4 Steps To Generate A Big Marketing Idea.
Come up with Big Ideas Faster Than Anyone Else.
It will happen.
There will come a moment in your copywriting career when a client hires you to write a winning campaign sales letter.
As a perpetual student of copywriting, you know that the backbone of all winning multi-million sales letters is a Big Marketing Idea.
But when that happens, you have to go from learning to doing…and that means its your turn to come up with a Big Idea.
However, for most newbie writers, they feel coming up with a Big Idea is something that is “out of their league” like the hot girl in high school.
But I’m here to tell you to put those feelings aside. Because, you can train yourself to come up with Big Ideas.
I’ll tell you in a moment all about the process of coming up with a Big Marketing Idea.
But first…
A Bit About Ideas and Creativity.
Ideas and creativity are two separate concepts that are closely related most people mistake having an idea for creativity.
This is not the case.
The process of coming up with an idea is creativity.
So, an idea is like the result, and creativity is the formula or the process for coming up with that result.
Basically, ideas, that is the idea generating process…the creativity element of it is just having a plethora of raw materials in your brain.
Stated in a different way…Idea generation is fueled by the consumption of raw materials, not creativity.
Creativity is the process.
So, it’s safe to say…
• There are no unique ideas
• There are no original thoughts.
Because everything that you think…all your creativity, are all just an amalgamation of...
• The experiences you’ve had
• The things you’ve read
• The things that you’ve seen
So, if you want to create that new experience, you have to feed in a lot more raw materials into your brain…then;
• You can create new connections
• You can draw lines to things that seem unrelated and
• Create a new line of experience for someone else…
Legendary copywriter David Oglivy had this to say about Big Ideas …
“You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent Big Idea. It takes a Big Idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”
Take for example: These books on saving money and investing…
“Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “101 Ways to Find The Money to Save And Invest”
One is an international bestseller and the other? Well, I don’t even know how many sales the other book made.
But…
What’s the difference between both books?
Really, there is no difference.
Both books are about saving money and investing.
The difference is not in the content.
The difference is not in the essence of the material.
The difference is not the idea behind how the content is being presented.
Robert Kiyosaki took an ordinary and common idea about saving money and investing and wrapped it around something new, unique and different.
That is the power of a big marketing idea.
Which is why…
Mark Ford, the Genius behind Agora’s $2Billion a year success story had this to say about Big Ideas…
“We recognized early on, when it comes to marketing, we’re really in the idea business. We’re in the business of developing interesting, arresting, and captivating ideas.”
The Technique for Getting Big Ideas.
The production of Big Ideas has a definite process.
And as such, it follows an operative technique, but the good news is that this technique can be learned and controlled.
In a minute, I’ll reveal this technique to you and how you can master it…
But first, I need you to understand two things about this valuable technique.
This is critical. So please, pay close attention.
While I’m willing to reveal this technique to you, there are two things you need to know:
First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe in it.
Second, while simple to state, this formula requires the hardest kind of intellectual brain work to follow, so that not all who accept it will use it.
Which is why…
In learning any art, the most important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second Method.
This is the same for the art of producing Big Ideas.
So, the most valuable piece of information with the art of producing big ideas is not where to look for big ideas.
No.
But how to train the mind in the method by which big ideas are produced; and how to grasp the principles which are the source of all Big Ideas.
With regard the principles which underlie the production of Big ideas, two things are important.
First, an idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements…
…and second, the principle involved is the capacity of the mind to bring old elements into new combination, and this depends largely on the minds ability to see relationships between facts.
The production of big ideas follows a method which is just as definite as the method by which, say, ford cars are produced.
So, when you pick up a multi-winning sales letter with a Big Idea, this technique is followed, consciously or unconsciously.
And the good thing about this technique is that, it can consciously be cultivated and thus the ability of your mind to produce ideas thereby increased.
In fact…
This Technique Follows 4 Simple Steps and All Four Steps Are Closely Related.
If you want to produce big marketing ideas, you must follow these steps in their definite order as there is no possibility of one of them being taken before the preceding one is completed.
So, let me cut to the chase.
Step 1:
The first step is for the mind to gather raw materials.
This is easier said than done and as such is a terrible chore that we constantly try to dodge.
Instead of spending quality time gathering raw materials for the mind…we rather sit around trying to get the mind to take the fourth step in the idea-producing step.
This is futile…well unless you’re Leonardo Da Vinci (who was a brilliant Nerd that read and consumed a lot of raw materials too.)
Well, you get my drift.
The materials you must gather ideally should be of two types…Specific and General materials.
But What Are These Specific Materials?
Specific materials in advertising are those relating to the product and your target audience.
This of course is not easily obtained, and as such most people stop too soon in the process of getting it.
They assume that if the surface difference is not striking enough, there are no differences.
But if they’re willing to dig deeply enough or far enough, they will always find that between every product and its consumers, there is an individuality of relationship which may lead to an idea.
Famous copywriter David Oglivy said “collect 17 times more information than you need”
Of equal importance with Specific knowledge is General knowledge (more like our experiences in life)
So, what this tells us is that an idea is a result from a new combination of Specific knowledge (about the product and your target audience) with General knowledge (about life events and our experiences in life.)
Stated in a different way…
The more experiences of the world we have stored away in that pattern-making machine, the mind, the more chances for production of new and striking combination of ideas are increased.
This is the first step in producing ideas.
Now assuming we have done the ruthless job of gathering and consuming raw materials, we may now proceed to…
Stage 2:
This is where the mind must go through the process of constantly thinking about the information it just consumed.
This part is a bit harder to explain in concrete terms because this goes on entirely inside your head.
But put simply…
What you do here is to take different facts from the materials which you have gathered and look at them from different angles.
You pick up the facts and you try to see the connections, the relationships…
You try connecting the dots and finding the link so everything can come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle.
As you do this, two things will happen.
First: Little tentative ideas will come to you.
Make sure you put those down.
Never mind how crazy or how incomplete they may seem.
Your mind is still processing the raw materials, so write them down.
Second: thing is you will get very tired of trying to fit your puzzle together.
When you get to this stage, please do not stop so soon.
The mind is a supercomputer which has a second generator. So, keep trying to get one or two partial thoughts down.
Just when you reach the stage where everything is a jumble in your mind, well congratulations.
You just reached the hopeless stage.
When you reach this point, if you have first really persisted in efforts to try and fit your puzzle together, you are now ready for…
Step 3:
This is where you drop it. Yes, drop it.
Drop the whole subject and walk away like you do from a crazy woman. Put the problem out of your mind as completely as you can.
Listen carefully…
This process is just as necessary as the two preceding steps.
What you do this time is turn over the problem to your unconscious mind, and let it work while you sleep…or indulge in whatever your little heart desires.
Turn over to what stimulates your emotions and drop the problem completely.
Listen to music, watch a movie on Netflix, go have some ice-cream or you can go play the amazing spiderman on your brand new PS5.
Then while it’s out of your mind completely, you will almost surely experience…
Step 4:
Where out of know nowhere, your Big Idea will appear.
It will come to you when you are least expecting it.
It can come while you’re in the shower, or you’re half-awake in the morning.
It may even wake you up in the middle of the night.
When you get your idea, your basic idea, you will then have to sit down and restate it, writing is as an emotionally compelling, sellable idea.
This, then is the whole process or method by which big ideas are generated.
If you use this process each time you sit down to write a sales letter, in essence what you’re doing is training yourself to come up with big, sellable ideas.
Then sooner rather than later, you will be able to come up with that Big Idea sales letter that will make your client so much money.
