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How important are big ideas, truly?

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Once upon a time the great, late David Ogilvy wrote:

“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers… Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”

And so it goes for a whole lot more than just your advertising. In fact, chances are, unless your product contains a big idea, it’ll be a pain in the proverbial to sell, let alone sell to a cold audience who’s never heard of you before.

Sure, some products can sell without a big idea. But those usually die off extremely quickly. You also won’t find many such products in many markets. You might have a shot in some unsaturated markets here or there, but for the most part you’re out of luck.

Not having a big idea in your product, service, marketing, advertising, or anything else means you’re either competing on mechanism, brand recognition, or, worst of all, price.

This whole lesson is something I’ve only begon to truly understand in the past couple of months.

I’ve heard about big ideas before then. People had told me how important they are. I acted as if I knew what they were talking about—I even acted as if I made all of my products with big ideas in mind…

But truth be told, I didn’t know jack shit.

It’s a giant concept that takes a whole lot of personal experience and skin in the game to truly comprehend just how important it is.

For one, what makes a big idea “BIG”? And where do they come from? Do you just come up with them or do you have to find them somewhere? Can you turn a regular idea into a “big idea”? How can you truly test, with real life feedback from your target audience, whether your big idea is actually good? And what do you do once you’ve finally found a big idea?

There are so many once you take the time to dig deeper and truly look into it. But luckily for you, I’ve already done most of the heavy lifting in getting to the bottom of it.

More.

I’ve dedicated the entire first issue of my new monthly newsletter, Alex’s Marketing Adventures to the topic of Big Ideas.

I give you all of the information you need to know. All that’s left to do for you is to make sure you’re subscribed to my Marketing Adventures before the deadline, which is tomorrow the 31st at midnight CET, then read the issue I’ll send straight to your inbox the next day.

Go here for more information about my Marketing Adventures: https://alexvandromme.com/adventures/


My fantastic marketing adventures and where to find them

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Yesterday I teased about a new offer I brought to life…

A unique way to write truly in-depth about different topics I find extremely interesting—a way that’s incredibly valuable and highly entertaining. Something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now already, but never really started with.

In a way this goes back to my roots. To the time when I still wrote weekly emails (for those who’ve been around long enough to remember).

What a wildly different time that was…

In a way, this new offer is also a completely different beast than those weekly emails. Sure, I did some research for those weekly emails. But never really that much. Those were mostly stuff I thought about on the spot, something I felt like writing about regardless of what I was currently doing. And something that, more often than not, I could write in just one go.

Not so much for this current offer.

It’s wildly more in-depth and easily 10–15 times longer while being better writing with less fluff because I 1) take my time writing, revising, and improving this new offer and 2) because I’ve become a better writer overall in the last 2 years.

The offer in question?

Something I like to call Alex’s Marketing Adventures because that’s main theme. Thoroughly sharing what I learn on all of my adventures (and believe me, they’re real adventures), which mostly have to do with marketing in some way or another.

More precisely, Alex’s Marketing Adventures is an entirely digital monthly newsletter, delivered directly to your inbox every 1st of the month, but with a slightly different structure and premise to it.

The crux?

At the end of every month, I’ll look back at what I spend most of my time doing, researching, and learning about and that’ll be the topic of the Marketing Adventure of the month.

And the very first issue—which I’ll send out in just three days and for which the deadline to join is March 31st at midnight CET, that’s in 2 days—is all about “Fantastic Big Ideas and Where to Find Them”.

But more about that and what you can expect from that first issue in tomorrow’s email.

For now, if you’d like to learn more about Alex’s Marketing Adventures and decide whether it’s something you might be interested in (before the deadline in 2 days to get the first issue), then I’d highly suggest you check it out now.

Here’s the link to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/adventures/


It’s about damn time

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For quite a while now, I’ve been looking into different possibilities of how to write truly long, detailed, and extremely in-depth about all kinds of topics I’m extremely interested and excited about in a way that’s both incredibly valuable and highly entertaining.

I thought about starting to write long-form articles and posting them on my website. That could work. It might even improve my SEO a bit and get me some tractions from Google, helping me passively grow my list that way.

But it just didn’t feel right… I might still do this, but not yet.

And sure, I could make new courses about everything, but a course doesn’t always scratch the same itch. A course isn’t as timely or personal as I’d like some of my writing to be.

So I thought of something else.

Something I’m incredibly excited for. Something I should’ve started a long time ago, in fact. And something I’ll share a lot more details about in the following days.

But for now, while there’s still a surprise factor to it, check out what I’m talking about right here: https://alexvandromme.com/adventures/


On book-cleaning duty

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Just the other day I was cleaning my wishlist for future books to buy and read.

And with ‘cleaning’ I mean deleting all of the overrated junk books I added to that list over 2 years ago when I didn’t know what actual good quality books—both fiction and non-fiction—looked like and I purely followed whatever was hot at the time or whatever the “top 10 books to read” listicle of the month was being shared on Twitter.

