This insane marketing technique is going to change everything.
And it’s arguably one of marketing’s best kept secrets.
In fact, I’d even go as far as to say it’s one of the most powerful techniques I’ve ever come across.
Imagine for a second you could get someone else to spend their time, money, and effort to find out what works for your business.
Better yet, all you had to do was sit and patiently wait whilst they spent thousands out of their own pocket to show you the precise things you could do in your business that’d pull in a never-ending stream of customers.
I’m talking about the best funnels you need to use, the most profitable emails you should be sending, paid ads your future-customers will constantly click on, irresistible subject lines & headlines that convert like crazy, you name it…
ALL on someone else’s dime, and handed to you on a silver platter.
It’s a secret some of the most profitable entrepreneurs and marketers have been using for years to launch insanely successful products, services and businesses.
And the way they’re doing it is to run multi-million-dollar campaigns using other people’s money!
How exactly does this work?
Let me show you…
Why You’re Not In The Business You Think You’re In
The first thing you need to understand is that you’re not in the business you think you’re in.
You’re in the business of selling.
Selling whatever problem-solving solution you have to offer (whether it takes the form of a product or a service).
People like Steve Jobs understood this down to the finest detail. He wasn’t in the business of iPhones, he was in the business of selling iPhones.
Think of it like this…
Say you have a book you’re trying to sell, if you ran two completely different campaigns to sell that book you would get two very different types of responses.
The best example I can think of is a 1982 book called “Astro-Logical Love” by Naura Hayden.
When she first released the book it absolutely bombed.
Convinced her message was a winner, she went back to the drawing board. She changed a few minor things about the book, including the title, and republished it.
The book was now called “How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time… and Have Her Beg for More!”
It went on to become a #1 best seller, a cultural phenomenon, and sold millions of copies!
Same book as before, with the same content, just a different idea behind the title.
The ideas behind how you sell can literally make or break how much you actually end up selling.
Do you see how powerful that is? ?
One strong, big idea can be the difference between bombing and becoming a best-seller.
That’s why ideas are the name of the game.
Which ultimately means you’re in the idea business.
The Secret Shortcut To The Business of Your Dreams
If you want to build the business of your dreams, then it comes down to one thing:
Finding the best ideas.
At the end of the day, the best ideas always win.
That’s why being in the ‘idea business’ means perpetually trying to find the “what” and not the “why”.
The faster you can figure out what ideas work, and not why they work, the faster you’ll find success.
In most cases you don’t know why something works, and that’s why you need to get to that ‘what’ as fast as possible (rather than unnecessarily spending wasted time on the ‘why’).
Whether it’s the emails you’re sending, the paid ads you’re testing, or the promotional copy you’re using – it’s all underpinned by ideas that people either respond to (and give you money as a result) or they simply ignore them and move on.
That’s why you need to become an “idea factory”. The more ideas you can throw out into the world, the more you’ll learn what people respond to and the faster you’ll start to make money.
You’re literally throwing ‘hooks’ out into the market, and different hooks catch different things. Some hooks catch whales, whilst other hooks catch nothing.
You want to find the whale catchers.
The Facebook ad that gets 1000+ people to sign up with you clearly has a stronger hook than the one that barely gets any clicks.
Whale catcher ?
That email campaign that pulled in over 100 sales obviously has a stronger idea behind it than the one that didn’t pull in any sales.
Whale catcher ?
Do you see where I’m going with this?
You want to find as many of those whale-catching hooks and ideas as you possibly can.
Because that’s what fuels the business of your dreams, that’s what it’s built on.
The beauty of big ideas is that they democratize the ability to find customers and make money. Your ability to find and test ideas gives you an advantage over the mammoth businesses out there that have bottomless budgets, hundreds of employees, and seemingly endless R&D departments.
It’s also your biggest advantage over every single one of your competitors.
One big idea can change everything.
That’s why being in the “idea business” is your secret shortcut.
“One idea properly exploited is worth 100 lifetimes of hard work” Gary Halbert
The very notion that you’re in the “idea business” is a game-changer, and something most marketers or entrepreneurs never, ever figure out.
It’s also why so many of them fail.
So, now that you know that the best ideas win, how exactly do you find them???
REVEALED: The Perpetual Source of Money-Making Ideas
Success leaves clues.
And as the world has gone more digital, those clues have become a whole lot easier to find.
Tony Robbins probably put it best:
“If you want to achieve success, all you need to do is find a way to model those who have already succeeded” Tony Robbins
What he’s saying here is that tons of people have already spent countless years of their lives, millions of dollars, mistake after mistake, and untold energy figuring out what works.
Which means that if you can carefully model them (and the ideas that work), you don’t have to make those mistakes.
You can literally shortcut the road to your success by avoiding the pitfalls you normally would’ve experienced along the way.
Modelling ideas that work is the savvy marketers secret to success.
Let other people spend the time, money and effort to figure out what actually works, and then just model them.
When I worked for Agora Publishing we had a term for modelling, we called it ‘localizing’.
