ZERO-COST MARKETING

Morning!

I'm finally writing this from my new apartment. I say "Finally" because it feels like it's taken months to move everything over. Well, everything but wifi. So today, I'm typing this up while stealing internet from "MSG Guest" - not sure who that is, but thank you for not having a password on your wifi.

This week I've been reading a book called "The Dhandho Investor". It's about making smart bets where you risk little but could gain a lot. There's a story in it about Richard Branson that I haven't been able to stop thinking about (and I think it’s worth you hearing).

We’ve all heard of Richard Branson and Virgin Atlantic. It’s a massive company worth over $5 billion. Yet when Branson decided to start the airline, he didn’t even own a plane.

He had:

• 0 experience in the industry

• 0 airline staff

• 0 planes

But he wanted to start an airline, and he wanted to do it without raising money or taking on any massive risks.

So he called Boeing up and asked them if they had any old planes lying around that he could lease. They put the phone down on him.

So he called again. They put the phone down on him.

So he called another 29x, and finally they put him through to the person who managed leasing the planes.

Finally, Branson got to make his ask… All he wanted was to lease one of their old and battered 747s for 1 year. If he didn’t make the payments, they could take it back immediately.

Reluctantly, they agreed.

But the crazy part is that he didn’t have to make the initial payment until the day of the flight. He also didn’t have to pay for fuel for 30 days after.

So, he started selling tickets 4 months out from the first-ever Virgin Atlantic flight whilst barely spending a dime.

• No major risk

• No massive expenses

• No penalty if he fails

And that’s how he started a $5 billion company - with next to no risk.

Now, I highly doubt either of us are going to wake up tomorrow and talk our way into a Boeing 747 or start a $5 billion company. But it's got me thinking about the zero-cost marketing strategies that most people overlook.

It’s all well and good marketing gurus telling you to pour 10s of thousands into Meta Ads every month. But what’s something you can spend a few hours on this week that won’t cost anything and will genuinely move the needle for your company?

Looking back, some of our most effective marketing campaigns I’ve launched cost me next to nothing.

So today, I'm going to break down 3 of the best zero-cost marketing campaigns I’ve seen that truly moved the needle.

THE ESSAY

When I think of Richard Branson, I think of a man in a tank riding through Times Square pretending to fire at Coca-Cola HQ to launch Virgin Cola in the U.S.

Now that feels like a marketing campaign that is probably a little bit out of reach.

But the Virgin Atlantic story I talked about earlier reminded me that Branson, like most people, really did start with nothing and had to get attention on Virgin with very little money at his disposal.

In today’s world, even with all of the new tech we have, it’s easy to feel like you have to spend £1000s to make any sort of marketing worthwhile. Yet the reality is, there are a lot of things you can do that cost nothing and have a big impact.

From boosting your SEO to get 100 new site visits a week, to driving a £2.6B in revenue by jumping off a building.

Here are 3 of the best no-cost marketing campaigns I’ve seen or tried:

Campaign 1: Our First Ever Essay

7 months ago, a marketer on Twitter called George Mack released an essay called “High Agency” that took the platform by storm.

It was unlike any sort of content being released at the time…

• It was a very niche topic - “High agency”

• It was long form - it takes 30+ mins to read

• It was published on its own website highagency.com

It was more comparable to a book than an essay. But most importantly, everyone loved it.

I heard at one point that it was racking up 1 million organic website visits every month. Absolutely bonkers.

About 1 month after it went live, my brother (and co-founder) Morgan came to me with the idea of doing our own essay like George’s.

My initial reaction? Stupid idea.

• It would take forever

• It would get no traction

• It wouldn’t lead to any new business

But Morgs was adamant we should do it - so he went ahead and started writing it.

Over the next few weeks, he’d put together this long essay on “The Future Of Creative Account-Based Marketing” (our main service offering).

This wasn’t just a piece of writing though, Morgan put it together in the same way George did.

• He bought a specific domain - accountbasedmarketing.io

• Built it as a web page so you can navigate through the essay

• Made it purely as a value add

Then, 2-3 months ago, we hit “Publish”, briefly pushed it on LinkedIn and left it be.

That’s when a bit of a shock factor came in.

2 weeks later, Morgan was on a sales call with someone who specifically said they’d reached out because they read the essay.

Fast forward another 4 weeks and we were pitching for our largest contract ever to someone who (you guessed it) also came through the essay.

There was clearly a theme here, so I checked the stats, and it turned out the essay was getting ~100 organic views from search engines every week.

