Creating Value Through Marketing

“Marketing aims to meet human needs by creating value.” Philip Kotler

When I studied Apple Inc years back, I realize something very significant: if you have to put in a lot of effort into sales, you haven’t done marketing right. This revelation was profound to me. As a result, I wrote three books, Marketing Like Apple, Compete Like Apple and Sell Like Apple. Apple does have to persuade people to buy its products because its marketing has already created rapport with the customers.

Steve Jobs was once quoted saying that marketing is all about value creation. Of course, marketing is all about creating awareness for your products or services. It is important that while doing that, you also create value for your customers. When your marketing points people to your product, your salespeople will have to do a great job convincing and persuading people to buy from it.

Creating value through marketing completely eliminates that. To most business people, the only way marketing creates value is to get involved in product design and development. That is very correct. However, you can create much more value for your customers when you are marketing that you get them presold for what you are selling. That is exactly what Apple does and it gives them a strategic advantage.

If you want to learn to compete like Apple, you should adapt the value creation process that Apple brings into its marketing. I like this definition of marketing by Joe Polish:

“Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face-to-face with you, properly positioned, so that by the time you talk to them, they’re pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified, and pre-disposed to do business with you.”

Your marketing should create a connection and give people so much value that they become fully convinced about doing business with you. When you give people value through your marketing, you are building rapport with them. That deep connection positions you as someone they can do business with.

This means marketing should not be about you trying to sell your products to customers, but you trying to make a connection, build rapport and credibility. The result of your marketing shouldn’t be sales but trust. When you build trust with your customers, you will become the business they always go-to for what they need.

When I work with Startups and SMEs I always notice those mistakes. If you always find yourself trying to convince whoever comes to you for business, then your marketing hasn’t done its job well. Marketing should be more like storytelling. It should take people on a journey into themselves. As such marketing shouldn’t just be about your products but the needs in the customers’ life.

Business people understand marketing as the way to touch people’s hearts, connect with them, and selling as a way to ask for their hand. What most businesses do through marketing is to communicate about their products, however, businesses like Apple use marketing to connect deeply with their customers. Marketing is about the customers, not your product.

Marketing should be all about giving value. Here are three important principles of creating value in marketing:

1. When you give value in marketing, your customers will readily do business with you: When your marketing serves them and add value to them, you will gain their loyalty and trust. You will build credibility and connect with them. That will open you to easily influence them.

2. When you connect with individuals deeply, soon they will tell everyone about your business: The common ground to connect with people should be their needs. When your marketing resonates with them, they will tell others about you.

3. When your marketing puts their needs first, they will be presold: When people know that you care for them, they will trust you and do business with them. That way you build rapport. You show people its all about them not you and that you are out to serve them and add value to them.

Here is how to use your marketing to create value for your customers:

1. Cause Provides Hope: When you use your marketing to project a cause that resonates with people you give them hope for the future. That makes you a dealer of hope. You provide them with leadership and direction.

2. Education Provides Excitement: When your marketing educates people, they become excited. Your education shows them opportunities they can get when they do business with you.

3. Experience Provides Confidence: When they experience what doing business will do for them, you provide them with confidence. That is because experience helps them see the capability they can have when they do business with you.

Your marketing should provide hope, excitement, and confidence to your customers. That way you make your sales easy.