Steve Jobs Building A Brand Tips

Steve Jobs Building A Brand Tips

hello I’m your host Kaycinho, I’m a digital alchemist, and today I’m going to share with you 5 tips that I believe can help you, whether you are a freelance creative web professional or maybe you’re in the process of creating your own business.

Steve Jobs has built one of the most profitable business on earth, and he left us with some nuggets of wisdom from the speech he gave in 1997 about the Think Different campaign.

If you watch the companion video, where I develop a bit more, make sure you watch till the end, because these tips may be the key that will unlock your business potential!

Let’s start the Steve Jobs Building A Brand Tips countdown!

5. Marketing is about values

“Marketing is about values.”.
Steve Jobs

That powerful quote is very different from what we see today.

Nowadays it seems that all you need is fancy graphics and a good ol’ FB Ads campaign… All of that without passion, without trying to solve problems.

And even if some do succeed at that game, it’s more an exception following the “first come, first served” rule.

Fidget spinners anyone? When fidget spinners were all the rage, sure the first ones to sell them made a lot of money. But after that, an army of unsuccessful FB Ads soldiers were left agonizing on the $ battlefield.

Let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with making $ on a good opportunity. But what’s next? After the hype is gone, the smart ones re-invested their money to build their entrepreneurial projects, but others just moved onto the next hype.

Hypes come and go. It is very different from building a brand that will be there in the long run, and that will make the world a better a place. Even if just a tiny bit.

Also, ask yourself if this the type of entrepreneur you would you like to become? “Be the first to sell the hype or die trying?“.

For example some of my brand values are rooted in inspiring others, teaching, attention to detail, minimalism and beautiful branding as a strong way of communicating and standing out.

What are your brand values?

Don’t forget you can freely download a branding guidelines template, with a page dedicated to reference your brand values.

Download now!

4. Be really clear about what you want people to remember about you

“It’s a complicated a noisy world, we’re not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us, so we have to be really clear on what we want people to know about us”.
Steve Jobs

In other words… Why would I do business with you?

Is it pricing? If so, then you’re just a commodity and you’re competing with the rest of the planet. It’s a never ending race to the bottom.

For example, I want people to work with me because :

• they want a strong brand
• they feel I have a passion for branding
• they trust I will take care of their brand as if it were mine.

I have a deep belief that the power of branding is not only the privilege of big brands only, but that it can and should be implemented at every level of entrepreneurship.

What is your deep belief?

3. Invest and care about your brand

“Even a great brand needs investment & caring if it’s gonna retain its relevance and vitality”
Steve Jobs

In his speech from 1997, Jobs explained that even as famous and successful as Apple was, they had been neglecting investing and caring about their brand.

The consequence is that Apple had lost some of the brand’s relevance and vitality.

If you think this is exaggerated, think about Kodak, Nokia or BlackBerry, just to name a few.

So of course, as a solopreneur or small entrepreneur, we don’t have the same budget.

But … it amazes me that brands as famous as Apple, Coca Cola, Disney and Nike for example, know they cannot fall asleep, but we, for some reason think we can?

Of course we don’t have the same financial power yet, but maybe we can just start by re-injecting money into our own business instead of, spending money like water in things that won’t help our business level up.

I’m not judging anyone, it’s totally ok to reward yourself. What I’m saying is, try to balance the part of the profits you enjoy for yourself, and the part you re-inject in your business.

What are you doing with your profits? What percentage are you re-investing?

2. Don’t focus on the technical details – Focus on the bigger picture

The way to do that is not to talk about features.

When Jobs made that speech, competition was fierce (and still is) with Microsoft and other brands.

So what Jobs meant is that for Apple it was not important to talk speeds, megahertz, and so on.

According to Steve Jobs, one of the best examples in the industry of marketing as Nike.

Nike sell shoes, they sell a commodity, and yet when you think of Nike, you think of something different than a shoe company.

“In their ads, they don’t talk about the products, they don’t tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok air soles. They honor great athletes and great athletics. That’s who they are, that’s what they are about”
Steve Jobs

So when you think about them, you associate the great athletes and all of a sudden, Nike become more than a commodity.

It’s a perception of ethics, sports values, motivation, champions, world records, great achievers.

It talks more than a commercial that would focus on the technical side of things.

So if you’re selling WordPress websites right now, with no vision, then you’re a commodity.

Do you focus on explaining to your customers that you’re better than XYZ because your website come with this plugin and that component?

Or do you focus on the bigger picture. What is your website going to change in your customers’s business?

If the answer is nothing, maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board, nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize something has to change

What do you stand for? What is your vision?

1.Your customers want to know, what you’re all about, and what you stand for

Where do you fit in this world?

“Apple isn’t about making boxes for people to get their job done, although we do that well and we do that almost better than anybody, in some cases. But Apple’s about something more than that, Apple at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better, and that those people are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that actually do”
Steve Jobs

That’s a strong statement!

Now honestly I don’t know what most of the tech companies stand for (except from Tesla), so in my mind, they are a commodity.

Now I’m not an apple fanboy, but I love that brand – doesn’t stop me from enjoying other brands for phones for example, but when it comes to computers, I prefer Apple because they have a strong position regarding creative professionals.

A position that I don’t find in most other brands.

But that could change – that’s why brands invest in shaping perceptions, and that’s what you should do too, at your level of course.

Steve Jobs Building A Brand Tips Conclusion

After that speech, and will all of that in mind, Apple went on to launch the Think Different campaign, that went back to their core values

As Steve Jobs mentioned, at that point, a lot of things had changed, since they started Apple, the markets were at a totally different place.

But regarding values, and core values, these things shouldn’t change.

So the Think Different campaign was all about honoring those people who have changed the world

Apple even went as far as implying that some of those people, that had been dead way before the computer technology was even created, would probably have been using a Mac!

Now to be honest, I think that the since that speech, Apple is falling back again doing what they did before Steve Jobs came back to the rescue, when he gave that speech.

But that’s another story.

It’s also a good reminder, that no matter how strong your brand is today, you should always care about your brand and keep your core values alive.

Most people compete on the price, don’t be of them, compete on what makes your brand unique!

Steve Jobs Building A Brand Tips: Your Turn!

So, I hope these tips from the master himself will help you better brand your web design business!

If you watched the companion video and if you like it, please give it a thumbs up, as it really helps growing the channel – did I mention really really really?

Also, if you know someone that could benefit from it, I’m going to ask you if you’d like t share it now?

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So, that’s it for this tutorial, I hope to see you around here or on the Youtube channel, and in the meantime, don’t forget to invest in YOUR success!