How to find good marketing ideas.

I hate the concept of "shower thoughts."

That seductive idea that all you need to do in order to come up with great ideas is stand silently under a stream of hot water, contemplating the secrets of the universe.

I hate it because it pulls attention away from the source of shower thoughts:

Your inputs.

Standing in the shower doesn't give you ideas, it surfaces ideas you've already given yourself through your actions and consumption habits.

It's what you do before the shower that enables the inspiration to come to you.

Now let's apply this to finding good marketing ideas:

Let's suppose you walk into the office tomorrow morning and, BEHOLD!...

Your dispatch board is empty. You're gonna have to send guys home early today. In other words...

You need ideas to fill your calendar on demand.

These days, most people will "prompt" AI to give them ideas. But while there are some merits to AI's research capabilities, it too requires quality inputs.

According to the late, great advertising legend David Ogilvy, good marketing ideas come from three primary inputs:

1. Your Product - study it! Learn every detail about how your new AC systems work. Analyze your Technician's 63-point tune-up inspection. The more you know about the product, the more ideas will come to you. When he was writing ads for Mercedes Benz, Ogilvy sent his team to the Daimler-Benz headquarters for three weeks to interview engineers in order to find good ideas.
2. Your Competition - learn from them! You're not necessarily looking for winning angles here, you're more just looking for opportunities. What position is the rest of the market taking? Is it working? Is it not?
3. Your Customers - talk to them! I bet you'll discover more great marketing ideas by spending half a day interviewing your customers about why they picked you and what they liked/disliked about you than you will in a year of prompting AI to do your ideating for you.

We don't "come up with" ideas in the shower or out of nowhere...

We find them throughout the normal course of our lives and work. What we call "coming up with" ideas is really just the surfacing of ideas that we've already found but haven't realized yet.

Study your product. Analyze your competition. Talk to your customers. Then...

Turn on the shower faucet and let the ideas flow.

❤️ Zac "The Email Guy" Garside