If your business has a consumer facing product, and you sell it based on features alone then you are doing it wrong.

The biggest shift that marketing in our generation is going through isn’t just technological in the sense of the mobile revolution, focus on location aware software, or even about the social fabric that ties everything together. Instead, in order to have a successful consumer product you need to focus on the experiences and tell an interesting story.

Think I’m kidding? Let’s take a look at some of the most effective marketing that has cemented users into a particular ecosystem, regardless of the fact that the competition arguably has more advanced technology. Instead, these companies focused on a user experience that delights their customers coupled with a marketing campaign that makes them feel something and creates an emotional understanding that the competition can’t quite create.

Example #1: Apple iPad

Arguably the master of their craft, Apple has built a culture around creating products with features the mass consumer can actually understand. The iPhone doesn’t just take 8mp f/2.4 photos, it records crystal clear memories. FaceTime isn’t just another web chat application, it’s a seamless way to see the people you love. The list goes on and on, and they have crafted their marketing formula around making technology get out of the way and giving people experiences.

Their recent iPad advertisement entitled “Love” is a great example of how they aren’t marketing just a tablet that is mostly a “nice to have” and is running on 3G networks while their competitors are running on much faster 4G LTE networks. Instead, they give examples of how creatives, curious youth and others can have enriched experiences with their device.

Example #2: The New Twitter

Twitter has long struggled with explaining to most of their 100 million customer base exactly what the heck the value of their service even is. Most people jokingly referred to Twitter as the service that lets everyone know what you had for lunch and how many times you had to go to the bathroom today, but for those of us who are more veteran Twitter users we fully understand the power of serendipity that Twitter can cause – and put simply it feels like magic.

With their latest release however, they also have done a much better job of marketing with the below advertisement by focusing on discovery (and the natural serendipitous nature of if) that shows how users can experience what feels like being a part of something bigger. Whether that something bigger is Egypt overthrowing their dictator or seeing a Tweet from space, it’s a larger than life experience that few other places really offer.

Example #3: Path 2

About a year ago, Path launched is a close network photo sharing application that was clean but didn’t have the magic formula to get any tangible traction. That all changed about a week ago when Path 2 launched as they understood that their niche to fill was not just another photo sharing app that only lets you share with family. Instead it’s a network that focuses on people you really care about (close friends, family etc), but also gives you the ability to broadcast information that you are comfortable sharing to more public networks such as Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook etc.

The video they used to launch Path 2 does a brilliant job of showing how most people only really care about a tight network of people anyway and that it’s not a race to see how many friends you can collect on your network of choice. Instead it was about high quality images, videos and experiences along your “path” of life that you want to share with your closest people. Quality > Quantity.

What can you improve with your own product?

This is the real question, have you been promoting your product service based on it’s differentiated features from your competitors? Or have you been focusing on how their experience will have a spark of magic in it? While most of my close friends are tech savvy, I can say that most consumers are not – but that’s actually a good thing.

By having customers who care about how a product improves their life instead of trying to keep up with the latest acronyms and other industry jargon they can focus on living their lives while you delight them along the way. Think about how you can modify the way you present yourself to focus more on the experience rather than the newest flux capacitor on your widget.

No one is a more rabid A/B tester than Google, yet it’s no secret that they haven’t been very prolific designers. With their iconic spartan search page that hasn’t changed much for many years and many of their products following suit, when Google dives head first into taking design seriously this should be the final wake up call for those of you who have been using them as an excuse for a owning a website that looks and performs like crap.

Being concise and muted

With the launch of Google+ we started seeing upgrades cropping up all over the Google suite, and even more recently we are seeing a consolidation of their branding by dropping the brands of Blogger and Picasa and instead calling those products Google Blogs and Google Pictures which will bring a more continuous look and feel to their suite of products. These brands lend themselves to being concise and much more easily articulated to consumers seeing as how the Google brand is now one of the most coveted, recognized and valuable brands on the earth.

Being ‘muted’ is all about delivering a compelling experience without overselling it through too many flashy objects (an in a lot of cases actually avoiding the literal use of Flash) and instead using soft color tones, unique feeling typography and a clean spartan design that give a clear call to action and leave plenty of white spaces for your users to distinguish between various objects and compartments of your website design. This will allow them to understand what they are being asked to do and what your value proposition is without being overwhelmed.

