10 Marketing Principles Behind Every Nine-Figure Brand

Attention Is the Game, Teaching Is How You Win It

These are ten marketing basics that have helped me build several nine-figure brands, including our family-owned business, NaturalSlim. As I was thinking about what got these brands to where they are, I realized there are things I did that contributed, and things I did that absolutely did not. I want to save you the time, the money, and the headaches.

Principle one: attention first. The game of business right now depends on how much attention you get. Attention is the new currency. Everybody talks about it, very few people know how to execute on it. If you focus on what you can do to get attention, you are focusing on what you can do to grow your business. Those two things are the same thing. Not vanity attention, not dancing on TikTok because you think it's cool. Attention in service of a great product or a great service is the quickest path to a sustainable business.

Principle two: teach first. This is exactly what I'm doing right now. I have a long-term game plan with my content and no desire for overnight success. Every single day, people walk into my marketing agency and say, 'Manuel, I've been watching your content for six years. Seven years ago I watched a webinar and never bought anything. Now I can finally hire your agency.' If I hadn't given value first seven years ago, that person doesn't buy today. My father Frank Suarez did it. Cesar Millan, the one and only dog whisperer, did it. They give in a 95 to 5 ratio. Give 95 percent, ask 5 percent, maybe even less.

Here's what happens if you skip this and just chase revenue right now: when marketing dies, you die with it. If Facebook kicks you off the platform, or TikTok gets shut down, your business dies with it. But if you focus on attention first, teaching first, value first, you become indestructible. No matter what happens on any platform, people search for you wherever you go.

The Intro Offer: How $20 Becomes $230

Principle three: you've got to have an intro offer. This is a mistake so many entrepreneurs make. They try to go for all of it at the start of the journey. There's so much competition out there that if you don't have a better offer, it's hard to stand out.

In our family business, NaturalSlim, we have a $20 product, a magnesium drink called MagicMag. It's a great introductory product, and those $20 become $230 two months later. That's lifetime value. Getting people to open their wallets for the first time is the hardest step they'll take, so give them something introductory and easy to digest, even if you break even or lose a little money on it.

Think about Amazon. They get you in with $10 for a Prime membership and those $10 become thousands of dollars over the years. Netflix, Apple, you name it, they all have an ecosystem. Try to find a billion-dollar brand in the USA that sells you one product once and never sells you anything again. It doesn't exist.

Keep a Scoreboard and Never Be Romantic About Your Creatives

Principle four: data analysis, or what I call keeping a scoreboard. You have to analyze every single day, week after week, what's working and what's not. You cannot be romantic about what you feel is going to work. Get data, make correct decisions, stop the bleeding on the losers, and scale the winners.

Principle five: creative testing. Same subject. Even when you're sure a creative is going to work because you feel you did a great job, you still need to put it out there and let the data tell you. These social media algorithms are built on real engagement. The more people like it, click it, buy from it, the more results you get. Creative volume is essential, and with the birth of the AI era a couple of years ago, you can produce and split test enormous quantities of creatives to find out what actually works.

AI Plus Organic: One Video an Hour

Principle six: AI plus organic. Instead of putting out one video a week, you can put out one video an hour. Take your value, your education, your problem-solving products and services, feed it to AI, and create content at scale. Then post it actively on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, every single platform that lets you put a message out there.

Imagine entrepreneurs of the 1900s having the ability to press a few buttons and communicate to the world at large for free. We didn't have any of that two decades ago. Leverage this opportunity until it becomes too crowded.

Temperature Categories and Social Proof

Principle seven: temperature categories. If somebody has never seen me before, I talk to them in a very different way than somebody who has been consuming my content. You, for example, several minutes into this lesson, know and trust me a little more than somebody who has no clue who I am. There's cold, there's warm, and there's hot. Cold is the start of the journey. Warm is warming up to you. Hot is 'shut up and take my money.' Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok let you build buckets of people at each temperature and craft messages for each one. Otherwise you're talking to everybody the same way, and when you talk to everybody, you talk to nobody.

Principle eight: social proof. At NaturalSlim we do UGC at scale. We go out and gather real results from people who use our products, we document them, and we run contests consistently to acquire those success stories, because people trust others more than they trust you. Then there's EGC, employee generated content. Some of our employees create educational content based on my father's legacy. All the big nine-figure brands use their own employees to spread the message. Add creators talking about your brand on top of that, and you have a combination with unlimited scalability. Start small, then scale and scale.

Plan Before You Spend, and Never Build Alone

Principle nine: plan before you spend. You cannot hit a target you can't see. Before you start any campaign on any platform, know how much you're going to spend. Like my dad used to tell me: 'Manuel, son, you are not spending, you are investing.' Assign an advertising investment budget, know exactly when you get in, when you get out, and what your ideal result is. Otherwise you're gambling. In nine-figure brands we take risks, but we don't gamble. We plan daily, monthly, yearly, even five-year windows.

Principle ten, and I'd say the most important: there's no such thing as 'I' at this level. I wouldn't be here without my team. Another lesson from my father: your team is your most valuable asset. I walk that talk. I have somewhere around 250 employees between our companies, and I'm always looking for more. There is no AI technology in this world that's going to stop me from hiring more humans. We are built on humans.

Build it one person at a time. Bring somebody on board, give them a post, give them statistics, give them a hat to wear and SOPs, standard operating procedures, so they can get results. Some people won't work out, and that's fine. They might not match your speed or your intensity. It's part of the game. But the ones who are in it for blood with you, who are building the thing with you, they become almost like family. And it's a beautiful thing.