Advertising

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/


The obvious thing to do would be to read this email

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A few days ago I found myself receiving, reading, and finishing a small pamphlet-sized book titled “Obvious Adams” in under an hour.

The book tells the story of a young man, who wasn’t particularly creative or quick-witted, yet, but still entered the advertising world, quickly made a name for himself, rose up to become vice-president of the biggest advertising agency, and surprised everyone with his incredibly successful, very profitable, yet all the while extremely simple and ‘obvious’ solutions, resulting in some of the biggest and best advertising campaigns of all time.

It’s not so much a “teaching you what to do” book, but much more a how to do it and, more importantly, how NOT to do it.

The message of the book itself is quite boring, somewhat logical, and completely “obvious” when said out loud. Yet still so very often forgotten, especially in the sales, marketing, and advertising industries.

I.e. analyze the situation, think about it, and do the obvious thing—don’t make it any more difficult than it has to be.

Speaking of.

The obvious thing to do for me would be to tell you to check out Email Valhalla.

After all, it’s only obvious that learning how to write better and more entertaining emails that get you paid is the best thing almost anyone in business can do.

So check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


To sponsor or not to sponsor

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Once in a while, I’ll write an email, plugging someone else’s offer, doing a sponsor deal, or even including a classified (or PPC) ad—like you saw me do two days ago.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that last year.

Not because I didn’t think I could do so (everyone can) but simply because, at least back then, I told myself I’d do any ads because why would I advertise for someone else’s stuff if I could just sell my own and earn more?

I still believe that, at least to a certain extent, but, as with anything, there are exceptions.

First, sometimes you just don’t care, don’t want to offer, or simply can’t offer (either because of a lack of expertise, time, or other resources) a certain solution that would help your readers out.

Would it then be fair to withhold such an opportunity from your readers?

No, of course not.

My main goal, first and foremost, will always be to keep the customer and the market in mind, think about what they want (read: need—the customer doesn’t even know what they want, let alone what they truly need), and how I can offer it to them.

So in that case, I’ll gladly refer people to someone else to buy from or do business with—and if I can get paid for it in the meantime, then even better.

Another one.

There’s always unused capacity in everything you do—daily emails are no exception.

Yeah, I can write daily emails selling my own stuff all the time (and I mostly do), but I can’t be running promotions 24/7, and even when I’m not running promotions, there’s always a diminishing return from sending more emails (most people don’t send enough emails to notice it though, me including). So withholding one email here and there to write an affiliate email or do a sponsored post is making use of the unused capacity and filling the gap or “less optimized” email you would otherwise have sent.

Last but not least.

It’s simple and doesn’t require much (if any) investment on your part (not every reason has to be profound, right?).

Anyway.

This has been an important lesson for me (and one I found valuable enough to share with you) and marks another clear sign of personal growth in my entrepreneurial journey of email marketing.

That said.

If you’d like to pick up pace in your own journey and learn more about email marketing and building, growing, and selling to your list then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?

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I’m currently in the midst of creating a course about paid advertising.

More specifically, a course about paid advertising aimed towards creatives (including self-published fiction authors).

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times before in previous emails. And everytime I do so I always get some questions from readers eager to get their hands on it.

Sometimes those questions are to ask when the course is coming, what they can expect from it, and whether it’s going to help them in particular.

Other times it’s questions from people wanting some help with their ads at the moment.

One of those “help me” questions I got recently was about how to navigate the enormous dashboard of data, statistics, acronyms, and confusing numbers every major ad platform throws at you.

What’s important, what does it all mean, and how should you decide what to do depending on what those numbers are telling you?

A good (and popular) question indeed.

More.

Watch any video about paid advertising, open any book, go to any course, and chances are you’ll get overwhelmed with all kinds of numbers, acronyms, and terminology to the point of utter and complete confusion where you don’t know what to do.

More often than not people will immediately stop right then and there, thinking this is way too complicated (they’re right) and it’s not for them (they’re wrong).

