Can You Copy The Iconic Marketing of Steve Jobs?

Most will agree that Steve Jobs was one of the best marketers ever.  He took electronic products that are often made into commodities after their introduction and commanded premium prices for them.  He introduced innovation after innovation.   He had a large percentage of his customer base believing that his products were superior because of their ease of operation, or simply because they were way “cooler” than anything else on the  market.

What most overlook though, is how iconic the marketing of Steve Jobs was.  He followed some simple principles that you can copy if you have the patience and desire to so.

First though, let me define iconic marketing.  An icon can mean many things, but in its broadest definition it is an enduring symbol or representation of something.  Many in marketing would call this branding which is partially true.  But in its truest form an icon really helps differentiate itself from everyone else in the market.  Iconic marketing is the use of marketing strategies and tactics to build the icon of the business within the minds of the marketplace.

How Steve Jobs used Iconic Marketing

1)      Looks are everything.  Steve took the packaging and presentation of his products to the Nth degree.  The Apple products needed to look cool, trendy, and futuristic.  We are talking beyond just functionality, but to the point where the end user would feel cutting edge as others looked on.

2)      His looks were everything.  When Steve made the platform introductions of the new products he always seemed to be wearing his hip black mock-turtleneck shirt and faded blue jeans.  His audience could immediately relate to him.  If he would have made the same presentation in a suit it wouldn’t have had the same effect.

3)      It is all about the pre-sell.  The Apple product launch strategy was set in place months before you could actually get product and Jobs was incredibly effective in engineering the pre-release “leaks” that further built anticipation to the point were many faithful customers wanted to buy before the product was even seen.

4)      The public introduction.  When it was time to release the product it was almost always done through a public speaking venue.  Jobs captivating the crowd with a personal introduction of the product.  No commercials, ads, or really any media preceded that announcement.  It was the pinnacle of the release.

How you can copy the use of Iconic Marketing

You may not be able to be a Steve Jobs clone, or even have the budget to do the kind of campaigns Apple does.  However, if you strip away the principles here you can definitely improve your marketing efforts.  Here is how:

1)      Differentiate yourself from your market with not only unique attributes, but a unique look as well.  Focus on developing a highly effective unique selling proposition.  Then visualize it.

2)      Keep your spokesman looking consistent.  In most cases, the small business owner, real estate agent, even construction contractor are going to be the mouthpiece for the organization.  If it is someone else on your team make sure they have a consistent look each time they communicate with their audience.

3)      You must pre-sell your products and services.  This is where the power of word-of-mouth comes in, but there are many other strategies you can use to control your sales message to build market demand and interest.  Just running tons of ads to generate leads no longer cuts it.  (Our Customer Pipeline program can give you more training on how to do this)

4)      Learn how to speak in public.  Whether it is to an audience of one, a local chamber group, or a large platform opportunity – you must understand and implement the basics of public speaking.

Steve Jobs was a great marketer – and you can be one too if you follow the simple principles laid out above.

How do you currently use Iconic Marketing or what ways do you think you could use it for your business?  Please comment below. 

Watch this interview and discover how successful small business owners and marketing managers are using Youtube to increase traffic, leads and sales.  It is an eye opener:

The new $79 Kindle and $99 Kindle Touch are sure to ramp up the use of these kinds of devices as the sub-$100 price point will open the pages of these readers to a whole new market.

Pricing does matter.  This will help Amazon eat up market share and create a whole new demand for these kinds of books.  As an author this is really good news!

What do you think?  Do you have a Kindle or will this new price point get you to buy one now?  Leave your comment below.

Many geographically-based businesses get the majority of their clients from within 5 miles of their location.  While we know this is typically true for businesses such as restaurants, gas stations, and other convenience-based companies, many other types of businesses also fall within this rule and don’t realize it.

