MR BEAST: CONTENT-FIRST MARKETING

Morning!

When I think about the greatest marketers of all-time I think of Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach, and Claude Hopkins.

But why does someone have to be dead to be one of the best ever?

I asked myself that earlier this week and it made me think…

“Who is the best marketer on the planet right now?”

The first person that sprung to mind: Mr. Beast.

It’s someone that most would overlook, but just take a look at the numbers:

• Sold $200,000 of chocolate in 2023.

• Reaches ~2 billion people every month.

• 5.4% of the planet subscribe to his channels.

He’s arguably the best marketer alive today, yet everyone overlooks his marketing talents.

But today, I’m going to show you the 6 key marketing lessons we can learn from Mr. Beast ↓

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION

BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY

If you have no idea who I’m talking about, this is Jimmy Donaldson (AKA Mr. Beast):

A nerdy 25-year-old from North Carolina.

So how in the world did 5.44% of the world’s population end up watching this man on a weekly basis?

The story is too long to tell in just 1 newsletter, but there are 2 key arts he mastered to make it happen:

A: Getting attention
B: Keeping attention

He understands content better than any human being dead or alive.

But for me, what’s even more impressive is that he’s able to use that content to drive people to buy his products.

His chocolate brand ‘Feastables’ is now stocked in 50,000+ stores across the world and did $200,000,000 in sales in 2023.

What he has done is downright astonishing.

But more importantly, there are a ton of lessons we can learn from him.

I spent the last week studying the way he works + how he markets himself & his products.

Here are the 6 key lessons he can teach us about marketing:

Lesson 1: Put Your Face On It

I started my research by listening to Mr. Beasts various podcast appearances.

On one he sat for an hour explaining how hectic his life was before admitting that he was the bottleneck in his company.

The host responded and said: “Why don’t you take yourself out of some videos then.”

Mr Beast responded: “The most valuable use of my time is to put my face on the channel.”

When I heard that I was a little shocked.

His videos are so high-production at this point, surely someone could fill in for him?

In his eyes, absolutely not.

He then went on to explain that he is a massive believer in personal brands and said that Taylor Swift is the prime example of how powerful they can be.

For decades, it’s been seen as detrimental to tie someones face to a brand. A massive PR risk.

Yet Mr. Beast shows us just how powerful a personal brand can be for a company.

As cliche as it’s become… people don’t want to watch/interact/or buy from companies.

They want to buy from people.

Lesson 2: Iterate → Duplicate → Extrapolate

Mr. Beast understands content better than anyone else on the planet. Yet his approach to it is stupidly simple.

(Although it did take him 12 years to develop.)

After listening to him talking about it for a good 4-5 hours, I see his approach as a three step process.

Step 1: Iterate

At the age of 13, Mr. Beast began posting on Youtube.

But he wasn’t just posting the kind of videos he was posting now, he began by posting Minecraft videos.

1 year later, he was posting Call Of Duty Videos

2 years later, he was breaking down YouTubers incomes, best websites, and “Money problems”.

3 years later, something else.

4 years later, something else.

You get the point.

For 5 years he just threw mud at the wall trying any random concept for a video he could find.

He iterated with every video, just trying to find something that works.

Until he uploaded this video (below) of him counting to 100,000.

It took him 40 hours, but ended up going massively viral.

Which is where stage 2 of his process comes in.

Stage 2: Duplicate

Once he found a concept that worked, he doubled down and recreated the exact same format.

In this case, that was counting to 200,000…

Again another viral video.

It seems stupidly simple when you see it like this. Yet so many brands refuse to do this with their marketing.

If one thing works, why not duplicate it?

Well, if you still don’t want to duplicate, don’t worry - because stage 3 is where the fun starts.

Stage 3: Extrapolation

Once he knows wild challenges of him counting get millions of views, he expands out and puts a twist on that style of content.

He starts by reading the longest english word…

Viral ✔

Then tries it with another twist and says “Logan Paul” 100,000 times.

Viral again ✔️

So he extrapolates one step further… if people like me doing crazy challenges, I wonder if they’ll like seeing me give away money.

It goes viral!

So he extrapolates and extrapolates.

He gives his mum money, he gives a streamer money, he gives a bunch of people $1000, he gives a delivery driver $10k.

He finds what works, then finds ways to put a new twist on it.

If you just scroll through his recent YouTube videos you’ll see how he does this 100s of times over.

6 years ago, he realised people watched videos where people gave money away.

Today, 6 years on, he is still creating videos like this:

• “Last to leave the circle wins $500,000”

• “I gave the delivery driver the house”

• “$10,000 for every day you survive”

All of these videos came from building off that initial video that worked.

Lesson 3: Don’t Sell, Integrate

“The guy makes great videos, who cares?”

Yes, he makes great videos, but he also does an amazing job at selling chocolate.

The way he does it? Masterful product integration.

For example: He built an entire Willy Wonka chocolate factory and had people compete to win the factory.

People got into the competition by winning a golden ticket in one of his Feastables bars.

The video was essentially a 16-minute Feastables ad.

The view count? 280 million.

That’s double the eyeballs you would get from a Super Bowl ad.

But this wasn’t the only time he subtly plugs his chocolate. In a bunch of his videos he includes Feastables without ever selling it.

Like in his ”$10,000 Every Day You Survive In A Grocery Store” challenge - that happened to have a massive Feastables section.

By integrating rather than selling, he’s able to get millions of people seeing the Feastables brand - without him having to shill them and put a bad taste in people’s mouthes.

Okay, I’m conscious of how long this is getting, so to save you some time I’ve made these last 3 lessons quick-fire lessons…

Quick Fire Lesson 1: Understand The Platform + The People

Mr. Beast says the reason he leaves other people in the dust is because they spend too much time thinking about themselves. When they should be taking time to understand the platform they post on & the people they post for.

Quick Fire Lesson 2: Keep A Stupidly High Standard

Mr. Beast is well known for scrapping videos that he spent millions of dollars making. Because he won’t let a video go out that he doesn’t think is a 10/10 standard.

This is why people remember his content for being so good!

Quick Fire Lesson 3: Always Go 1 Mile Further

On one of the pods I listened to, Mr. Beast proudly stated that no one will catch him on Youtube because they aren’t willing to go as far as him.

He goes 1 mile further than they will.

 🌱 THE GREENHOUSE

Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:

• Mr. Beast’s YouTube channel. (See here)

• Steven Bartlett: 9 Secret Habits That Made Me A Millionaire. (See here)

• 20 best marketing books. (See here)

TL;DR

1/ Put Your Face On It
2/ Iterate → Duplicate → Extrapolate
3/ Don’t Sell, Integrate
4/ Understand The People + Platform
5/ Keep A Stupidly High Standard
6/ Always Go 1 Mile Further

There are so many marketing lessons you can take from Mr. Beast.

I genuinely think he’d be one of the best CMOs in the world if he ever wanted to go down that route.

• He knows how to get attention.

• He knows how to keep it.

• He knows how to sell.

And that’s a pretty killer combination if you ask me.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed. If you did, make sure to let me know in the poll below :)

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

WAIT… BEFORE YOU GO

If you’ve read this far, why not see how else I can help you:

• Follow me on Twitter for more marketing stuff.

• Connect with me on LinkedIn to follow my business journey.

• Want to work with me? Start HERE.

THAT’S ALL!

This has been a breakdown of Mr. Beasts marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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