Apple made a press release yesterday announcing that they have updated the 13 and 15-inch notebooks, which is great news to say the least. These improvements include more battery life and better performance. Apple has also increased the memory of the 13-inch notebook to 8 GB from 4 GB and from 8GB to 16GB on the 15-inch notebook – that is double the memory!
With the new announcement from Apple on the recent updates, we have decided to take a deeper look at Apple’s marketing and how they manage to juggle everything. Let’s go through some of the factors that make Apple so good:
Apple has a very strong foundation, which was established in 1977 by Mike Markkula whom was both an advisor and investor in the company. Mike decided that there were 3 points for marketing that would make Apple very successful down the line. These included: empathy, focus and impute. Mark believed that with these 3 things he could take Apple’s marketing superior to the rest of the industry.
Apple has proven themselves as experts at thinking outside the box. Targeting the innovators, artistic, educational and design-oriented businesses instead of simply going after the big dogs in the business industry is Apple’s way of making a point to show that they are different. Apple has made their products simple and functional consequently making it easier for their customers to work, which brings in one of Mark’s principles: empathy. Having empathy in marketing means truly understanding what the customer needs and in order to be successful you have to out-do every other company at this.
Apple has created a “brand mote” by excluding other company brands from Apple stores. Having a brand mote gives Apple the ability to impute the best representation of their brand. They make their store environment and product experience unlike any other thereby putting another one of Mark’s principles into action. Apple employees make a point to be there to help and guide the customers from the moment they walk through the door to the moment they are signing the receipt by explaining products, introducing them to the latest and greatest as well as the older models, telling them where to go for technological assistance and adding value of the product by making it impossible for the customer to envision their life without it. The aesthetics of the store aren’t something that needs to be shown, but instead something that needs to be taken in.
More than anything, Apple has focus. The company eliminates all distractions and does what they do best. They did not try to make another PC identical to Microsoft, but instead took a different approach by reaching out to the “left-brainers”, made their product simple and, more than anything, made their marketing simple as well. Realizing that flashy and loud advertising was not working the way it used to and simplifying everything about themselves put Apple in a different pool than the rest.
Take a look at your business’s marketing plan. Does it exclude the clutter? Is it offering the RIGHT information for the company? Remember, the key to modern marketing is simplicity.