The truth is, most courses are making it way more difficult than it needs to be (almost as if they’re doing it on purpose, hoping you’ll ask the author of the course if they have a “done-for-you” service—which they almost always have).

But all of that is completely unnecessary.

In fact, there are only really three (3!) numbers/acronyms you need to know to run a successful business powered by paid advertising.

These three numbers alone can help you decide whether your ads are working, if you should let them keep running as is, switch it up, try other variations, add upsells or downsells to your funnel, try another marketing angle, switch up the targeting, adjust your phrasing, limit the daily budget, and so much more.

Even more.

Those course creators I talked about before?

Most of them pretty much only rely on these three numbers as well. They don’t always mention they do, but at the end of the day. Those are the only ones that matter.

Which three numbers I’m referring to and exactly how to approach them for you and your business can be found in my upcoming and soon-to-be-released paid ads course.

For now, you’ll just have to hang tight and keep your eyes open.

If, however, you have ad-related questions or topics you’d like me to address, feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

I won’t promise I’ll have the answer, but chances are pretty high I do.


They Laughed When I Made An Email List – But When The Sales Started Coming In!

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There are two types of people in life:

Those who recognized the subject line and those who didn’t.

Let me explain:

See, one of the most famous ads ever written was the historic masterpiece written by John Caples and its headline was “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano – But When I Started to Play!”

Caples then goes on to tell a (made up—which is dubious in its own right and quite possibly illegal nowadays) story about a man who sat down to play piano at a gathering with his friends.

The good friends they are all started laughing because this man had (as far as they were aware) never played a single note in his life.

But then, suddenly the man started playing the most magnificent music anyone had ever heard.

He earned admiration and respect from every single person in the room.

He then tells the story of how he learned to play piano from some music institutes across the country which would send him these lesson bundles to practice on your own (the product the ad is about).

The ad made a shit ton of money and with it easily became one of the most swiped and copied ads ever.

Which is laughably stupid.

Not the money-making part, it’s a good ad. But the swiping part.

The only thing you’re doing with swiping, well, anything, is shooting yourself in the foot. You’re not original, your audience will realize, you will look stupid, nobody will buy your stupid stuff, and you lose all credibility you had as a marketer—which probably wasn’t a lot to begin with since if you’re down to copy someone else’s work, you’re probably also doing a lot of other dubious stuff that hurts your credibility.

Am I calling swipe files stupid? No.

I’m calling the act of swiping stupid.

Swipe files are great for idea generation, to learn what makes something “good” and to improve your own ability.

I have a swipe file full of old-school ads (before 1990) which I open every morning when I hand copy an entire ad—a practice Gary Bencivenga, the world’s greatest living copywriter, and many other top players recommend.

But the stuff you write?

No, that needs to be original.

Your thoughts, your ideas, your interests, your style, and your structure.

You’ll never see me talk about swiping inside my courses. I simply don’t teach you how to copy, how to mindlessly follow some checklist that will undoubtedly end up with bad results, nor how to be a fraud and destroy your entire reputation and credibility.

I give you the tools and principles you need to succeed together with the freedom to experiment and grow on your own personal journey.

I created my courses as more of a guiding hand in the right direction than a step-by-step template on how to do something.

Anyway.

If this didn’t scare you off (which I hope it didn’t because you shouldn’t be on my list in that case) then go check out Email Valhalla today.

Why?

Because I said so. (how’s that for persuasive communication, huh?)

Here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


When (not to) run ads

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As with everything, the answer to “Should I run ads?” is “It depends”.

It all comes down to your current situation and what you’re trying to achieve.

For one, if you don’t have anything to sell yet, it wouldn’t make sense to run any ads. Sure, some people argue running ads can be beneficial to grow your list—which it is. But simply having a list filled with people without having anything to sell to them is a recipe for disaster—let alone the fact that you can’t possibly target your ad towards qualified buyers if you don’t even have anything to sell.

