Marketing people must learn Jobs 10 inspiration

When we are still struggling to find a way of marketing, Steve Jobs told us the highest level of marketing is what he is how to do marketing? He enlighten us the following: 1, looking for a good mentor; 2 , Create great products; 3, stick to their beliefs; 4, willing to spend money; 5, will create excellent experience; 6, keep secrets and create a sense of mystery; 7, find an opponent; 8, fans into sermons ; 9, do not talk too much about products; 10, the use of pictures, rather than words.

No doubt Jobs is a success, he turned almost bankrupt Apple into the most profitable technology companies. But now think about it, he is not an engineer, can not write a line of code; there is no MBA, nor is the product manager.

Former Apple employees, Steve Jobs is the greatest of his strong marketing capabilities, he is the history of the most powerful marketers. Marketing people must learn Jobs 10 inspiration:

1, looking for a good mentor; 2, to create a great product; 3, to persevere in their own beliefs; 4, willing to spend money; 5, to create an excellent experience; 6, to keep secrets and create a sense of mystery; An opponent; 8, the fans into preachers; 9, do not talk too much about the product; 10, the use of pictures, rather than words.

1. Looking for a good mentor

Needless to say, Jobs is a genius. But he is smart enough to continue to look for other objects worth learning. His first teacher was Regis McKenna, the legendary marketer in Silicon Valley. When Apple was just a two-person company that was in the garage, Jobs found him. With McKenna's help, Jobs found Apple's first angel investor and marketing leader, MikeMarkkula. He joined Apple as an employee (for some time he was CEO) and created a set of marketing principles Apple has stuck with 35 years ago.

Later, Jobs started working with TBWAChiatDay's advertising specialist LeeClow, who created Apple's most famous "ThinkDifferent" advertisement in 1984. As a result, LeeClow became a lifetime consultant and close friend of Steve Jobs. Jobs tells us from his experience that no matter how good you are, there will surely be more and better characters than you know. Find them hard and listen to what they say.

Create a great product

Kawasak, former preaching sergeant at Apple, once said that "what Steve created was a great product, not just something that was casually taken in. Most marketers unconditionally accept any rubbish thrown at them, in which case Under the slogan, even a hard-fought marketing campaign would be as tedious as a pig's lipstick, and Steve's "secret" is more than just marketing, he controls the product quite severely. "

3. Stick to their beliefs

When Apple Computer was founded in 1977, Jobs and Markkula summed up the core principles of the three companies. First of all, Apple must be with consumers. Second, Apple will focus on a few areas and will do their best. Third, Apple will export its value and style (simple, high quality) in all aspects of the product - not only in the product itself, including the product's packaging, storefronts, and even news distribution.

As a result, Steve Jobs made an extraordinary decision at Apple: He insisted that every product in Apple use a consistent design style. Do you think this is easy? Check out your company's website. Do all the parts appear to be from the same hands? Most sites look like Frankenstein pieced together with different pieces of style. Does your website fit in well with your press releases, even if your site looks the same? Your storefront? Your truck? Your product packaging? Jobs is pursuing this unprecedented unity.

Willing to spend money

Steve Jobs is a natural performer, and advocates commercial big move. One of the most direct examples is the new Macintosh commercial in 1984. As usual, Jobs decided to make an impact on it. He hired Ridley Scott, director of the "ET" and "Blade Runner," spent $ 900,000 on a 60-second ad and continued investing $ 800,000 in the Super Bowl. (Then $ 1.7 million was $ 3.4 million today). This is a huge risk to the company, especially if you do not know if it will succeed. In fact, when Apple's board hated the ad, it did not want to play it at all.

Finally, hard to come. Because of this ad to generate news much more than the Macintosh computer itself.

5. Create a great experience

Apple called the 1984 business event "event marketing," meaning that if an event was sufficiently innovative and unique, the event itself would receive enthusiastic attention. Soon after, Jobs did a similar thing. He spent $ 2.5 million buying a quarterly Newsweek advertising spot. In addition, Apple's famous event marketing there are "ThinkDifferent" and "I'maMac." The most important is: Steve Jobs published a keynote speech, fruit powder will line up overnight, the popular must beat the Beatles reunited.

Jean-Louis Gassee, a former executive in charge of global marketing for Apple, said Jobs understood the importance of the story and moved it again and again to Apple's commercial activities. "People all want to feel some stories, which is why there's so much to complain about now that Apple has no story."

Keep your secrets and create a sense of mystery

People lined up for Apple's events because, in addition to Steve Jobs's rock star-like charm, more of a surprise for his fans as a suspense master, people think he is always likely to announce some amazing things . A few months before the release of Apple products, he will begin to leak some information. The first is a hint, then a rumor, followed by another rumor to disprove earlier rumors. Most of this information is misinformation, but it drives people crazy speculation.

But when Steve Jobs really show the world iPhone, people still talked about it for a whole year. There are constantly designers who create their own imaginary versions of Apple phones. Steve Jobs also has a famous stem: "One thing." Just before you thought the end of a press conference was coming to an end, he would say, "Oh, one more thing," and then come up with a stunning audience design . Most marketers will be tempted to tell everyone as much about the information about their products as early as possible. Jobs is doing exactly the opposite - the more he remains mysterious, it makes people more excited.

Find an opponent

The first rule of telling a story is that good theater needs conflict. In other words, you need to have a competitor in the marketing process. Apple's initial rival is IBM. Then turned into Microsoft. Recently, Jobs has given Google and his Android operating system a new counter-party. In each case, Jobs sets the scene for the audience the same: a bad guy wants to take over the world and destroy it, and we can stop it all.

Many marketers evade this rhetoric. They are afraid of being bounced and hurt, so the general performance of children like missing children, very much hope that each consumer's love. To be sure, creating an enemy is definitely risky, especially if you choose a strong and powerful enemy. But Steve Jobs believes you have to do something first to sell your product. If you want to launch a revolution, you need an object to resist.

8. Turn fans into preachers

Perhaps the most important thing Steve Jobs did is to turn customers into passionate advocates of the Apple brand. Whenever a new Iphone comes to market, we can not ignore the fans lining up overnight outside the Apple Store, even though the Apple only made some minor improvements to the iPhone last year. To be sure, they are not there for the phone. They stand there to express their support for the Apple, just as fans in the favorite team before the match will be wearing the team's color. Fruit powder do not think they are customers. They think they are part of the apple, representing a higher than their own mission.

9. Do not talk too much about the product

The commercial ad in 1984 did not show too many pictures of Macintosh computers. Only some shots were given to the Macintosh in the last ten seconds. Similarly, "ThinkDifferent" is the same, the ads did not talk about any product-related information, but what kind of people will be impressed by the computer. In "I'maMac", Jobs replaced characters with characters - representing two different computers with two different personalities.

10. Use pictures, not text

Even today, Apple invests tremendously on its website and in advertising, using as little text as possible to express its meaning. Part of the reason for this move is to continue Apple's core values ​​of simplicity, but also because Steve Jobs realized that the image is more powerful "storyteller."

One of my favorite examples of this is the MacBook Air, with Jobs appearing on the stage and taking a slender laptop out of envelopes. This simple action is even more impressive than a thousand words.

Take a look at Apple's recent new ads for its camera features. In the one-minute ad, the only marketing message is just the five-second voice-over at the end of the video: "Every day, more photos are taken with the iphone than with any other camera."

We all know the motto: "Less is more." Most agree with this view, especially when it comes to writing. But why do not we do this? Probably because simplicity is not an easy task in itself. As Mark Twain once said, "If there is more time, I want to write a shorter story."