How to Come Up With Ideas for New Services, Programs and Marketing Projects
With the MAG Program as a Case Study
By Robert Middleton
1. Have a clear purpose and specific goals you want to achieve or a problem you want to solve. This should be central to your business, something that is important, vital, exciting and challenging.
My goal was to come up with a new marketing program that could generate between $4K and $5K a month that would provide high-value information and support for participants.
2. Do research – Google, Medium, YouTube. Think about it, talk about it, brainstorm about it. Write down a lot of ideas in Evernote or in notebooks.
I did a lot of this and simply spent a lot of time thinking and generating ideas and rejecting most of them. I thought of all kind of formats and structures and content.
At this time I was also writing a number of articles for my eZine/Blog on the topic of doing outreach marketing. I wrote six or seven articles on the topicand started to get excited about it.
3. Let is rest for a while. Stop thinking about it or paying attention to it. Forget it. Do some other work.
This comes naturally to me. I have limited time to develop new ideas as I’m always working with a lot of clients, writing my ezine, etc. So when I want to create a new project, I’ll put in some intensive time and then take a break from that to work on other things.
4. When the idea pops up, then write a whole lot about it, everything the idea includes, everything that needs to get done. Then start organizing and prioritizing action steps.
The catalyst for my program idea was something one of my clients was doing. He had created a checklist to keep him on track with his outreach activities with a goal to contact someone every day. I had a “Eureka Moment” and saw the possibility to create a program that revolved around that. And then I wrote about that and more articles about direct outreach marketing.
Ultimately, for the MAG program I came up with three main ideas: 1) Have the program revolve around consistent outreach to prospects. 2. Have it be an ongoing program where people could join or leave anytime to maintain the vitality of the group. 3. Price it so that it was affordable but not so cheap that people didn’t take it seriously.
5. Go to work intensively, to put your idea into action.Get support or assistance if you need it. Do all you can to keep it alive and on track.
I started by writing a document that outlined all the components of the program, all the actions I need to take and a timeline for launching. Then I took about a day and created the whole online platform with the course materials. Then I wrote the online sales letter, and the pre-launch emails.
Now that the program is in session, I continue to develop new topics and materials for the various sessions. And I’m tying in my email newsletter with the topic of the weekly MAG session. I never want this program to get stagnant.
The primary idea popped up mid-March; work on the program started immediately and the launch started mid April with a start-date on the second Tuesday of May. The program filled within one week of opening it up to enrollments.
Some Tips:
1. Don’t take on a huge goal or project unless you’ve mastered smaller goals or projects. Also know your resources and what’s possible to do with what you have.
2. Stay as organized as possible. Have a place for everything and keep things in those places. I’ll create a master project file for every program I do and then put in sub files for various components of the project in the master project file.
3. Keep researching, brainstorming and coming up with new ideas. For instance in this program, I want to come up with a new idea or topic each week.
Resources
I highly recommend the book, How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster. It’s available on Amazon as a book or Kindle. Get the 2nd edition as it has some extra valuable materials.
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