When I do target market studies with companies it is quite often an eye-opener when they do a geographic sort of their past customers to see how many – often 80% or more, that come from within 5 miles of their location.  I’m talking about insurance companies, remodelers, mortgage brokers, and many other categories.

The fact is, buyers really like doing business with local companies.  Even when I had to get my garage door fixed I saw ads for companies that served our entire metro area, but I wanted to work with someone close – even though all of them offered to come to my location from as far as 45 miles away.

Enter Google.  Now in the Google Search era location is becoming even more important.  Not only the location of the business, but also the location of the searcher.  When I type in “garage door repair” into Google I will get DIFFERENT results than someone on the North side of town who types in the same thing.  Part of Google’s algorithm factor’s in the location of the browser.  And now in the mobile computing world my results searching will be different than from my desktop because Google knows where I am at any time on my smartphone because of GPS technology.

What’s a marketer to do?  If the 5 mile rule applies to you, you need both a local and a mobile strategy.

Google has made this a little easier because they offer their Google Places listings free to businesses. The sad part about this is that of the over 49 Million places listings Google has made available, only 7% have claimed their free listing.  Combine this with the fact that Google has reported that over 60% of their users search using their mobile devices.

You have three options to deal with this.  (1) Learn how to create you own local and mobile strategy.  (2) Hire someone to do it for you. (3) or learn how to do it for yourself and then charge other businesses for doing it for them.  This option is actually an emerging business opportunity that many are engaging to supplement their income (something we can all use in times like these).

My friends Ryan Deiss and Laura Betterly are teaching a course called Local/Mobile Fusion which shows you how to do all this for yourself and even teach you how to make extra money doing it for other businesses. 

This is a great course that I have personally taken myself and have applied the principles for clients.  I know it works first-hand.

If you would like to find out more about the course check it out here:  http://MarketingPlanGuide.com/google-mobile

Local Marketing video on Youtube 

This is a great ad featuring Jason Alexander as Seinfeld’s George Costanza (and his infamous overstuffed wallet), for Google Wallet, the new smart-phone payment system being slowly rolled out by Google.  After you’ve had a few laughs you can start to think what does this mean for me and my business?  Why is Google – the search giant – stepping into mobile payments?

This is part of a much bigger strategy by not only Google, but many other companies that are seeing the future of mobile computing, encompassing everything from mobile content, mobile websites, mobile payments, and more.

In many other countries, like the Phillipines, mobile payments are quickly replacing the use of credit cards.

What is your mobile strategy?  I have to admit we are evaluating ours regularly as we see more and more people accessing our content on smart-phones rather than the desktop.

What are you doing to approach the mobile computing tsunami that is coming?  Leave a comment below.

I am really excited about a side project I am working on to do just that. It is called, “The Business Course” and it is designed to teach home-schooled high school students how to start a business. The course goes from concept to completion and covers everything from how to choose a business, how to properly set it up, how to market it (of course), and more.

The interesting thing I noticed when I launched the concept for the course was that not only the students, but their parents also, wanted to get in on the action.  So I priced it on a per-family basis where the whole clan could participate if they wanted to for one price.

Owning a business is not without its challenges (I know because I own several), but the satisfaction you can get from it is incredible.  In these economic times more and more people will be starting businesses to help pay the bills that just keep on growing.

The course is being taught live from September 2011 - May of 2012, but participants can also take the course via replay if the live session time does not work for them.

While this course is designed for a high school level (and targeted to a Christian home school audience), the lesson that will be taught can be useful for anyone who wants to venture out on their own and start a business.

For more information visit: http://TheBusinessCourse.com

It parallels our business life as well – we want to be equipped for success.

So lets take a look at the back-to-school checklist:

Paper and pens.  These are the basic tools.  You can’t really take notes with out them.  We also classify these as school supplies.  Fall
is the time we always stock up on them because the worst thing that can happen is to be running around the classroom (or in our case – our home since we home school) and digging around to find something to write with.  It’s a big time waster.

