Different is the New Better - How do You Stand Out in the Sea of Sameness? By Using Big Ideas and Creative Execution

Eric Eden:
0:59

Our guest today is Daniel. Daniel is a very experienced marketer and he's going to talk to us today about how to generate big ideas. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing and who you are, so everyone has sensed that, before we jump into your great marketing story? Thanks so much.

Daniel Den :
1:18

Eric. So our big thing, what we've done over the past 11 years now, we've helped over 20,000 students and clients. And the way we do it, eric, is with our X Factor Effect methodology, and that is a methodology that's all about breaking through the noise in your market and becoming a market leader or category king or category queen, and people absolutely love it because they're seeing results and for anybody that's out there, that's they're struggling breaking through the noise, because there's a lot of noise out there. Right. Forbes says there's four to 10,000 pieces of marketing like buying for our attention every single day. That's how much clutter is out there. So the question is how do we break through that clutter? And we help people break through the clutter.

Eric Eden:
2:14

I agree. There's thousands of marketing messages coming in us every day and I think 99.9% of them are pretty terrible. So the idea of this podcast is let's highlight that top 1%. That's really great. Tell us about some of the marketing you've done that's in that top 1% that you're most proud of. That's remarkable.

Daniel Den :
2:38

One of our favorites that we like to share is the first event we ever did was for a thousand people. This was down in Sao Paulo, brazil, and then the biggest event we did was for 7,400 people. So how did did you get 7,400 people to come to an event? So here's a quick story about things to inspire people. All right, how do we do that, eric? I'm a Dan Kennedy fan. You a Dan Kennedy fan, eric?

Eric Eden:
3:09

Yeah, I know about Dan Kennedy, of course.

Daniel Den :
3:11

Of course. So Dan Kennedy, he's all like direct marketing. It's the only way. Like you got to do direct marketing, and I'm there, let's do marketing. That's direct marketing. It's all results, it's all. I am one, like 99% of the time it's yes, we got to go the direct marketing route because we need to measure things, we need to like, we need to see results. But I'll tell you what, eric, let's flip the script here, because the truth is, when we got up to 7,400 people to come to one of our events, we did not do it Necessarily because of our direct marketing.

Daniel Den :
3:51

What we did was a very advanced strategy. We call it creating a core belief, and what we did was on social media is we started to spread this core belief and we started to attract a massive audience through a core belief and we had our dream customers adopt our core belief, adopt our way of thinking. This is sounding a little bit evil, eric Eden. I know that I'm saying this out loud. This sounds a little bit evil, but it's not. It's just really smart marketing. So we had people adopt this core belief. What we did was it was all on purpose. We knew that if we could get a large audience to adopt the core belief that they would want to buy our products and services as a natural consequence of the new core belief that they adopted.

Eric Eden:
4:46

Okay, so I'm starting to have visions of minions out of the line Maybe you could just mention that we will fart and also because I try to work minions in as many PowerPoint presentations as I can. Sorry, continue, no, that's perfect.

Daniel Den :
5:02

But so the question people then have is okay, daniel, I get it like partially, give me the example. What's the core belief? Okay, so our core belief was hey, business owners, if you're struggling to break through the noise in your market and if you're competing on price so a lot of our dream customers they have this problem where they're competing on price, they're trying to make sales and then they're lowering their prices and then their competition is lowering their prices and then they get into this price war and then it's, oh my gosh, like how am I supposed to run a business if, like, I'm selling for half of what I used to, right, and in the end of the war, it's like a big pain point in business if you've ever had to deal with it. And so we said oh, if you're struggling with price wars, right, and if you're struggling to break through the noise in your market, the reason why is because you are caught up in the sea of sameness, and the solution is that you need to differentiate yourself inside of your market to the point where you become a unicorn inside of your market. You need to differentiate yourself to the point where you are a clear alternative. So great example, because we love examples, eric, we love examples.

Daniel Den :
6:31

Let's use a commodity example. Let's use bananas, since we were talking about menus. So when it comes to bananas, a bunch of yellow bananas like three pounds at the store, it's gonna cost you a couple dollars, right, it's a couple dollars, right? Maybe three dollars if you're shopping at a higher-end grocery store, it always depends Just two, three dollars, right? For three or four pounds of normal yellow bananas. Now there's this banana, eric.

