After analyzing hundreds of businesses, I realized that there was one indicator that could help me predict which companies were going to succeed and which ones were going to fail better than any other indicator.
Case 1 (On Average, Each of Your Customers Tells Two Friends About You):

  1. 100 visitors multiplied by 200% = 200 new visitors.
  2. The 200 visitors from Step 1 multiplied by 200% = 400 new visitors.
  3. You can keep multiplying by 200% as many times as you want to see how fast your business will grow.

In this case, once you get the ball rolling, your customers and fans will do the rest of the work for you.
Case 2 (Out of Ten Customers, Nine Don’t Tell Anybody About Your Business and One Tells One Friend):
100 visitors multiplied by 10% = 10 new visitors.
10 visitors multiplied by 10% = 1 new visitor.
In this case, the trend decreases over time, meaning that the moment you stop inviting people to your site or store, your business will be on its way to death. The second thing to consider is this: Even if you have the money and time to market to new prospects all the time, at one point you’ll run out of prospects to market to.
So, What’s the Main Difference Between the First and the Second Example?
The first company GETS PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THEM and the second company doesn’t. That’s it. That’s the most important marketing lesson I’ve ever learned. If you’re remarkable, all you need to do is tell a few people about your products and word-of-mouth will do the rest. You won’t be able to stop sales from constantly growing no matter how hard you try. On the other hand, if people don’t talk about your business, you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars in marketing and your business will never take off. You might get some customers, sure, but you have a car without an engine; the moment you stop pushing it, it stops moving forward.
Then, The Question Is, “How Can I Create a Remarkable Business?”
This is my favorite part: you need to be weird. Having a better product at a better price won’t do the trick. When I say weird, I mean different, unique. I’ll give you some examples of companies that did things differently and got the whole world talking about them:

  • When Yahoo! was the top search engine, their competitors tried to beat them by having more features and information. Google did something different: they offered LESS: Less clutter, fewer features and more accurate search results.
  • Twitter created a new concept in blogging: posts that can’t exceed 140 characters.
  • Zappos revolutionized the shoes industry by offering free rush delivery and free returns (they even pay for your postage costs if you need to return or exchange a pair of shoes.)
  • Whole Foods offered a central location for premium organic foods like no one else.

So, how will you make your company unique and weird? What will you do to get some raving fans to spread the word about your business? How can you make a difference in the world instead of being just another company in your industry? I promise you that if you take 10 minutes to think about these questions, they’ll be the best 10 minutes you’ll have ever invested.

Most Important Marketing Lesson