Where do Big Ideas come from (and do you need one to sell your offers)?
In marketing, Big Ideas are as novel, intriguing, encompassing concepts that define the topics, themes and arguments you make in your sales campaigns.
Ad Age says, "Big Ideas do more than just sell a product; they elicit awe and wonder, create spaces where people can escape to and imagine themselves in lives very different from their own. Big Ideas change the way people think."
So where do Big Ideas come from (and do you even need one to sell your offers)?
If you watched Mad Men, you might believe Big Ideas are found at the bottom of a whiskey glass—but you don't actually need to hit rock bottom to find one.
In my personal experience working on my own biz and clients' work...
I've found 3 ingredients make it much more likely that you'll stumble across a Big Idea:
1) Immersive Copy Research
2) Deep familiarity with your niche and what makes you unique
3) Time to noodle—in the shower, on a walk, while you do the dishes
If your Big Idea is sourdough bread, then Immersive Copy Research is your starter.
When you collect insight straight from your clients' mouths, you gain invaluable insight into how they think about you & your brand.
Big Ideas I've sourced for clients from their Immersive Copy Research:
"The tenure clock is ticking" (Productivity Pipeline sales page + evergreen funnel for Jane Jones, PhD)
"Become a Fundable PI" (The Impact Incubator launch funnel for Sarah Dobson)
Deep familiarity with your niche & how you fit into it allows you to carve out space for yourself:
When Don Draper comes up with the "It's toasted" idea for Lucky Strike, his audience comes back at him with, "But they're all toasted 🤨"
"Sure. But we're the ones claiming it," he replies.
Don Draper realizing that the best way to make Lucky Strike stand out is to CLAIM a feature all brands have in common.
^^ One of the biggest parts of your Big Idea is having the vision and the courage to claim it for yourself.
You don't have to be the only business doing something if you're the only one defining it in a unique & desirable way.
Finally, you must have time to noodle.
...time to take a shower and let your mind go blank.
...time to go for a walk and go through your grocery list.
...time to do the dishes while singing along to Fleetwood Mac.
The blank brain space of repetitive tasks is where the insights from your Immersive Copy Research + your exploration of your niche coalesce into Big Ideas.
When I was re-writing the sales page for WeeSleep's Sleep Consultant training program, I heard a lot of their existing consultants say they had previously worked for MLMs, and they didn’t love that that work had required them to sell to their family and friends, or feel like they were contributing to consumer culture.
When I asked them what they loved about their work with WeeSleep, they told me they could see the positive impact they were making in tired parents' lives.
With market research, I noticed that none of WeeSleep's competitors were acknowledging the reality of moms' other options if they wanted to work from home...
And with time to noodle, I turned that insight into the Big Idea that WeeSleep helps moms "turn a trusted brand into [their] own business and make a real difference in other people’s lives".
Now, why am I telling you this today?
Because there's one more ingredient that can make it MUCH easier to find your Big Idea – without 10,000 hours of practice...
And that's getting expert eyes on your Immersive Copy Research, getting expert insight into what makes your offer unique.
Recently, one of the women inside Your Signature Promise shared her sales page for feedback and waaay down at the bottom was a very compelling line. (I won't share it here cuz its hers).
"This needs to be near the top," I said on her Loom review. "This is your Big Idea."
Honing in on that Big Idea will not only help her grab her ideal clients' attention and make them more likely to ACT, it also gives her a theme to work from when it comes to her pre-launch event and her launch emails.
It gives her an open loop to close.
And it gives even the people who don't buy now something to think about, to turn over in their brains, until the next time her doors are open.
So, one last question for you today—
Do you need a Big Idea to sell your signature offer?
No, not really. 🤷♀️
You can write a compelling sales page even if your Big Idea never emerges,
You can 100% make a compelling argument for your offer, even if you don't quite find one concept that encompasses the energy & angle of your offer.
Coming up with a Big Idea isn't a pre-requisite for making sales online—not by a long shot.
But it is an added asset that will help you:
🔥 stand out in a crowded market
🔥 claim valuable real estate inside your ideal client's mind, and
🔥 create even more memorable sales assets – in the form of emails and social posts, plus your pre-launch event – by iterating on the theme of your Big Idea
If you're interested in how I can help you find your Big Idea, check out the details of Your Signature Promise or send me a voice note on Instagram so that we can chat.
