Differentiate yourself with a small business frameworkTable of Contents
Frameworks Help Make Your Business Number One in Your Category
If you want to build a successful creative business, it’s likely there are already competitors in your space. While competition can mean the market for a product is already proven (a good sign), it also means you’ll have a brutal time differentiating yourself as the newbie to the space.
Enter the framework.
Instead of operating on price, speedy delivery, free shipping, or great service (ground-level expectations of any business), you bring to market your secret sauce.
Your framework is a proprietary way of providing some sort of transformation for your customer.
If she wants the outcome you promise, the only place to get that outcome, in the desired way, is through you.
Your framework creates an island of one in a sea of competition.
While the rest of the competitors in your space chases each other to the ground, competing on price or some other commodity, you have the tollbooth.
Your framework is a recipe you created for the people you serve. It’s a proven model to help your customers get from where they are now to where they want to be.
Using the MURFEE framework (what would an article about frameworks be without a framework?), you can build a secret recipe for your own business and grow an island of one.
How Frameworks Help Squash Competition
Even if you use a similar process to the other players in your space, by male of your process in an effective, memorable, reasonable way, you cement yourself as the instant leader in your space.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the newcomer.
The framework does a lot of the selling on its own. The customer can read your framework and visualize how it will fit into her life.
When created properly, the right framework doubles (even triples) as a silent sales device, a marketing vehicle, and an easy way to remember your transformational tool.
- The right frameworks have teeth.
- The right frameworks are powerful change agents
- The right frameworks sell products
Instead of racing your competition to the bottom, skip the line and make your own.
Later, once your competition recognizes your success, if they try to rip you off, they’ll look like a copy, not an innovator.
Your framework becomes part of your brand.
The best part is, you can adopt multiple frameworks inside your business.
Maybe you’ve got a series of three or four proprietary recipes that form the core of the work you do. Anyone who challenges you will look like a clown. At best they’ll steal you teamwork and change the words.
If you’re first in your niche with your recipe, you become the benchmark. And benchmarks are almost impossible to rip-off, because everyone knows the leader and strives to be just like you.
You Become an Instant Leader
When done well, a framework builds you into an instant leader. The framework is easy to understand. The potential customer can see how you help her gain the transformation, from where she is now, to where she wants to be.
If you’re new to a space, your framework will help you earn word-of-mouth marketing. And credibility too. The recipe does a lot of the selling so you don’t have to.
Instead, you market the transformation, not your product. Your product isn’t as important as the end-result you deliver. And it’s your framework that cuts through the skepticism. We can see how you lead us from where we are now to where we want to be.
Instead of just telling us you’ll transform us, your framework shows us the process in a way that makes us say, “Ah. OK, cool.”
Now, let’s dig into the MURPHEE framework, so you can make yours.
MURFEE—The Six-Step Framework for Making Frameworks
Memorable acronym—
Your framework must have a memorable acronym. At best, it should spell a name or be a play on a common word.
If your acronym doesn’t spell anything, it better be really short—no more than four letters.
Unique to your niche—
Your framework must be unique. If all you did was rename the same steps as your competitor, then you are the copycat, not the innovator.
You can borrow successful steps from other industries. In fact, this is a great way to build a strong recipe. But make sure your framework is unique to the people you serve.
Otherwise, all they’ll do is point fingers and say, “Hey, there’s that business that looks just like the main player in the space. What a scam!”
Realistic outcome—
We must be able to look at your framework and see that it’s possible for an average person like me, to get the same (or similar) results as you.
The outcome should challenge us, but it can’t be so outlandish or unrealistic that the average person will see the framework as impossible.
Few steps required—
No one will remember the GOLDNFUBBERBUBBLESTARSHINEQ65 framework. Edit your framework down to as few steps as possible. Seven or fewer. There’s a reason phone numbers have seven digits. That’s the typical capacity of our short-term memory.
If your framework has a dozen steps, it’s likely we’ll forget a few if we don’t have your manual in front of us.
When you have only a few steps, it’s much-easier to remember, like a great story, after the first telling.
Easy to implement—
Every step in your framework must be (or at least appear to be) easy to implement. Be careful not to put too many steps inside a single letter, just so it forms a cute word. For a bad example, a ‘too hard’ framework to become a doctor might be GTD (Go to med school, Train on the job, Do great things).
We want to see the steps and visualize ourselves implementing your process. If we can’t visualize the steps, with us behind the wheel, you won’t sell us your product.
Exciting to execute—
Every framework creates some kind of transformation at the end of implementation. If I’m not excited about the transformation, I’m not excited to execute the framework.
It won’t matter if you’ve got the perfect framework for walking and chewing gum, simultaneously. If that framework doesn’t ring my bell, I won’t be excited to execute it, and thus, will have no interest in buying your product.
Does Your Business Need a Framework?
The idea of using formulae or recipes work well in almost every niche. If you have a physical product, for example, instead of teaching your framework as a how-to solution, your framework becomes your proprietary manufacturing or development method.
If you’re a teacher of any kind, especially with the boom of course producers, a framework is critical to keep from getting copied.
Once you gain any kind of notoriety in your space there will be a dozen copycats chasing you.
Start your business poised for growth, by beginning the process with a framework.
If you’re a consultant, your framework or recipe will be the lifeblood of your company.
You become the only person on earth (at least the first person) to operate under a certain framework.
Consultant and coaches sell transformation and change.
Using your recipe as a marketing tool, the potential client can visualize how your framework will lead to the transformation you promise.
What if you sell a commodity product or service?
Instead of building a recipe around the product, create a framework for your customer service model, your delivery method, or your quality control system.
Turn a commodity into a tollbooth, using a secret sauce no one else can copy.
Take a critical piece of your business and make it yours, so that anyone who copies it will look like a copy.
Even commodity businesses can use frameworks to differentiate themselves from the rest.
What about artists?
Maybe you’re a writer, painter, designer, or maker. If you do custom work for clients, use your framework/work recipe as a marketing tool. Use this formula to show prospective clients how you’ll work with them, the quality they can expect, your level of communication, and the timeliness of your delivery.
Almost any business will benefit from the power of a framework.
Frameworks Create Intrigue
Not only is your recipe a great marketing and sales tool, you can use your framework in copywriting. This secret sauce should be part of your correspondence with cold traffic.
In your ads, articles, and social posts, describe the transformation or change you create, using your XYZ framework. But don’t define the framework! You can also include your proprietary framework in your author’s bio.
Our brains hate open loops.
We want unanswered questions answered. We want open doors shut. Just like the name of that one actor you can’t remember gets stuck in your head all day, your framework will be a ‘brain worm’ too. A prospect will read your great article, skim your social post, or see your ad that showcases your framework.
Potential customers will click your links, sign-up for more info, and dig-deeper to find the answer to your ‘secret sauce.’
Play with both options. Define your framework up-front in some marketing and leave the definitions out, elsewhere.
August Birch is an author, email expert, and entrepreneur from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make more work that sells and sell more work once it’s made. When he’s not writing or teaching, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor