Why is Apple seeing such phenomenal success with its products of late? One theory is that as a company, Apple is targeting people, not a so called “market.” There’s a great post over at GigaOm by Matt Assay titled “Apple Doesn’t Target Markets. It Targets People.” It’s a great essay about the importance of understanding, ultimately who are your customers. They’re not markets, they are individuals.
Apple understands this and their product development is laser focused on the individual. “This is how great companies are built: they focus on individuals and build exceptional products for them, and let these individuals determine how best to make use of the technology,” says Assay.
On the surface it seems like a rather simple concept. But all too often companies and their marketers try to build products to a so called ‘market,’ and lose sight of the fact that markets are made up of individuals. If people embrace your product, the ‘market’ will take care of itself.
This is a message we try to convey to our clients. We help telecom vendors and suppliers grow their business with the tier 2 and 3 service provider segment. All too often we see clients trying to lump all of these carriers together into one market and then develop tactics targeted at this market. Our advice is, there are people within those service providers and you have to engage them, not engage the entire market.
We always say business is really about relationships. Long term success depends on whether companies can build relationships with individuals, not with markets. Apple has managed to build individual relationships with its customers. And they are seeing fabulous success as a result. We could all learn from their experience.
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