See, business has to be done in the right order.

First, you look at the market you want to sell to. Next, you discover the problems that plague that market. After you made a list of problems, it’s time to pick one or more (preferably one) and build a solution for that problem.

Then, and only then, can it be beneficial to run ads.

A specialized ad speaking to people in your market who struggle with your chosen problem AND want to solve said problem.

Notice how I explicitly mentioned people who want to solve that problem. There’s no point selling people something they don’t want. You won’t convince people that they have a problem. You can only make them aware of just how big a problem is if they’ve already experienced minor issues relating to that problem.

In this short amount of time I’ve already covered multiple mistakes many people make when it comes to running ads—major problems as well, the kind that could cost you thousands every single month if you’re not careful.

And this is sadly just the beginning.

I’ll dive deeper into the many, many mistakes people tend to make over and over again in my upcoming paid ads course for independent creatives.

More information about the course and its release coming soon.

In the meantime, reply back to me with any and all advertising-related questions you’d like me to cover in the course and I’ll make sure to include them as best as I can.


The Great Paid Ads Revolution

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These past few days I occasionally mentioned the new paid ads course I’m working on.

While doing so I’ve gotten a good amount of replies from people.

Some were eager to know when they could expect the course to be finished, others wanted to share their experiences running paid ads and ask for my advice about what I would do in their situation.

Either way, it seems quite some people are enthusiastic about running paid ads (now or in the future).

This got me wondering.

What are your thoughts about using paid traffic to consistently and predictably grow your email list, build a stable income stream, and free up more time which you can spend writing, drawing, fishing, raiding along the shores of Madagascar, or doing whatever your heart desires?

Are you currently running paid ads by any chance? Have you experimented with them in the past but couldn’t make it work? Or are simply planning on playing around with paid traffic in the future but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then I’d love to hear more about you and your situation.

What you like about it, what you struggle with, what you’re afraid of, and especially what you’re hoping to accomplish with your paid ads endeavors.

Simply hit reply and let me know.


Do not run ads if you’re not getting paid

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Imagine if I’d ask 100 people the following question:

“Should you run ads if those ads aren’t making you any money?”

Now, I’d imagine all 100 of those people would answer “no”. You’d probably give me the same answer (at least I hope you would).

But then you look at what people are doing, and boy it’s a mess out there.

The amount of people who are running ads to their free lead magnets, straight to their opt-in page asking people to join their (free) email list—without making any upsells or qualifying their readers—or, and this is the worst of all, asking them to follow their social media page.

See, I get it.

The thought process goes something like this: “Me want make money. Guru says build following with big numbers. Me run ads for big numbers. Big numbers give me money.”

Although I might have explained the thought process in too much detail and made it too complex to follow—especially for the types of people who follow that type of thought process.

That said.

I hope you can see the issue. If not, let me explain it to you step-by-step.

Let’s say you are in fact running ads straight to your free lead magnet. You probably already understand the importance of building a list and good for you. But you clearly misunderstand what it means for a list to be “high-quality” (spoiler alert: big numbers isn’t it).

In this case, you’d be building a list filled with people who only joined your list because of the free stuff you were giving away.

The result?

You’ve got a list full of freeloaders and tire kickers, none of who will ever pay you a single penny, no matter how good of an offer you make them. They simply won’t pay and they won’t care.

(This is the same reason why you never run “Engagement” Facebook ads if you’re hoping to get some sales—you’ll only get people who like, comment, and follow everything they see, but never, ever buy something. But that’s another story for another time.)

“But Alex, I’ve seen plenty of famous and well-known entrepreneurs such as Russel Brunson, or big multinationals run ads “selling” free stuff”.

Do you have the same budget they do? Do you know your numbers as well as they do? Have you been in the game for as long as they have?

No?

Then stop comparing yourself to them. They’re quite literally playing a whole other game than you are.

The point is this.

Ads are an incredibly powerful (and surprisingly simple) tool you can use to build an effective, consistent, and reliable business. As long as you’re using them to to get clients or sell your offers.

