“We know it takes Rs 20 crores (or Rs 100 crores, or Rs. 500 crores),
at least, to launch and market. We don’t have that kind of money.
What do we do?”

“We do have a little money – but with that, we’ll never have
the share of voice to compete.”

You’ve probably come across objections like these - or variants - somewhere in your marketing career. And brought your dreams and plans to a standstill.
This article seeks to establish that conventional wisdom is wrong. That there is a very real set of options to the traditional route of outspending on marketing to win. Indeed, it goes so far as to suggest the contrary: that outspending is now a sign that you will NOT deserve and achieve market leadership!

A quiz to stump you
Name the world’s top internet brands. That’s it – roll off the names of five or seven of the top names that come to your mind when you think of brands that are known around the world for something to do with the internet.
I’m sure you’ve probably come up with names that include some or all of these: Amazon, Yahoo, Hotmail, eBay, Google and ICQ.
Right? If you were to value the brands these companies possess, you’d probably say each is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Agree?
Now think and tell me something else. When have you seen advertising – any advertising at all - for any of these brands?
Stumped?

The fact is the e-world has regularly produced winners that have nothing to do with the amount spent advertising them. As somebody who personally worked on the launches of two of those: Yahoo and Amazon, I can vouch that their ad spends globally in their first couple of years would be dwarfed by what Lever’s spends in Bombay alone in one month.

And the trend continues: companies like Paypal, Alumni.net and Slashdot.org have become world leaders in their own niches online without really spending on media.
Is there a lesson here to be learnt for brick-and-mortar marketers? I do believe so.

The only word that counts: word of mouth
How did these brands become popular? You either heard of them from a friend – or read about them.

Your friends told you about these brands either because they were told about it – or they used them and found them special enough to mention to you. You read about them not because of some expensive PR campaign - indeed many of these, couldn’t even afford a PR agency early on – but because journalists found enough people talking about them and using them that they felt these brands were worth writing about.

So why did these brands – and not their rivals - get that word of mouth? Probe a little further here, and you may come up with a nugget or two worth implementing in your business.