Apple Doesn’t Target Markets. It Targets People

Apple has never (to my knowledge) marketed Macs to enterprise customers, and only hired a skeleton sales crew to sell to such customers, …

It targets people. It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they’ll use its products.

This sounds simple, but in my experience very few companies think this way. Most startups write business plans that dredge up IDC data on market size, then define their target market (e.g., “Global 2000 enterprises”). Few seem to realize that there are people employed within these target markets, and these people will be the ones who actually embrace or reject one’s product. …

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.

A very interesting posting: Apple – and a few others – do build on the Exceptional Indvidual Customer Experience. This is why a lot of users love the products. And they are king in building a Marketing hype and huge pull around the products.

I remember times, when Lotus Notes was brandnew approx. 20 years ago (and Lotus an independant company). Consultants and knowledge workers loved it, because of its groupware and replication features. They drove Notes into the Enterprise. Parallels to the iPhone and iPad?

What can we as Marketing people learn out of it? What can IBM learn out of it?

What is your opinion?