In fact, I find them so useful myself that I’m building an entire course teaching you how to write, run, and profit from ads in a simple and straightforward manner—specifically focused on creatives and those who work in the entertainment industry.

I’ll let you know more about this course later, so definitely keep an eye out for this one.

It’s going to be worth it, I guarantee it.


Stop writing ads if you want to see success

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The more I experiment with creating and running ads, the more I’ve come to realize that most people have come to hate (or at least severely dislike) regular advertising.

Not just because of all the grifters and used car salesmen out there.

But mainly because there’s advertising everywhere you look. People simply can’t escape it anymore—and most of that advertising is boring at best and outrageously disastrous at worst.

See, when it comes to ads that perform, you’ll want to do two things:

1) Entertain

2) Inform

Most ads fail to do either.

Those who succeed in one of them focus way too much on it, so much so that they completely forget and disregard the other.

Yet, there’s an easy trick to get it right without even having to think about it (or even looking at it as “creating an ad”).

The trick?

To use the same principles for your ads as you’d use when it comes to creating high-performing content—which is something a lot more people are able to get right and, definitely not unimportant, you can easily practice without having to spend a single penny.

Think about it this way:

What is an ad if not one of your best-performing pieces of content?

Either way.

While I haven’t got a course for you on how to create, run, and manage high-performing ads to boost your business (it is, however, in the making and will be here sooner than you think). I do have a course helping you pump out tons of emails which are (you guessed it) highly entertaining AND informative which will make you sales and keep your readers reading day after day.

Click here if you’d like to learn more about that: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Why new stuff is almost always way worse than the old stuff

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One of the founding fathers of modern-day marketing, and more specifically advertising, is Claude C. Hopkins who first published “Scientific Advertising” back in 1923.

It’s an amazing read which I highly suggest to everyone who even remotely comes close to advertising anything, no matter what, why, or how.

In fact, I’d argue you should read it multiple times in a row. That’s what I’m doing right now, in fact—I’m currently on my god-knows-how-many read-through and I keep learning new stuff.

You can read the entire thing in one sitting if you’d like.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking “But Alex, that book is from 1923, surely that’s outdated and there are better books for me to read right now?”.

I thought so too at first.

But boy how wrong I was.

See, advertising and marketing at their core are psychological disciplines. It’s essentially salesmanship in print as Hopkins described it in his book. And if there’s anything to know about sales & psychology, it’s that people’s psyche doesn’t change. If something used to be true back in Ancient Rome, then chances are it still holds true today.

Sure the medium changes, and maybe even certain ideas, beliefs, and cultural ideals. But the underlying principles everything is based on don’t.

Another fact to consider is that the best way to stand out is to “be different”.

So modern books, teachings, and people who want to “compete” with such old-school legends and more-than-holy scriptures on the art of advertising, by definition, have to do things differently or else they won’t even stand a chance in competing.

But what happens when people want to compete with a near-perfect book (in this case at least)?

That’s right…

You end up with something slightly worse at best and completely and utter bollocks at worst.

That’s the case for every piece of information in every market targeted to every demographic and applied to every medium there is. No exceptions.

Something to think about.

Anyway, I’m not saying I’ve got knowledge anywhere near to the level of that of Hopkins. But I always focus on only taking in the best, most-trustworthy, and effective information from the old-school myths, legends, and pioneers.

Take for example Email Valhalla, my flagship course which teaches you all about writing emails that get you sales, no matter what market you’re in or what you’re selling, and keeps readers reading day after day.

There’s nothing truly new in the course.

No shiny bells or whistles.

But it is one of the only (I only know a handful of others) courses that brings everything from the top dogs who knew what they were doing together and teaches it in a modern jacket and a teaching style that’s uniquely mine and mine alone (that means no-nonsense, no bullshit, no time-wasting, and ultimately memorable and effective).

If that tickles your fancy, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla