Apply Apple's Marketing Genius to Your Business

Apple is blazing a new path for its products. Could your company do the same?
Read the following and think about the questions at the end.
We all can learn from Apple.

Apple's iPad is changing the game. If I owned Microsoft or Dell, I would be very concerned today. Not because the iPad is a new type of limited-purpose computer that looks snazzy, but because it's a new computer "footprint" with an Apple operating system.

Apple is hitting the computer market in its most vulnerable spot: hardware design.

Hardware manufacturers have not evolved much beyond the laptop "style,"--other than to decrease weight and increase battery life. Why should they? People are happy with laptops and, besides, the applications that laptops run don't need to be turned sideway, flipped with a finger swoosh, or expanded with an "unpinch" motion.

Apple is changing that. And now, if you wanted your laptop to work like your iPhone (and who wouldn't? Have you seen the iPhone!!), you will need to buy an iPad. (And rest assured that the iPad will evolve into a full-fledged business computer in a very short time, now that 3-rd party developers can get at it.)

So what does that mean for Microsoft? Suddenly, their operating system is running on the wrong hardware!! And, guess what: the people who own the iPad hardware have their own operating system. So, Microsoft is on the path to obsolescence, not because their operating system isn't good, but because the hardware it runs on it looking old. Microsoft and Dell have been attacked from the rear!!

What have we learned?? Apple's Wisdom:
(1) Even large companies have weaknesses.
(2) To overcome the competition, you have to change the game (not take on the competition).

Apply Apple's wisdom:
(1) Think about your product or service and all its components. Draw a picture if you can. Where does your offering touch other people, companies and markets, etc.
(2) For EVERY component of your offering, what could you do to sabotage it if you were a competitor? For example, for every concept you promote as a consultant, what could change to make your advice wrong? These are your weaknesses.
(3) Now reverse that thinking, what could you embrace to make your product better? If you were not constrained by time or money, what would you do to improve each component/feature of your product?

Are the ideas coming yet? Keep at it. They will. It may take a few weeks of mulling this around in your head before the real brainstorm hits.

Apple may not have had the genius to foreseen it's long-term path when they introduced the iPod, but somewhere along the line they did. And now the competition will be scrambling to catch up while Apple builds market share. Apple has changed the game.

Maybe you can, too.

Let me know your thoughts,
--Paige
Paige Miller
MultiPlanet Marketing, Inc.
Always thinking ahead.