Few people achieve success by spending little money on marketing, but there are indeed those who try tirelessly, they have the spirit and a mature strategy to achieve it, but not everyone can be like that, only certain people with strong thinking and mental capital for the achievement they make.
Well, you have a point, and if we must go by the view of those who do not spend much money but still enter their limelight, they are mostly lucky, it could have been a twist of events in most cases. I know of such graceful companies like that where people naturally advertise their products and services, that's brilliant, but not common in this technological age. What I'd like us to note about such companies is that they probably solve yearning demands/issues of the people, so people telling their friends, families and neighbours of such is not difficult, which makes such companies go viral very fast. But if the company has so many existing competitors, it will be an almost impossible mission without quality marketing.
This is the reality, because most marketing companies spend a lot of money. They do end up learning how to optimize and get more efficient, I am not declining that, they do spend a lot at first, see where the money comes from at most, and they refine their marketing based on the results. But that requires a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars in most cases, sometimes as high as millions of dollars depending on the size of the business. The thing you can learn, is this refining process, the success part depends on luck, but refining is something you can learn.
The better you are at refining, the better optimized your marketing will be and you will make money based on that, and you will not be overspending based on return. All those people who have marketing companies, knows or claims to know this part. They can't guarantee success, but they can guarantee that you will get best bang for your buck and they are good at that, how that will look in result is unknown.
