Last week, I heard a story that fired me up.

"We spent no money on marketing whatsoever, no money on customer acquisition and our sales grew by 30 percent" - Nick Jenkins whilst on the Diary Of A CEO podcast.

Damn that would be good. Imagine paying nothing for marketing?

Virality

The product is inherently viral.

Moonpig.com allows customers to send personalised birthday cards to their friends.

Think about it...every time they acquire a customer, dozens of birthday cards get sent to their friends and family. There's a good chance that one of those family or friends might start sending cards as well!

This was their marketing. And they don't pay a penny...okay, well it's sounds like they did pay at the start to get the ball rolling, but got to start somewhere!

Keep It Cheap, but Statistically Significant

"Why spend two and a half why spend £25,000 finding out that a particular channel doesn't work for you when you can get the answer for £2,500?" - Jenkins

Another marketing lesson. This was something learnt from a textbook during his MBA. If you get you're maths right, you can test quicker using stats to find the minimum you need to spend to get a statistically significant result.

The Name

This was crucial for Jenkins. A memorable name meant that every bit of marketing he did would be slightly more effective.

Moonpig.com originated from Jenkins' school nickname "Moonpig".

The Result?

Jenkins' vision eventually led to the sale of Moonpig.com to Photobox.com for £120m.

He's now 51, and splashes out cash (venture capital) to aspiring entrepreneurs on the BBC's Dragon’s Den.