Daniel Den :
7:00

Have you heard of the blue Java banana? I have not. The blue Java banana, eric, the minions are gonna love this. The blue Java banana. It's a real thing and it's a banana where there is a actual blue tint to the banana, like it's a bluish banana. Okay, so imagine a bluish banana and the taste of the banana is very unique, but they're so hard to get a hold of. But the taste the minions go crazy for it. They say that it tastes like vanilla ice cream and so sometimes it's nicknamed the ice cream banana.

Daniel Den :
7:42

Okay, so you got this blue Java banana, tinted blue, it's a bluish banana and it has the taste of vanilla ice cream. Wow, that's desirable. Now, why is that desirable, eric? It's desirable because it is different, it's new, it's exciting and this is a real thing. I'm not making this up, this is a real thing. The blue Java banana exists. It's super rare and to get to buy them it's gonna cost you about 30 times more than your normal banana. So for that three, four or five pounds of blue Java bananas shipped to your door, it's gonna cost you like $97 if you can get a hold of them, because they're so hard to get a hold of.

Eric Eden:
8:34

Now, the sea of sameness is a place that I don't want to be because it feels like it would be a race to the bottom on pricing. Like you were saying, being different and standing out is the way to get the price premium right.

Daniel Den :
8:50

Exactly so. To wrap up the story because this was a long, roundabout way to tell the story of how we got 7,400 people to on it we started selling this belief that you have to be different in a way where you can become that unicorn in your market where you stack those differences. So you need to be like the blue Java banana where you can't be compared to the yellow bananas. You need to be like the blue Java banana where you're unique, you're different, you're rare, you're exciting, you're all these amazing things that your dream customers want.

Daniel Den :
9:22

And we started teaching this concept that different is the new better. And we started selling this belief all day, every day, on social media, and we grew a following of about 2 million people across all of our social media accounts that started to believe that the solution for market success inside of your business, inside of your niche, was to be different. That's the belief. Pretty far apart. Yeah, if you're different, that is the solution. Different in a way that your dream customers love. Different is the new better, different is the key to becoming that market leader, that category king, that category queen. And we sold this belief all day, every day, and people a portion of our audience that adopted this belief said I believe.

Eric Eden:
10:14

And so was those 2 million followers that you got on social. Did that all come for organic, or was it a mix of advertising and organic?

Daniel Den :
10:22

Yeah, it was a mix of both, because we would promote our pieces of content that sold this belief, and then, of course, we promoted like crazy whenever we were selling tickets for our events, for our mentoring programs, et cetera. But the big thing is that the catalyst behind everything that we were able to do in order to get people to come to our events was that we had this incredible core belief that we sold. And then, when people adopted that core belief, they wanted to become part of the tribe, they wanted to come to the events, they wanted to buy the courses, they wanted to jump on the webinars, and it was what drove everything. And that's what made it so that our first event that we did for in 2017, we were able to get 1,000 people to come to that event. And then, our biggest event to date we were able to do for 7,400 people, and that, eric Eden, is the story of what I probably say is our most successful marketing campaign of all time.

Eric Eden:
11:31

Event marketing is huge and that's a huge audience. What would you say was the impact of doing a big event like that with 7,400 people?

Daniel Den :
11:41

I still have really cool pictures today that I post on social media all the time from that event. I think, Eric, I sent over the picture where I'm rapping on stage, so at that event I was able to rap on stage in front of our 7,400 people. So people still talk about that event today. We sold like crazy during the event and we had our first million-dollar profit day.

Eric Eden:
12:09

A million-dollar profit date sounds pretty great.

