Marketing: The Steve Jobs Way

Steve Jobs was a true genius of marketing.

In 1997, the year Jobs made a dramatic return to Apple, he gave a presentation on some key lessons about product marketing. It is short but very powerful, and millions of people consider it one of the best marketing speeches ever made.

Jobs acknowledged that Apple, once a unique and persuasive brand, was struggling to resonate with its customers.

According to him, our world is a very noisy place with too much information. If you want the world to know about you and your brand, then your message must be brief and ultra-clear.

However, increasing brand awareness is not enough. You need to make people really care about your brand. Jobs emphasizes that product marketing shouldn’t be about products. Instead, it should be all about the value.

He picks Nike as a successful example. Nike sells shoes but their ads don't talk about the air soles or their newest designs. Instead, they honor great athletes and their champion spirit.

If you ask someone to pick a company that has plenty of great products to be proud of, Apple would be definitely one of the most famous choices. But Jobs didn’t want the ads that talk about how great Apple’s products are. Instead, he decided to talk about what Apple was really about.

That’s how legendary slogan, "Think Different" was born. According to Jobs, Apple's core value, is that they believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. And those people, who are crazy enough to believe, are the ones that actually do. Jobs wanted to rebuild Apple as a company that fuels and empowers those who think differently.

There are companies that make better or cheaper tech accessories than Apple. But nobody is uniquely positioned in customer’s minds like Apple is. If you want to be unique and special in this complex world, your brand needs a personality that is relatable.

Stop talking about speeds and fees, or bits and hertz. Instead, give them a reason why they should love you. That’s the only way to win the contest for customers’ minds.

After all, a large part of marketing is just like dating. Just as one would want their date to be attentive and focused on them, customers expect the same when engaging with a brand.

All those numbers don’t mean anything if you cannot win customer’s hearts. Don't sell features! You've got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology - not other way around.