What are the essential tools you need to have on hand to be successful in business? Letterhead, envelopes, etc.  Make sure you are stocked up.

Backpack.  You need something to carry around your stuff in. In business – this involves basic organizational equipment like file cabinets and drawers.  Perhaps you need to take a few minutes and purge the files and get ready for the increased activity that fall brings.

Class schedule.  In business this is your calendar of activities. When do you plan to start that new marketing effort?  Have you reviewed your goals lately?  What are your top 3 priorities?

I know this is a simplistic action plan – but without these pieces in place you won’t be ready for fall classes – which brings up our fall
class schedule which we will be launching soon.

We are going to do things a little differently moving forward.  You will now have two options for taking classes from MarketingPlanGuide.com.  You can take the offerings individually, or if you prefer you can save money and become part of our monthly members community and get the classes for free.  Watch for details on this coming soon.

What are your Back to School strategies?  Share them in a comment below.

Summer vacation is usually my favorite time of the year when I get a chance to rest, relax, and renew myself (the 3 “R’s”).  This summer I was dealing with a whole different set of “R’s” that have some great lessons that you can apply to your business.

R #1 – “Reinventing” – As I was headed into my annual month-long break this year (Usually I take the month of July to relax up North) I knew that things were just not the way they normally have been.  Our current economic situation is really weighing heavily on many of you – I know that because when I talk to clients it seems to be one of the most frequently discussed subjects.   I know in the other businesses I also own (outside of MarketingPlanGuide.com) there have also been huge changes in the last 90 – 120 days days.  Getting new customers is just getting harder and harder because people are holding on to their money longer.

At the end of June I was just about to put the finishing touches on a new program that I wanted to launch as soon as I returned in early August.  I didn’t get finished becuse I just kept collecting more and more data regarding the subject and I really felt that I was on to something big.  What I realized,  just before I left on June 30th, was that if I was going to teach these new concepts to you I was also going to need a major overhaul of how I was operating.  I went into the vacation with marching orders for my team that we had some major reinventing to do – and quickly.  I was looking forward to my “thinking” time on the deck of my lake home to process through these changes as well.

So application #1 for you is – are you willing to reinvent yourself when you see signs that things aren’t working the way they used to?   So often we hold on to the past and want to just keep on doing things the same way.

R #2 – “Roadblock” - Often times we experience roadblocks that keep us from moving forward, especially when it comes to a major overhaul of our business.  I had such a roadblock occur on July 1st when we had a major wind storm blow in to our property and knock down about a 1/3 of our trees.  Day #2 of my summer break and now we are faced with a monumental clean up.  We had no power for 9 days and basically had to work most of the time cutting down trees, moving brush and hauling it away.  So much for my “thinking” time.  The only time I had was to work outside and rest.   After 9 days the power came back on but the work continued on and on for the remainder of the month.  I even have been back up the last several weekends trying to finish the clean up.  It was really a war zone.

This put us off track for our reinvention, but it helped my family learn a lot about team work.  Often it was difficult to get the kids to cooperate, but when they did – we really did accomplish more (We kept repeating the acronym for TEAM, “Together Everyone Achieves More”).

The takeaway for your business is - How can you get your team to work together when there is a roadblock?  The roadblock itself is hard enough, but when your team is not on board it makes it that much more difficult.  Fortunately, my MarketingPlanGuide team really stepped up to the plate to help get our reinvention moving in the right direction.  As a result, in early August we were able to launch a brand new MarketingPlanGuide.com website, put the finishing touches on our new training program we will be releasing shortly, and get ready to launch our new members site.  All big initiatives that happened with a great roadblock in the way.

R #3 – “Restart” – After so much change in such a short period it has been difficult to get a new rhythm going.  We all experience a version of this when we head into fall.  While I wanted to make formal announcements about all of these new parts of MarketingPlanGuide.com, I seemed to be waiting for just the right time to do just that.  Instead, now I have simply launched the new site with no big announcement, and will introduce our other two initiatives in the next few weeks through our normal conversations with you.  This post represents just getting restarted after all the craziness of the past two months.  And it feels good to be back!

