Drew McLellan’s blog post on how to get customers to choose your product over a competitor’s is essentially what we have been discussing in class majority of the time– differentiation and fully understanding your customers-.
He mentioned that it is important to “go back to really understanding how you’re and what sub-set of potential customers is in perfect alignment with that distinction”1.
If we stop and think about the most recognized companies and brands in the world, we may notice that most of them fully understand their customers and thus in their marketing strategies, incorporate what they think will pull at the strings of the customers’ heart and move forward from there. For example, Apple’s target market are people who want a simple and clean-looking design in technology that is highly functional, and also people who want to be associated with the image of being a trendsetter.
Therefore, what Apple sells is not the product itself, but the lifestyle of being cool, hip and trendy, and the community that Apple users are automatically a part of once they buy the product.
People want to be first to have something new and popular, and Apple’s products have turned into that something.One of the many cases that show people who want Apple products are trendsetters was when the iPhone 5 was released. On CBC News, it was reported that “In London, England, some people camped out for a week to be among the first to get the phone.”2
What the Apple brand does for its users is so much more than providing a functional product to satisfy the customer’s functional needs. Apple’s product satisfies many of our generation’s psychological needs of being belonging in a certain group or community (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) as people long for a different self.
By knowing what your brand does for the consumer, all the company has to do is present the product correctly. It is all about telling a consumer what they want to be and how your product will help them achieve their desires.
Sources:
1 http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/2013/09/why-would-i-pick-you.html
2 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/09/21/apple-iphone-launch-sale.html