In fact, both Agora founder Bill Bonner and marketing stalwart Mark Ford personally taught this to me.
They even emphasized just how important it was that I do this, and how they’d setup the company in such a specific way that it actually facilitated the whole process.
A few times a year I’d look over the sales figures of every other Agora office around the world, and I’d spend some time looking for breakthrough promotions. The proverbial needles in the haystack.
I’m talking about the big ideas that pulled in millions of dollars, month after month.
And for a company that generates over a billion dollars a year, this was like gold dust!
Other people had been spending time, money and effort to test ideas in order to find out which ones made money, and I got to model those ideas and start making money from the get-go.
It felt like marketing with the cheat codes on. It was insane.
Everything from funnels to copy, strategy to paid ads, headlines to products…
It was all at my disposal, and I could literally pick and choose from the best the Agora group had to offer.
But I’m sure at this point you’re probably wondering, “that sounds great Steve, but neither of us has access to Agora’s numbers”.
And sure, you’d be a thousand percent right.
But remember what I said earlier, how success leaves clues?
You just need to know where to find them…
How To Run Successful Campaigns Using OPM (Other Peoples Money)
Agora might have called it localizing, but there are plenty of other names for it.
I’ve seen people call it “repurposing”, others use the term “growth hacking”, and a select group even call it “funnelhacking”.
Whatever you call the art & science of modelling (because it’s definitely a bit of both), you still need to know where to look and what to look at.
The real secret to modelling success lies in these two things.
Money-making ideas don’t just exist on their own, they’re usually wrapped around things like landing pages, ad copy, headlines, processes, sales funnels and so on.
And its those things you want to take note of.
(This is what a swipe file is for)
Screen shot and save as much as you possibly can from your competitors, people in your industry, and the people out there who are finding success.
I usually mark off some time every week to do this (Fridays work best for me), and in the days leading up to that I send myself as much as I come across as possible so that when the time comes I can run through everything with a fine tooth comb. It can sometimes be a bit of a slog, but its worth its weight in gold.
The key here is ideas.
What are people putting on their landing pages, what kinds of headlines are they running with, are they using fear & scarcity or are they making big bold promises?
What goes into their sales funnels, what types of funnels are they using, how are they structuring their upsells and downsells?
What kind of media are they using in their ads (images vs video vs gifs), what colors are they using, how long are the ads, what kinds of benefits are they pushing?
Its not about flat out copying people. Don’t do that, that’s stealing.
It’s about modelling the business and their ideas, not just ripping off their landing pages.
It’s about process – not just tactics – and how that process fits in.
You want to observe and absorb. Its about getting your creative juices flowing and getting inspiration for your next big promotion, or funnel, or email sequence.
The other aspect about this I love is that you get to see what’s actually out there, and what other people are doing.
This gives you context for how you can be different.
Make no mistake, “better” doesn’t always get attention, but “different” does.
Knowing what’s out there is the first step in being different.
Now, there are three specific things I like to look at in order to model:
The Big Idea: What is the central idea that people are responding to in the campaign. You’ll usually find this hiding in the headline, and BIG ideas are simple and easy to spot. In most cases big ideas flow from the initial ad or email to the landing page and through the upsells (if there are any). If its not clear, its not worth your time.
The Funnel: How is what they’re selling structured, and what type of funnels are they using? Are they using webinars or lead funnels, or are they using a free-plus-shipping funnel? Do they have order bumps, and how are their One-Time-Offers structured? Are they using multiple funnels stacked on-top of each other, and what do their thank you pages look like? What types of emails are getting triggered, and are they retargeting people who don’t buy? The answers to these can literally show you the precise things people are doing to sell tons of stuff, and give you the exact blueprint for your next campaign.
The Copy: What ideas are they using in their copy, what headlines are they testing in their ad campaigns, and what words are they using in their email sequences? Look at what they’re saying and what they’re not saying, what kinds of angles, perspectives, and stories they’re using.
Modelling isn’t about cloning, duplicating or ripping off.
It’s about stepping outside of your comfort zone, and getting ideas for the structure of your campaigns, ideas, landing pages, funnels, and copy.
To do this you want to gather as many successful ideas from as many sources you can find, and you then want to test test test.
Once you get this right, your business will start to grow like crazy!
The Biggest Growth Hack You Aren’t Using
The secret to your success lies in finding a way to model those who have already succeeded.
Let other people spend the painstaking hours, effort, energy and money finding out what works, so you don’t have to!
You can do this by localizing, funnelhacking, or repurposing winning ideas.
It doesn’t matter where they come from, just that you find them – but the best ideas always win.
And one idea properly exploited is worth 100 lifetimes of hard work.
Set some time aside and start researching people who are succeeding, and make note of what they’re doing, the ideas they’re using, and the funnels that are making them money.
The easiest way to do this is to save everything in a swipe file, so you can reference it all later.
Why spend the time and money trying to figure out what works when there are people already doing this for you?
Just model them.
Until then, here’s to finding winning ideas.
Steve De La Cour
Founder & CEO
Kong
