Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, once said “An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements.”
And while this is pretty much spot on, it shouldn’t discourage you from trying to create something new.
In fact, it inspired the team at Elena’s Growth Scoop to come up with a framework for generating exciting ideas:
I.D.E.A., which stands for Identify, Decode, Extract, and Apply.
Let’s break it down.
I = Identify. Take a look at other companies’ marketing activities and see what you can learn from their success.
You can do this by:
- Configuring Google alerts for keywords such as “viral.”
- Browsing Product Hunt to seek out creative marketing activities.
- Following hyper-growth companies on social media so you can monitor their successful marketing efforts.
D = Decode. Once you know what was successful, you need to understand how it was successful through reverse engineering.
- Recreating the marketing activities as closely as possible can help you absorb what went into each step.
- Deep diving into content can help you understand the behind-the-scenes of the campaign.
- Scanning the history of a website can lay out each stage of development.
- Metrics give you a statistical overview of a campaign.
E = Extract. This is when you identify the ingredients you need after the decoding process.
While these won’t be the ideas, they are components you can blend together.
You can give them a score of 1–5 on the ICE scale (Impact, Confidence, and Ease) to help you prioritize.
A = Apply. It’s time to put together everything you’ve been working on!
Take the “ingredients” you’ve generated, plus your own knowledge and in-house resources, to create your brilliant new idea.
Let us know if you have any “A-ha” moments when trying this framework…
