How to become a 10x marketer by 'Reverse Engineering' 🧬

Don't start from scratch. Piggyback on winners. Here's how ⏩

From my experience, the #1 skill that separates good marketers from great marketers is the ability to break down successful campaigns (made by other brands). ⚒️

Great marketers don’t just admire a viral post or a beautiful ad. They analyze it - and they try to identify the key elements and psychological triggers behind its success. This is the art of reverse engineering.

It’s honestly a must-have skill for any 10x marketer in 2024.

Reverse engineering for marketing is pretty straightforward:

1. Find success 🎯

2. Deconstruct it 🔍

3. Remix & rebuild for your own brand 🏗️

Sounds easy, right?

But here is the catch — most marketers don’t have a system for it. They stumble upon a brilliant campaign, marvel at it for a moment, and then move on with their day. 🤷‍♂️

The best marketers I know? They have a process. A framework. A habit of deconstructing greatness and reconstructing it in their own image.

Here’s how you can do it yourself 👇👇👇

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🅰️ Always Be Collecting

Start by actively hunting and gathering examples of marketing brilliance in the wild. Make it a habit. That’s always your first step. Here’s how I do it:

• 📸 Spot a post that’s going viral on LinkedIn? Screenshot it.

• 🐦 See a tweet with a smart move? Bookmark it.

• 📧 Get an email that makes you want to click? Save it to a folder.

Don’t just consume - collect. 🏹

For hunting - I recommend signing up to Google News Alerts for the following keywords:

Viral marketing
Viral campaign
Genius marketing
Successful ad
Creative ad
Broke the internet

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🅱️ Break It Down

Once you have a collection of outstanding examples, it’s time to put your analyst hat on and start deconstructing. 🕵️‍♀️

What makes each example a *really good* example? Make a list of the stuff that works - patterns, principles, tactics.

For each piece of content, ask yourself:

1. 🎣 What is the first thing that caught your eye and made you stop scrolling?

2. 😎 What makes this campaign feel unique and different?

3. 🧠 What insights about the target audience does this campaign tap into?

4. 🎨 What design elements (colors, shapes, layouts) make this visually appealing?

5. 🎯 What do you think the one goal of this campaign is?

6. 💌 What is the main “value” (offer, incentive, reward) people can get from this?

7. 📣 What is the CTA here?

8. 🧗🏽 What is the journey of people seeing it (e.g. social post → website → CTA → form fill → new email → gift/value)?

9. 🏛 How did the website/landing page evolve over time? (use Web Archive)

Apple’s website from 2004. No need to go back in time that much 😜

The key is to go beyond surface-level observations and really dig into the mechanics of what makes each example successful. 💎

We then want to take all those mechanics (patterns, principles, tactics) to step C:

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🅲️ Creatively Reconstruct

You’ve collected great examples and broken them down. The next step? → Organize all those elements and patterns you identified. Here’s a simple way to do it:

1. List all the elements and patterns on a table or spreadsheet

2. Group them by the goal they achieve (e.g., drive leads, boost engagement)

3. Score each element on the ICE scale (Impact, Confidence, Ease) from 1-5

4. Prioritize the high-scorers – those are your heavy hitters. 💪

For example, when I worked at MineOS, here’s how my table looked:

Now for the fun part!

It’s time to take those insights and rebuild them for your own brand.

🎨 As Picasso famously said:

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

But he didn’t mean steal in the literal sense.

He meant that great artists take inspiration from a lot of sources, deconstruct them, and then reassemble them in new, super-creative ways.

🧩 It’s like putting together a puzzle – you take the catchy headline from one example, combine it with the compelling offer from another, and present it with the visuals from a third.

To do this, try the SCAMPER technique:

1. 🔄 Substitute: Swap out certain elements for others. What if you replaced the headline formula from Example A with the visual style of Example B?

2. 🧬 Combine: Merge elements from different examples. Could you combine the storytelling arc of Example C with the interactive features of Example D?

3. 🛠️ Adapt: Adjust elements to fit your specific startup. How could you adapt the gamification tactics of Example E to suit your B2B audience?

4. 🔍 Modify: Change the size, scale, or nature of certain elements. What would happen if you took the mini-course format of Example F and turned it into a full-fledged ‘Capture the Flag’ challenge?

5. ♻️ Put to another use: Apply successful tactics to a new medium or channel. Could you repurpose the quiz strategy from Example G into an engaging email series?

6. ➖ Eliminate: Remove elements to simplify or streamline. What if you stripped away all the fluff from Example H and focused on one core message?

7. 🔃 Reverse: Turn ideas upside down or inside out. What would the opposite of Example I's approach be, and how could that work for your brand?

To make this a habit, hold monthly “remix” challenges: ⏰ Once a month, challenge yourself (or your team) to reconstruct marketing ideas from a different industry in a way that would work for your brand. The more out-of-the-box → the better!

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🎬 Recap: How to Reverse Engineer in Marketing

To sum it all up, here’s a step-by-step playbook of actions:

1. 👀 Actively seek out marketing greatness in your day-to-day. When something catches your eye, save it.

2. 📂 Set up a system for collecting examples - whether it’s a folder, a spreadsheet, or even just Apple Notes (what I’m using).

3. 🔬 Block off time each week to study your examples. I call these ‘breakdown’ sessions. Use the prompts shared above to identify patterns, and extract principles.

4. 🎨 Run monthly ‘remix’ challenges using the SCAMPER model (as explained above)

5. 🧪 Execute! Take your new insights and apply them to your own campaigns. Experiment, test, and iterate.

6. 🔁 Rinse and repeat: Make reverse engineering a habit, not a one-time task.

I've used this exact process to build the Viral Post Generator, a parody product I made that was used by 2 million people in 1 week (and got acquired by Taplio).

How did I do it? By scraping 100,000s of LinkedIn posts, analyzing what makes the top 0.1% stand out, and then using those insights to create ‘viral’ cringeworthy LinkedIn post templates. 🤖

That’s the power of reverse engineering in action 💪

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☕️ Real-world Example: Morning Brew

One of the most successful referral programs in recent years has been Morning Brew’s “Refer 50, Get a Mug” campaign.

Morning Brew deconstructed traditional referral programs and identified a few key elements:

• 🎯 A clear, achievable goal (refer X friends)

• 🎁 A tangible reward (a free product)

• 🗣️ Social currency (the ability to show off your reward)

But rather than just copying this formula directly, they reconstructed it like this:

• 🤦🏻‍♂️ They made the goal specific and memorable: 3 referrals, rather than a generic “refer friends”

• ☕️ They chose a reward that was highly relevant to their brand and audience: a Morning Brew mug that readers would be proud to own and show off

• 📸 They made the reward social media-friendly, which made readers post photos of their mugs and tag Morning Brew

By remixing elements of successful referral programs in a way that 100% fit their brand, Morning Brew created a viral loop that helped them grow to over 4 million subscribers in just a few years. 📈

Remember: It’s not about copying - it’s about remixing. Taking the best elements and making them your own. 🌀

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🎁 The Cheat Sheet

In the end, reverse engineering is all about creative theft. It’s about:

1. Finding amazing marketing campaigns,

2. Deconstructing what works,

3. Rebuilding it in new and innovative ways.

As Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”

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Keep deconstructing :)

Tom

P.S. If you want to dive deeper into the SCAMPER technique and other creative thinking tools, I highly recommend Michael Michalko's book ‘Thinkertoys’. It’s an amazing collection of exercises and prompts to help you generate ideas. 📚

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