Earning your visitors trust

For many sales online, sales are essentially the arbitrage of trust you have built with your audience. What this means is that people are willing to buy from you because they trust you, and each time you ask them to buy something you will lose a few “followers” and feel less valuable to your users in the process. Most marketers get over this by keeping a steady stream of fresh visitors and providing as much value for free to their audience in between asking them to buy stuff to at the very least balance out the trust arbitrage.

But what is the difference between this and simply having good design? Of course you need to provide value to your audience, they need to trust you and feel good about the relationship – but even if you are giving away the world in a package that looks like ass your sales are going to suffer. This is where the time and resource investment of quality design comes into play. Your audience will trust you more as well as be more willing to buy your products when you have good design because it articulates what you are selling, what the value proposition is and it feels like it has the polish that only the highest quality product would have.

To put it simply, every audience desires and is willing to pay for the following:

1. Something of value (it solves a problem or perceived problem they have)

2. Something of quality (fit and finish that they feel they deserve)

3. Something of scarcity (an item, service, or experience that is not easily replicable)

Knowing this, how is your website design hurting your conversions? What aspect of your value proposition is lacking because you weren’t willing or able to put in the additional resources to articulate in a way that solved all 3 of the above requirements for a successful consumer product?

There used to be a time in America where simply graduating high school was a big deal, but the expectations quickly grew as more and more families could afford to go to a University. Today’s Bachelors feels more like an expensive high school diploma when entering the work force, yet for business related functions it still doesn’t feel useful. What the heck is going wrong?!

Being Relevant

I recently graduated from Washington State University with a degree in Marketing and a minor in International Business. While the experience there was fantastic and I was able to meet a lot of people it seems difficult to quantify the value and return that the traditional business program can offer. If I had taken that same amount of money that was spent on a four year degree, don’t you think I could have networked with the leaders in my industry of interest and learned from the best? Being relevant with today’s business demands seems to be something Universities are struggling to keep up with.

Disruption

How can a prospective student get more value out of their passion for business? The internet is completely saturated with “make money online gurus” that offer limited value and leave most people out in the cold. It is more and more difficult to find legitimate mentors online, and even tougher still to validate that you have learned anything. Why isn’t there an online degree program from these individuals that would hold weight out in the business world?

I personally feel that a lot is being left on the table by these simple informational products from a brand and revenue perspective because so many of the legitimate specialists have both real skills and their own web based services that compliment what they could be teaching new students. There is no reason that these honest professionals shouldn’t be the harvard of the online eduction world when it comes to business. It could be the perfect funnel to a special “alumni” pricing of their amazing tools that they use internally to produce millions of dollars in revenue and profit.

If there is one thing Apple has been phenomenal at over the at last 3 to 4 years it has been anticipating the needs of the average consumer before they really understand that the need exists. Much like Starbucks did with a premium coffee experience, Apple has been able to take a market that was in a race to the bottom and instead of purely going for the lowest price of entry they decided to change the way we use technology through out our daily lives.

This is more significant than it first appears because what Apple is really doing here is catering to the human emotional needs of computing, and not purely the functional need and for technology that completely changes everything. By having such a strong push and obsession around content, experience and quality they are simultaneously hitting consumers from directions they didn’t even know existed. These emotional pulls not only help Apple sell impressive units at even more impressive margins, but they have raised the bar for consumer expectations to mind boggling heights. Have you seen the wireless data consumption of AT&T? 4932% growth over 12 quarters! That is INSANE for a company that was the largest wireless carrier during part of that time (however is currently eclipsed by Verzion due to VW’s aggressive acquisitions).

The same kind of massive shift in the way consumer interact with their devices, and additionally what they have come to expect from them was seen in the portable music player category which seemed to have the secret sauce for an ecosystem that generated a better, and more reliable experience than what users had at their disposal before. iPod + iTunes has certainly proved to be a winning combination that is still paying off to this day, granted through a much more expanded form than what was originally conceptualized I am sure.

So what’s next?

Steve Jobs has described the iPad as possibly being the “most important thing [he] has ever worked on”. Bold words coming from a man who has had a fair hand in turning the music industry upside down, but what makes this device so important to the Apple lineup and how will it shift the way we expect our devices to perform for us?