Daniel Den :
12:12

Full transparency with that massive event. And now we're taking our methodologies with the X Factor Effect worldwide and I was like, hey, I'm going to launch this book, but I have to follow what I preach, eric, so I have to do things differently. I can't just launch a book like everybody else for the X Factor guys. That would be lame. I launched my book in a way different way than everybody else and, if you want, I could talk about that really quickly. What we did behind that yeah, please, awesome, eric, you've got one of these right. What is it in influence? What I did was I created this interactive book box experience where, instead of just doing a Free Plus Shipping Book Funnel, I said what if I am the first Free Plus Shipping Book Funnel that comes with a free box experience? What I wanted to do, eric, is I wanted to offer anybody that's listening access to one of these boxes for free Free Plus Shipping. You just go to bigideasboxcom big ideas with an S.

Eric Eden:
13:16

Thank you for making that offer. I'll link to it in the show notes so people can easily get there. One question I have is around big ideas and creative execution. That was the theme or one of the cultural values for a company that I worked for. That I really liked, because I think a lot of times from a marketing perspective, marketers do a lot of the same things over and over again.

Eric Eden:
13:48

So back to your sea of sameness analogy. You're using the same channels, the same tactics, like Facebook advertising or Google advertising or PR or email marketing. It's all pretty similar in terms of the channels and the tactics and the things you can do. It's not like there's a thousand different tactics. There's like probably 30 or 40 tactics, depending on how you define it, channels and tactics. There's a limited number of them. But really what's interesting is what can people do? That is a big idea with creative execution inside of those channels or tactics. And I believe what you're really helping businesses do you explain the art of being different, which I think is awesome, but what you're really helping people do is think about how to have a different approach in their marketing.

Daniel Den :
14:45

Yeah, you can differentiate by using different marketing channels that your market isn't used to using. If you're the first person that reverts back to advertising and super popular magazines, it could work for you for a little while if you're the only one in your market doing that, but that's not the main way that we differentiate. Yeah, we're mainly using the marketing channels that everybody is using, but we are helping people come up with big ideas that just crash through all the noise, because if you just try to do something slightly different, you'll get slightly better results, but we want to move the needle in a big way. So it's what are like big ideas that really deviate our dream customers' attention. And then let's test those and some people might think that's risky.

Daniel Den :
15:40

We're going to test all these big ideas. There's actually inside of the book. There's a study that we talked about where they found out the creative approach where you're doing things differently On average, it's six times more effective than doing more of the same inside of your market. So if you ever fall into the trap where you're like, hey, let's just do what everybody else is doing because it seems to be working, if you do that, then you should expect the same mediocre results as everybody else. You will get caught up in the sea of sameness and you're missing out on about six times more potential if you take the different and creative approach to your marketing. So that we really push for that, let's come up with big ideas that move the needle instead of small tweaks, like instead of split testing the email headlines which is great, we're all for it but let's bigger picture, like what's the big idea that's going to move the needle, not a small little tweak that's going to move the needle in a small way.

Eric Eden:
16:48

Yeah, I think the big ideas are important because you have to have those foundationally. Lots of people have ideas but they don't execute on them. The examples that you gave us today involve creative execution. For example, with your book in a box experience that's a creative execution that I haven't seen from anybody else, and I've talked to a hundred authors while I have a book and they're like read my book, but it's great.

Eric Eden:
17:15

But your approach is creative execution and it's a big idea. So that's living the dream, if you will. That's one example, and your other example of events and getting seven or eight or other people there and wrapping while you're on stage is also pretty creative execution. I don't know if people even do an event if they're wrapping on stage. Right, congratulations on living the dream and sharing some really good examples that show how people can do that. I assume that 20,000 people that you coach with their businesses have had a lot of success figuring out these sort of big ideas and creative ways to execute. Have you seen that across clients that they've put into place the system and the ideas that you share?

Daniel Den :
18:08

Yeah, we have estimates for how much we've been able to help people move the needle and it's hard to get actual numbers, but we know it's at least $250 million in increased sales from our students and clients who have truly applied what we've taught. And then whenever I say that number, pedro my business partner down over there he's like stop saying that number, it's way bigger than that. I'm like, yeah, we know it's at least that. So we'll just say it's at least that.

Eric Eden:
18:37

The least that you don't need to exaggerate. It is pretty remarkable, so congratulations on that. It's, I'm sure, very rewarding being able to help marketers and business owners come up with big ideas and creative execution. Thank you so much for being with us today sharing these stories and your generous book and a box offer.