Why Marketing

In my last blog I shared a challenge of picking the most important of four business elements … Product, Management, Margins, Marketing (PMMM). After briefly explaining each, I shared that in my opinion the No. 1 was Marketing. I ended the blog saying that this week I would share with you several reasons why I feel Marketing is No. 1. So here goes …

The Obvious

Think about the top businesses in your local area that you feel are the best, i.e., dry cleaners, car dealers, restaurants, real estate agents, CPAs, law firms, etc. Which of the four business elements (PMMM) listed above are they No. 1 at? Add to that that there are thousands if not tens of thousands of highly profitable, incredible, life-changing products invented and created by people with impressive resumes that we’ve never heard of simply because they don’t know how to market. Therefore, in my opinion, in the end marketing is what matters most.

Best Example

A great example that we can all relate to is Apple. Steve Wozniak invented a circuit board that would evolve into the Apple I computer. If you read the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson, you learn that Woz’s father basically ran off Steve Jobs initially because he hadn’t actually created anything and didn’t deserve a 50% stake in the startup, but growing business. And Jobs left in a very emotional state as described in the book.

But Woz was smart enough to know there was a “harmony” between him and Jobs’ … that Jobs brought a factor or secret sauce that Woz didn’t have. Woz realized that Jobs had an entrepreneurial and marketing mind that could move his product forward with creativity, innovation, and salesmanship. We all know what happened. It was Jobs who turned Woz’s ingenious designs into a budding business. Which is today the most celebrated, valued, and copied brand in the world.

I gleaned from several articles a few practices that Jobs’ did to create the fanatical following of Apple. Granted there are many more but these are just a few that jumped out as things that definitely helped Apple succeed.

1. Focus – in 1997 when Jobs’ was brought back to Apple after being asked to leave in 1985, he immediately focused on reducing the product line by 70% … to only four products. He knew what not to do as well as what to do.
2. Creativity – he taught us that it wasn’t about the Product, but an idea, a status, an identity … a way of being different. A creative revolutionary approach. A goal of excellence.
3. Launch Events – he taught and showed us how to have a planned and prepared launch well before the marketing date. He made it an EVENT … and he started internally and then launched it externally with passion and precision.
4. Keep It Simple – he took a technological and complex industry and product and broke it down into something simple and very memorable. A couple of examples are: “There’s an app for that” and “A 1,000 songs in your pocket.”
5. After-the-Sell Market – he took marketing one-step further … after the sell … with great packaging that excited the customer. He had his people study the constraints of the industry and told them “you can improve on this.”
6. Service and Branding – he was the first in the computer industry to sell the impression of service … and made customer service part of Marketing & Brand Management … then added consistency in packaging, design, advertising of every product. He sold a perception and status.

Wrap Up

Granted there are others who have done this in their own way (i.e., Howard Schulz with Starbucks, Jeff Bezos with Amazon, Eric Schmidt with Google, and others.) but we all recognize the Steve Jobs approach to Marketing and its continued success.

© Phil Hoffman 2012. All rights reserved