Create proprietary ideas

Rob Hardy -

Here’s a powerful strategy for earning true fans. Come up with useful concepts and proprietary systems, then give them a catchy name.

This is particularly powerful for creators whose work is geared towards education and problem solving.

For example, here are three marketers who’ve influenced my thinking.

  • André Chaperon has “Emergent Marketing”
  • Jay Abraham has “The Strategy of Preeminence”
  • Donald Miller has “StoryBrand”

These three marketing philosophies, funnily enough, share quite a few similarities. They’re all rooted in understanding your fans and customers so that you can serve them well.

Despite the overlap, they’re all different enough from one another to warrant a nifty branded moniker.

And that, my friends, is pure gold in terms of positioning, and differentiating yourself in a crowded niche.

Instead of being seen as “yet another guy talking about marketing,” Donald Miller is now “the StoryBrand guy,” and the king of his own little empire.

And here’s the cool part. Once you start giving unique names to your ideas, they can take on a life of their own.

If the ideas are good and useful, your fans will start identifying with them. They’ll start “telling the others” as Seth Godin would say.

Hell, even competitors might start using your own language, as many in the marketing space have done with André Chaperon’s notion of the “soap opera sequence.” That’s when you know you’ve truly become indispensable in your corner of the market.

So go forth, dream up useful ideas, and give ‘em a cool name.

P.S. This is something I’m working diligently on for the Ungated universe.

For the past few years, I’ve been building out my own grand unified theory of marketing and business for creators.

It’s called the Identity Theorem—and its central premise is that once our work becomes intertwined with our customers’ identity, we’ve essentially created fans for life.

I’m also working on a system called NicheCraft, which includes Audience Mapping, Keyword Roulette, Fascination Stacking, and more.

You’ll be hearing quite a bit more about all these delicious ideas soon 😎