That’s how I ended up with books such as Think and Grow Rich, Atomic Habits, The 48 Laws of Power, How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Four Agreements, The Daily Stoic, and many, many others like it on my bookshelf.

Some of them I read, some of them I only read a few pages before dumping them and moving on to the next.

But all in all, I’m glad to be able to remove all of these books from my wishlist and to recognize the quality of the books I once read, and sometimes even adored, in the past. It shows me how much I’ve grown. How much I’ve learned and come to realize what matters and what doesn’t. And most importantly, how much I’ve trained my bullshit, or in kinder words, my flawed-argument-aimed-at-a-mass-market-audience detector.

Now, I have no idea how many books I removed or how many were on my list when I started—I didn’t check.

But I do know how many I’ve got on my wishlist right now… over 500 books!

Just to give some perspective: I only really started reading, collecting, and wishlisting books in the past 2 years or so and my current collection of books in my bookshelf is just shy of a 100.

I might have said this before, but if you would’ve told me about this just 3–4 years ago I would’ve called you crazy. Me? Reading books daily? And having a ginormous list of books I want to read??

Truly absurd.

Anyway. I don’t really know where I’m going with this except for sharing a fun and perhaps insightful anecdote about your ability to predict to future.

As for another future prediction I feel a lot more confident in than the knowledge of what I’ll enjoy doing in 5 years time: despite people saying email has been dead for years and years now, email doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. In fact, even with Google’s latest announcement of making it easier for people to check their current email subscriptions all in one place, and allowing them to easily unsubscribe, this will only make it so much more lucrative for people who know what they’re doing, who write engaging emails people want to read, and who aren’t seen as yet another newsletter filling their inbox with spam.

As time goes on, the competition will only get smaller.

So now might just be a great time to improve your email writing ability and prepare for what’s to come in a way that’s all but guaranteed to grow your skillset, your business, and your wallet.

To do so, check out my flagship course, Email Valhalla, right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


On the argument of pyramid schemes

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Stubborn people love to mention the whole “coaches coaching coaches on how to coach coaches” thing all the time.

Most of them also like to use the argument of “the fat personal trainer”.

But when you think about it, those two arguments mostly contradict one another.

See, the first is used to make fun of everyone and everything being a pyramid scheme. “Oh you teach other people how to do X so they can do X and teach other people how to do X as well? That’s a scam,” they say.

It’s a convincing argument if you’re only using 2 brain cells.

Not to mention the fact that this implies that every single teacher, university professor, coach, consultant, and even your local kindergarten teacher is running a pyramid scheme (yes, people teaching in kindergarten once used to be in kindergarten themselves).

On the other hand.

Those same people will use the argument that “nobody buys from a fat personal trainer” (which is true) but then again, implies that every person teaching you how to coach (can be replaced with anything) has to be a coach (again, replace with anything) themselves.

So clearly they can’t make up their minds.

Which is great, because that leaves the playing field open for the big guys and gals like us to profit from.

But why am I talking about this?

You see, if you’re anything like me, you might have wondered whether what these short-sighted and stubborn trolls are saying might actually have some truth to it.

I have actually worried about “doing the right thing” in the past myself.

And here’s the thing.

This is how the world works. This is how information and education gets passed on from generation to generation.

You learn something from someone who has a lot of experience in said thing. And then you can do that same thing yourself. But with the added bonus of being able to choose how you apply it.

Let’s say I want to learn how to play the guitar.

I might want to go to a master at playing the guitar and ask me to teach him. This guy in question could be a true master at playing the blues. And he’ll distill his wisdom of playing the blues onto me.

During the process, I’ll learn how to play the blues really well, as well as get an almost complete overview of how to play the guitar in general.

Now, I can choose to specialize in blues as well (maybe even teach it myself if I wanted to), or I can venture forth and experiment with other styles.

In my case, I’ll probably dabble more into classical guitar or flamenco.

I’ll learn the basics, and then, if I’m really passionate about it, I might even add to the body of knowledge of flamenco guitar by adding slight flavors, textures, and improvements to it that I picked up from having a teacher who played the blues.

Thus creating and adding value to society and the world.

Then the next generation comes around and will build upon my contributions.

This is how knowledge is passed on. This is what people mean when they say “standing on the shoulders of giants”.

Sometimes it’s a few people who made a lot of contributions.

Most of the time it’s many thousands of people who each made small contributions generation after generation.

Speaking of contributions.

I didn’t invent the entire market of creating and selling digital products. But I learned what I could from people who came before me, from all types of different fields, and then went into the industry myself, added my own flavors from experiences I’d gained in different fields, and added to the body of knowledge by creating (and sharing) my own unique frameworks.

More specifically, a framework that’ll help you ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

Which you can check out here if you’d like to earn more: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme