just for comparison, when you look at historical data, according to Statista, when Ford spent $4.1 billion on global advertising, Apple only spent $1.8 billion.
In essence, Apple spent less than half of what Ford spent, yet, Apple is 46 times roughly bigger in size because people love their products and really evangelize them. And if you look at Fortiveand Danaher and Ceridian, Ceridian’s a great example of this. People love Ceridian’s payroll because you can actually get paid out daily as an employee. That creates that virality, why? Because people love Ceridian’s products.
Number four,
ugly is sexy. Everyone wants to create a cool company like selling iPads, but who wants to create a payroll software company like Ceridian? But it’s a huge market because everyone needs to get paid.
Whether you live in America or India or Brazil, it doesn’t matter what country, when you work for someone, you need to get paid. Or Danaher, they have a water treatment company called ChemTreat.May not sound sexy, but hey, we all need water. A lot of the biggest companies resolve big problems that are ugly and necessary. And those companies are easier to market because it’s less competitive.
Five,
the United States isn’t the center of the world. Yes, I live in America, and I’ve lived in other countries as well. And I’m not here to say one country is better than another, that’s for a different debate and that’s up for you to decide. But here’s the thing.
When you’re marketing, if you look at all these multibillion-dollar companies, especially the ones that I mentioned, they’re global. You don’t want to create a company that just going after the USor just going after China or India or Brazil. You need to ideally create a global company because it gives you more people to target, which makes it easier on your marketing. So take your marketing global.
Six,
your marketing is only as good as your team. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling or how good you are, marketing is a team effort. You need amazing people on your team who have done it before to do well.
Look for people on LinkedIn who have worked for your competition and been promoted multiple times, as the chances are, if they’ve been promoted multiple times, that company found them to be good.
And if you hire them and they’re a good cultural fit and you think they can do well for you, the chances are, they’ll have a higher chance of success compared to someone else who hasn’t worked for a competitor and hasn’t been promoted within their job, because it usually means people don’t find them as valuable.
Number seven,
you have to build a brand to do well in the long run. All big companies work on building a brand. For example, in the United States, around three times more people search for Danaher than water treatment. You build a brand by not only building a good product or service but by also being in a business for many, many years, ideally 10-plus. So you need to be patient.