(Which for someone who had never touched SEO before, I thought was pretty crazy.)

Today (2 months after launching the essay), we can confidently attribute £72,000 in revenue that came in directly because of the essay.

So, we’re doubling down on it with a simple plan:

1. Write essays on core components of our service - the next one is on Client Acquisition.

2. Write them long-form on focused purely on value

The only change is we’re going to test sharing them directly on the company website to see how it affects our site SEO.

If you’re some SEO guru, this may seem very simple to you. But I think the nuance here is the fact that this wasn’t written as an SEO optimised blog for the website, it was a standalone thought leadership essay.

Forget the organic traffic numbers, it’s the revenue numbers it drove that matter - and the fact it’s a thought leadership essay on a niche topic with real substance is the reason I think it worked.

Campaign 2: Trojan Horse Software

The idea that you can build software for fun with no code is a VERY new concept. But most people would be absolutely gobsmacked at what you can build nowadays with a tool like Replit that costs you $25/month.

We recently did this and had some shockingly good results with it, but first, let me share one of my favourite examples of this that has literally just unfolded over the last few weeks.

Early last year, this free tool hit the market that I became absolutely obsessed with - Kleo.

It was a simple Chrome extension that allowed you to see anyone’s best-performing LinkedIn posts. It was a basic tool, but for someone who gets a lot of business from posting on LinkedIn - it was priceless.

Very quickly the tools’ user base exploded and they had 60,000+ users.

But LinkedIn quickly sent them a cease and desist to take the tool off the market as it competed with their tools.

That didn’t really matter at that point though. They were already building their proper software tool - Kleo 2.0 - a fully fledged AI content partner tool.

Those 60,000+ Kleo 1.0 users were just a waitlist for the tool they were building. Now, with or without the Chrome extension, they had 60,000+ people ready to pull the trigger on their new product.

As I write this, Kleo 2.0 has been launched for under 24 hours (it went live this morning). In a matter of hours, they hit $25,845 in MRR.

(With 90% of their marketing being to the community of users they had on Kleo 1.0)

Getting a software tool to $300,000 ARR in a few hours (with no funding) is absolutely unheard of. Yet the Kleo team did it by simply using a Trojan horse software product.

For me, that means a piece of software that is:

1. Free

2. Massively valuable

3. Is a set-up for your core product or service

We actually did this earlier this year for our agency on a smaller scale and it worked great.

• We highlighted a key part of our service that clients love → Our lead magnets

• We created a simple software tool that would generate ideas for them

• We launched on LinkedIn under the site product.noticed.co

250+ people used it within an hour and 1000s have used it since. Which for us, was a big fat list of leads for our team to start conversations with.

I think this will become more and more popular over the next few years.

Campaign 3: Branson’s Dive Off A Skyscraper

I thought I’d make the third and final campaign a little more bold and exciting, while also tying it back to Richard Branson.

Because while Branson might be known for launching businesses with low risk, he was also incredible at getting a sh*t ton of attention for next to no cost. Most of the time by putting himself at the centre of a PR stunt. And when he launched Virgin America, it was no different.

Earlier, I told the story of how Branson started Virgin Atlantic and rented the Boeing. But even decades later, when he launched his new airline in the U.S., he was still using the same scrappy approach to get attention.

He didn’t have the budget to compete with the likes of American Airlines or United on ad spend. So instead of running a polished campaign, he pulled a stunt.

On the day of the Virgin America launch, Branson dressed up as a pilot, climbed onto the roof of The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas and jumped.

Literally.

He invited all of the biggest media outlets to film the spectacle, then leapt off the roof smiling for the cameras.

The next day, the photo was everywhere.

It didn’t matter that the U.S. giants had multi-million dollar budgets. The image of a founder jumping off a skyscraper was the only ad anyone remembered that week.

And, quite ironically, the jump was a bit of a disaster. It was windier than expected, so Branson slammed into the building and ripped his trousers, which of course led to even more press.

This isn’t to say jumping off a building is easy, but it does prove a point.

There are plenty of creative ways to market your company that cost almost nothing at all.

I know there is quite a lot of contrast between launching an essay and a founder jumping off a building, but that’s also why I love marketing - there are 1 million and 1 ways you can take it.

That’s all I’ve got for you today, but before you go take a second to rate the email below so I know if you liked it or not - it helps me know what to write next week :)

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

P.S. Seriously, go rate it. It takes 2 seconds and helps a bunch.

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