Hello,

I was reading from a well-known marketer recently. He went on (and on, and on) about how a “big marketing idea” is the essence of success. Not the intricacies of user journeys or funnels or copywriting.

I flipped through 29 pages and my head hurt. I was like, “C’mon, get to the point.”

Let me spare you from the agony. 😉

Let’s understand the big marketing idea!

You need a big marketing idea…

Look at these three book covers.

If you don’t see an image above, make sure to enable image loading in your email program.

All three books talk about outsourcing. The book in the middle is by Michael Hyatt, who was already successful when he wrote this. Nobody knew Tim Ferriss until “the 4-hour work week” though. That book exploded to wild success real quick.

Thanks to the big marketing idea.

Mind you, the “product” or “content” idea, but the “4-hour work week” positioning (which is essentially a great marketing idea) had a lot to do with the success of the book.

“The virtual assistant solution” sounds dull and boring. “Outsource everything” feels vague.

The “big marketing idea” is not your typical marketing “hook,” “promise,” “premise,” “theme,” or “benefit-driven headline…” Nor is it the “idea” behind your product, your unique selling proposition, positioning statement, or marketing claims.

Here’s makes a big marketing idea:

• It’s got to be emotionally compelling
• It’s built on a primary promise of your product / service / book
• The promise is delivered by a unique mechanism
• And the whole thing is intellectually interesting – curiosity, discovery, something new…

What’d happen to your marketing if you applied this lesson?

Can you run some experiments to test how this works with your audience?

What’s one next action you can take in this direction?

SEO for images

Relevant images are good for content. And a few simple practices with naming and using images within WordPress can have a big impact on improving your search engine ranks.

Here are the best practices:

• Use a descriptive filename with keywords: – “bird-flies-over-london-bridge.jpg” is better than “birdbridge.jpg”. [Tip: Use hyphens instead of underscores to replace spaces]
• Stick to the most relevant keyword only: Many keywords in image filename will confuse the crawler.
• Provide ALT text / title for images when you insert them in content – again use a descriptive text – not too short, not too long.
• Add context for the image in the content around the image. Search engines will use surrounding text to better understand media.
• Use relevant artwork for featured images: Stock images may not be a good fit.
• Make sure your website has appropriate structured data for the blog posts, featured images, logo etc.
• Google Image crawlers may not be smart enough to read or translate text within an image but instead they rely on structured data and ALT text.
• Compress, resize and optimize images before adding them to your site. Large images slow down the site and create bad user experience. TinyPNG and Birme are good online tools for this.
• Using CDN and lazy image loading can drastically improve site performance and image SEO.

Want a one sentence summary?

Use relevant and optimized images with descriptive file names and proper alt text / titles.

Words, not ideas

Mattie John Bamman struggles with his stage presence, yet delivers some really useful advice about writing books. And his suggestions are useful for blogs and emails too.

Watch his TEDx talk: Words are more important than ideas

I watched at 1.25x speed, and the main ideas are after 2:30.

Another good read: How to write a nonfiction book in 8 steps

A writing prompt

✍

Take a moment, think about what characteristics you like the most about yourself, and write about it.

If we wanted to give a new name to the “Email Subscribers” plugin – something brandable, recallable – what would your suggestion be?

Looking for some ideas. Please reply with your suggestions.

Thanks,