Marketing Lessons from Steve Jobs

I am not a scientist. I’m an inventor. I measure everything I do by the size of the silver dollar. If it don’t come up to that standard, then I know it’s no good.”—Thomas Edison

Steve Jobs was an inventor…and a marketer. By the measurement that Thomas Edison provided, Jobs was accordingly the greatest inventor of all time, having created more than $300 billion in net worth over the course of about a decade.

He accomplished this through marketing. In fact, IMPUTE MARKETING is called IMPUTE MARKETING because of Steve Jobs—you will see why below.

This article discusses XX ways in which Jobs became possibly the greatest marketer of all time. Marketing is “the ongoing activity of interfacing your business with the marketplace—of communicating the value of a product or service to customers for the purpose of selling that product or service,” and Steve Jobs was the highest master in this.

FOCUS

“Steve Jobs was the most remark – ably focused person I’ve ever met in my life.”—Jony Ive

Focus is the ability to decide what is important to you, versus urgent to others…the ability to say “no” with ruthless integrity to a wide variety of other very attractive distractions. See video about Jobs by Jony Ive.

If you cannot choose what to say “no” to, then you will inevitably say “yes” to things that will derail you.

IMPUTE

To impute the value of a product/ service is to convey “signals” to the user to allow them to form their own opinion about that product/service. People do not like “salesiness” and prefer to come to the table on their own terms.

Jobs knew that every single detail of an Apple product would have to be absolute perfection in order for people to never consider it as “slipshod.” He demanded that everything Apple did be creative and professional. He wanted people to infer the tremendous value through user-experience and imagery, not be sold through words and gimmicks.

FEELINGS

Steve Jobs was known to understand that a well-marketed product/service must be highly empathetic to the user’s feelings and needs.

The job as a marketer is to find out:

1.What known or unknown or irrational pain, angst, worry, concern, fear, anger or sadness is the potential client experiencing?

2.Do they perceive or feel that they have few or no available options for a solution?

3.Are they currently and actively seeking, and willing to accept, a solution?

When a marketer understands these aspects of their intended user, the process of selling is easy, low-friction, and highly profitable. Sadly, most people start with the product first without regard to the needs and feelings of the user and then try to “force” it onto them with word- campaigns. Steve Jobs never had to talk anyone into buying an iPhone.

By Rob Flitton