10 Valuable Product Marketing Lessons to Take from Apple

Steve Jobs didn't have a master's degree and was certainly not an engineer, but he did master marketing. These marketing skills propelled Apple to the top and saved the company from the brink of collapse.

Apple's marketing has become the benchmark for companies looking to generate similar levels of recognition and revenue. Any company can integrate these rules into its own marketing strategies and use them for both its existing and future products and services. The 10 big lessons that can be learned from Apple's marketing are as follows:

1) Keep it simple.

Current and prospective customers do not need complex marketing campaigns that will inundate them with information. Apple understood this from the very beginning and kept its marketing techniques as simple as possible. He cleared the lists of product features, price, external sounds and special effects. It did not include information about where and how to buy the product in its advertisements. Instead, he showed his products and let the product speak for itself in a straightforward way. He prepared advertisements with minimal content, devoid of ostentation and noise, allowing simple graphics to convey the message. He never preferred to speak in jargon and technical terms that would confuse his listeners.

2) Use product placement.

Apple allocates a budget to place its products in TV shows and movies, but it's also acceptable to start small. Any marketer can place and share their product on social media like Instagram or Snapchat with an influential name. Once this influential name shares your product and your product is found useful by their followers, the seeds for progress are planted.

3) Pay attention to customer reviews.

Apple has been very good at getting feedback from its customers. This is something you should and can easily implement. Customers are often happy to leave comments. Of course, giving coupons or other special offers helps. You can make it easier to get feedback with a free trial or sample product in return for comments/evaluations on social media or in the comment section of your product's website.

In this regard, care should be taken to include the names, photographs or avatars of these customers in the comments received from each customer. If it is an inter-institutional business, it is also important to add a link to their website to increase credibility.

4) Focus on what differentiates you from the rest of the market.

A big part of Apple's marketing strategy consists of never engaging in pricing wars. Even though they are generally higher priced than their competitors, their pricing strategies are specific. The reason behind their success is that they focus on promoting the value of their products by doing what their competitors cannot.

Apple also focuses on providing a great user experience with cool features and common applications that elevate its products. They want to make sure that whatever the company proposes, their customers think it's worth the high price they pay. This way of thinking can be applied in all service and product sectors. Just focus on what differentiates you from the rest of the market.

5) Have something to defend.

Customers want to know that you stand for something. They want a reason to make them feel comfortable when they buy and use your products. This is something separate from the product itself. Your message should be clearly visible not just on the product but on everything it is connected to, such as packaging, retail and collateral. In other words, the message you want to give should be clearly visible on all these platforms.

Delivering a consistent message strengthens your customers' trust in you. Be careful about how everything you put effort into your marketing process looks like and make sure it's all consistent.

6) Create not only products but also experiences.

Anyone can create a product, but it is very difficult to create a memorable experience that will create excitement for the customer again and again. You must be creative and experiential in many areas, from product launches that make you feel like you are at a rock concert to movie-style advertisements, from stores to online shopping that will change the shopping experience.

One way to create experiences that will stay in the customer's mind is in storytelling. Storytelling creates a different feeling in your customer than what they are actually doing: buying a product. Apple also makes buying computers, tablets and other products exciting.

7) Speak in a language they understand.

Because Apple studies its customers carefully, it knows how to speak the language that will create a deeper connection with them and enable more sales.

By removing terms and conditions that only serve to confuse, Apple has found a new way to reach customers that its competitors have yet to figure out. You can achieve this by focusing on your customers, learning how they interact, how they talk, how and from what angles they talk about your product.

8) Create mystery in what you do.

Apple's best marketing method is to create mystery by constantly revealing something about its next product. This turns customers into fanatics and makes them buy whatever Apple produces without thinking or questioning. Despite this, Apple goes a little further and leaks some information, spreads rumors and creates an atmosphere of mystery around the upcoming product. They really know how to excite the customer.

While marketers usually miss all the excitement by trying to tell their customers everything about their products, Apple creates an audience that is excitedly waiting for it by hiding some information.

9) Appeal to emotions.

In its ads, Apple focuses on people having a great time with their iPad or iPod rather than things like battery life, memory capacity, etc. In this way, it touches its customers emotionally and has a customer group that praises the company's products to those around them.

As visual content that appeals to emotions such as happiness and pleasure increases, this content is shared more and turns into a widespread movement, as Apple did. This can be emulated by any business or company for basically any content with strong visuals, emotional language and a positive atmosphere.

10) Use visuals.

The impact on customer experience can be increased with much fewer words and much more visuals. Apple even made ads with only 10 words because they know and understand that words, especially overused words, do not create that voice with customers. When marketing campaigns, fewer words mean more to the audience, especially when they are exposed to visuals, the product leaves a greater emotional impact on the audience.