Uncopyable: How To Create An Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition

by Steve Miller

Let me tell you something you already know. Competition is fierce.

it’s a race nobody wins.

Your products or services are very similar to what your competitors offer, and it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate.

Today, it’s so easy to copy a new and/or improved product that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to create and maintain Uncopyable products.

In today’s world, if something can be copied, it will be copied.

As I said, if it can be copied, everybody will copy it. As a result, competition doesn’t breed innovation. Competition breeds conformity.

And don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can just ask your customers what they want that’s different. I guarantee Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t do that. Your customers don’t know what they want. They know they want something better—but not different. Nobody asked for an eight-track tape player. Nobody asked for a cell phone, let alone a smart phone. Nobody asked for the Internet. Nobody asked for social media. Nobody asked for Amazon.com.

And it was my first real exposure to a common practice now known as developing your avatar. If you can create a mental picture of your ideal customer, it makes it much easier to think like your customer.

Develop the avatar. Your customer. As precisely as possible. Who’s my avatar?

always enter the conversation that is already taking place in the customer’s mind.

What keeps your market prospects awake at night? What’s the first thing on their mind when they wake up? What challenges, problems, and hurdles are they facing? On the flip side, what are their aspirations, dreams, and goals?

Find the customers itch you want to scratch

Now imagine you come up with a message only you can say, only you can promise, only you can deliver. That’s where the concept of Uncopyable comes in.

In a Nutshell

“What you don’t understand is what we sell is the ability for a forty-three-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns, and have people be afraid of them.”

Branding

differentiates

Branding

establishes your credibility

Branding

resonates

Bra...

makes a unique ...

Bra...

makes you the logic...

Branding

makes you memorable.

branding remov...

Smart companies play up what sets them apart.

1. Own a Word or Phrase. Take ownership of a word or a phrase, something that connects to your promise.

Own a Color.

Create Your Own Language.

Shock and Awe.

the problem with internal benchmarking is that you never get new ideas from your competition. You can only take their improvements and maybe make them a little better.

Get outside of the box. Get outise of your sector to "benchmark" new products

Peter Drucker, who’s generally acknowledged to be the godfather of modern corporate management, used to say there were only two things a corporation needed to do really, really well. One was marketing, and the other was innovation, and everything else played a support role to those two, including manufacturing and production.

It’s not unusual to see something that might be common in another industry but doesn’t exist in your industry. You have to take that common thing and bring it back into your industry, where it’s brand-new. And if you do it right, it’s hard to copy.

“Great. If Apple were to come in and buy your company, what would Apple do to make your company more successful?”

the most powerful way to deliver an Uncopyable experience and get people attached: creating a club everybody wants to be a member of.

The RSPro Club The AMS Club

The airlines’ frequent-prisoner programs are possibly the most successful example of this kind of club.

To me, the club is one of the coolest things you can create. The club creates that personal, emotional attachment in which the fear of loss is actually greater than almost everything else, along with the perception of especially high value.

The second critical piece of creating attachment is to give clients something nobody else has.

Which leads us to the fifth critical piece of creating attachment: making your customers into rock stars. How are you creating rock-star opportunities for your customers?

A richly imprinted experience wants to be repeated. It wants to be remembered. And it wants to be shared.

Being Uncopyable means—should mean—you are not for everybody.