Apply this proven formula from Steve Jobs to strengthen your marketing success.
What’s in your marketing toolset? Have you employed a full battery of social media tactics along with pay-per-click, advertising and direct-mail campaigns? How’s that working for you? Are you happy with what your analytics are reporting? Do you fully understand them? Does your marketing perform profitably?
If any of these questions elicit a pang of frustration or anxiety, you’re not alone. Marketing has never been easy. Technology designed to improve and automate marketing, if anything, has made it more complicated and expensive. Consequently, most decision-makers resort to doing what they believe the next guy is doing to stay competitive and hopefully get ahead.
Happily, there’s another way of viewing your marketing performance. In fact, the success or failure of your campaign will shine a light upon where improvements can be made—and it seldom relates to any technical aspects. Instead, it has to with defining and aligning your marketing with the impression you intend to make on your marketplace.
Shortly after his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs set the company back on a successful marketing course by emphasizing three core concepts expressed in a speech he gave to his leadership team during one of the company’s Town Hall meetings. Here’s a short excerpt:
“This is a very noisy world. We’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. So, we have to be really clear. Our customers want to know who we are, what we stand for, and where we fit in this world. A lot of things change, but our values and core values. Those things shouldn’t change.”
Based on the insights of Steve Jobs, there are three questions that your future customers want answered to their satisfaction before they will business with you:
- Who are you?
People feel more comfortable when they gain a sense of familiarity with you. Therefore, regardless of the tool or tactic you use, your marketing must consistently look, sound and feel like it’s coming from you. Be clear about your brand.
- What do you stand for?
Like you, your future customers have values and beliefs they hold dear. Shared values are often the means through which we “break the ice” and form connections. While understanding that you can’t be all things to everyone (and you shouldn’t want to), you can form strong bonds with those whose values align with yours. Make your values known by your customers.
- Where do you fit in my world?
People may tell you that they like you. However, it’s not until they know how they need you that they will fall in love with you and your brand promise. Your company has a purpose for existing that goes beyond making a profit. Let your ideal customers know why you exist, what you do better than anyone else, and how their lives will change because of it.
A very simple approach to testing the effectiveness of your marketing campaign is to view each of its components with these three questions in mind. If any piece of your marketing fails to answer one or more of the above-mentioned questions, you will know immediately where improvements are to be made. If answers to more than one question are missing from your marketing toolkit consistently—you can look forward to making a big difference in your marketing results by making these improvements.
Apple wasn’t always the business giant that it is today. Steve Jobs knew that building Apple into a successful brand would require the company’s concerted focus on principles that mattered most to its customers. You can do the same for your business and brand. When you do, get ready to watch it grow!