What are you waiting for to get started with right now?   What roadblocks are you facing?  Do you feel it is time to reinvent what you are doing, based on the current economic conditions? 

I would love to hear your feedback and comments below.

Back in the late ‘80s (sometime in 87-88) I had the chance to attend a presentation by the president of a local envelope company.  There were 40 or 50 of us in the room and I remember that I was fascinated by the sales concepts that were presented that day.

The one that stuck out most was called the “66-question customer profile.”  What each sales person at the envelope company was required to do was keep a file on each of their clients and continually keep adding to this list of 66 things they wanted to know about them.  We are not talking envelope color preferences, but rather things like college fraternity or extracurricular activities, names and ages of children, if any, and even things like their children’s education and interests.

How might this information possibly be used to sell more envelopes?  According to the presenter, “people, not specs, will always be the key in determining who gets the sale.”  He would take home the files for the top ten customers each weekend and memorize the facts about them.  What followed then was a systemized process of always connecting with the customer through one of these 66 points.  If they liked baseball, they would often get sent baseball tickets to their favorite team.  If they went to a particular school that was in common with the salesperson they would reminisce about the way it used to be.

Notice that the connection was never about envelopes it was always about the customer.  I recently wrote a column about how marketers are told to get their prospects to “know, like, and trust” them.  But that column really turned the equation backwards and suggested that they get to know their customers better.  This is a perfect application of that 66 question customer profile.

You can still get a copy of this book 23 years later and that president of Mackay Envelope Corporation is known more for his international speaking and numerous books that have followed this one.  The original book, “Swim With The Sharks without Being Eaten Alive” was written by none other than Harvey Mackay.  It is definitely worth reading, or as I recently did, reading it again.  The principles about how to outsell, outmanage, outmotivate, and outnegotiate your competition are priceless.

You can still find a copy of this (I believe a newly updated version) on Amazon for under $7 by CLICKING HERE  (aff link)

But what does rapport really mean?

I did some dictionary searches and found that, as it can be best figured, the word started surfacing around the late 1500′s to the early 1600′s.  It is a French word (pronounced “Ra – pour“).  It’s meaning is actually a derivation of another French word, “rapporter,” which means to bring back.  The psychological meaning is to have “intense harmonious accord.”  All technical definitions aside, when it comes to marketing rapport has a slightly different meaning.

We are always taught in our sales training classes that we need to establish rapport with the prospect so that they can feel comfortable buying from us (similar to the intense harmonious accord).  This makes rapport a “feeling” that we have to establish, measured by who knows what standard, other than a signed order and each party happily involved.

I think when we dig back into the dictionary definition a little more we see that rapport is really a noun (person, place or thing).  It is a “thing’ we describe that we have with another person.  Definitely relational, but I believe it is much more than a feeling.  It is also something that we can’t just manufacture by giving you a check list of things to accomplish in order to achieve rapport.

So how do you establish rapport with someone?

Remembering that rapport is a connection you have with someone else that needs to be harmonious, it really is a state that is achieved when both parties are actively involved. You can’t do it all, and neither can the prospect.  It is a balance between the two of you.  It helps if you have common interests, goals, or ideals.  However, rapport will naturally be the byproduct of working at establishing and nurturing your relationship with the other person.  Much like in a dating situation.  It will take time for you to get to know the other person, adjust to their preferences, and ultimately develop a way that you work together.  Now rapport is sounding much more like a verb than a noun!

So to develop a state of intense harmonious accord (rapport-noun) you have to work through a process of genuinely getting to know someone and how they operate best with you (rapport-verb).  This is nothing that happens quickly, but when it does finally occur you have developed a much better long-term, ideal customer – and that’s what we are always looking fro when we market.