What Coke Can Teach You About Marketing

Wanna be the top rated brand in the word? Spend north of $2.6 billion a year in advertising and be around for the last 100 years with some of the most innovative advertising ever.

Don’t have that kind of coin? Specialize like Coke

Coke has about 100 products in its stable; from water to tea to…soda. But the product that started it all…the grand-daddy, is Coke. And the Coke brand gets the lion’s share of the $2.6 billion Coke spends on advertising.

How much does the Coke brand get?

Well, Coke doesn’t break out ad spend by product line, but I bet it is north of 70% globally.

But what the hell does this have to do with you?

Good question – Coke started off 100 plus years ago with one product, Coke. And built an empire from there. They spend so much on the Coke name in order to keep it first in mind when you hit the supermarket. But they also know that by adding additional products to their lineup, given them a smidge of marketing love, consumers will no doubt stumble onto other products in the Coke fleet.

Translation?

Advertise your most profitable, or your easiest, or whatever product or service your business is known for first. This builds brand and product specific awareness in the marketplace. Then, once you are in front of Mrs. Jones, you can let her know you do other things.

This strategy works well when you are in a hyper-competitive market or you have short arms in the marketing department. You get the biggest bang for your buck, and your ancillary businesses get your, excuse the analogy, leftovers.

In the long run, it saves you money, builds a brand and a name faster and makes it easier to develop referral work as the “expert” in that field.