What a Dead Billionaire’s Strategy Has to do with Scaling Your Ads

What does historic tycoon strategy have to do with paid media??

The answer might surprise you.?

John D. Rockefeller was a shrewd and aggressive (some might say ruthless) businessman. One of the early leaders in the oil business in the late 1800s, he recognized the key to winning in the oil business at that time was gaining an advantage in transportation costs.??

Consequently, he invested heavily in railroads.??

But he also invested in land. Land with trees.?

Why?

Well, he decided to vertically integrate by producing his own oak barrels in which to ship his oil, rather than using green timber like his competition. He cut the trees down, had the oak sawed in the woods, and then kiln-dried the planks. This process sliced Rockefeller’s transportation costs in half.?

It also gave Rockefeller a 10x advantage over his oil competitors.

He found his X-factor.

But you don’t stop searching for X-factors. Rockefeller didn’t.?

The railroads owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt shipped his oil. However, Rockefeller felt Vanderbilt was overcharging him. Therefore, he entered a handshake deal with Andrew Carnegie and Tom Scott to ship his oil.?

Sometime thereafter, Carnegie and Scott wanted to raise Rockefeller’s shipping rates. He wouldn’t do it. Instead, he laid down 4,000 miles of pipeline, connecting his refineries in Cleveland to oil wells in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

He found another X-factor.?

And he didn’t need railroads anymore.

Small Hinges Move Big Doors

You don’t have to be a Rockefeller to discover and act upon your company’s X-factor. In 2010, Spread Networks completed the installation of a fiber optic cable connecting the financial markets of Chicago and New York City.?

It cost $300 million. It was so expensive because while existing connections were laid along railroad tracks, around mountains, etc., they laid this cable almost in a straight line.?

By using the fiber optic cable, they could send trading information between Chicago and New York City in 13 milliseconds, compared to the 17 milliseconds it took using conventional data transmission lines. However, to high-frequency trading (HFT) firms, that 4 milliseconds meant the difference between a profitable trade and a losing one.?

Consequently, HFT firms were happy to pay the $14 million fee to link to the new cable.?

Speed is the X-factor for HFT firms-and they’re happy to pay for it. What’s your X-Factor optimization strategy?

If you can find that one variable to optimize for, you can scale your campaigns to the moon. This newsletter will show you case studies and methods for finding that Xfactor for your paid advertising campaigns.?

Stay tuned for some expansive, mind-blowing strategies to help you “Beat the Control”. =)

Andrew James is the CEO and Founder of EyeBall Division, LLC in Sandy, UT. He is an expert in Internet marketing and social networking. He helps advertisers find their X–factor optimization point so they can effectively scale beyond what anyone else in the market can afford to.

That puts them in charge. And they become the 800-pound gorilla overnight.?

If you would like to talk, you can get on Andrew’s calendar here.?