Near 100% reliability

While many would argue that devices with offerings such as Android provide a ‘superior’ experience because of their limitless functions and features that can be added at any point (Flash anyone?). However, while competition is fantastic and I strongly believe that every market segment needs bold innovation to push the boundaries in order to understand what works, for mass adoption to take place the devices need to provide a stable foundation that users can depend on to carry out their tasks. If this element is missing, all of the emotional bonuses that come along with the Apple ecosystem are quickly discounted.

Masked price point

This one is kind of tricky with Apple, especially for those who are not drinking the Kool aid because there is most certainly an upfront premium that has been put on Apple products and the accompanying culture, buying habits etc that come with living in an Apple/Mac world. What IS interesting however is how Apple has clearly hinted at the iPad as a “sign of things to come” (Jonathan Ive) and while at first this devices seems like an over-sized iPod Touch; it is really going after the entry computing market. Think about the type of accessories and ways that a user can interact with this device, consider its price point and then think about what kind of computing experience you can get elsewhere for the same dollar.

For $500-900 can you get an industry best (IPS) display? Multitouch? 10 hour batter life? What about a seamless experience between the content you truly care about and the ability to quickly access information that you need? The Google Chrome OS will be a very interesting challenger to this type of experience game changer but until they are both out in their second generation, it is anybodies guess.

Dead simple usability

One thing I always found interesting as I went through High School and I am not finishing up College throughout the “iPod Generation” is the big draw that people had through word of mouth marketing, and the perceived ease of use. One of the people that I really look up to is Gary Vaynerchuk due to his ability to capture the essence of what is driving the market and understand that the key fundamentals haven’t really changed, only the delivery. People were buying iPods for two very simple reasons.

1. They were extremely good at doing what they were built to do

2. Everybody else had them, so everyone already KNEW how to use it

When you combing those two factors you have a potent recipe for buying decisions to stem directly from word of mouth marketing, where even better yet prospective buyers were able to hold a “sample” product in their hands and experience the ecosystem before buying. The trial-ability for the Apple brand, ecosystem and value proposition was phenomenal.

Developer community

This is a huge competitive advantage that Apple has with their ecosystem right now, and ironically is something they were openly against at first and ever since opening up their doors they have been slammed ever harder for not being more open (regardless of the fact that being at least semi closed is what makes the user experience so amazing). What Apple really gets at this point though is that by taking an agency approach to 3rd party software development with a 30% cut from all App sales they are directly profiting off of the innovation, marketing and value that their community is coming up with.

This last part is what I really want to drive home as to why I am bullish on these entire product line and ecosystem: Apple is no longer in the passenger seat when it comes to understanding the pulse of the consumer and even being a few steps ahead. It took them a few hard punches in the early rounds of computing to polish what they have wanted to perfect all along; content and the user experience. With the introduction of the iPad and the realization that Apple is now a “mobile company”, the firm is very much firing on all cylinders regardless of what type of traction this first generation iPad produces.

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We typically only talk about web technologies, and how to use them in order to build your brand, product etc. However there is an important aspect that too many of us overlook when bringing a product to market; how the hell does it look to the consumer?

Apple is notorious for discrete and sexy packaging that has drawn in buyers and changed our perception of the actual products inside. Apple does arguably make a quality product, but even if you disagree based on use of their devices your first impression is nearly almost always met with a “wow.. that looks cool”. It has even brought about videos of their product that are centered solely on the unboxing experience, which has since bled into other products but none garnish the number of views that Apple products do.

The sad part about the video above? It’s not even the fact that the guy opening the box is so taken back by the packaging, but the fact that this unboxing of a mouse has nearly 30k views! So what is the added value for Apple by putting more time and effort into a nifty package for this mouse? Think of all the people who sought out this video and then made a purchase (drives sales), talked about the mouse and it’s packaging (this blog post, discussions with friends) and even more importantly the customers perception of quality before ever actually using the device.

The consumer perception is everything when it comes to turning prospective customers into buyers and often times makes the difference between a products mediocre success and becoming an absolute start in the firms line up. So next time when you are putting together a physical product to add to your line, or creating a web service you need to remember that the presentation of the device is what does the selling. The quality of the product just continues your success… if no one ever buys it to start with it is hard for them to understand the quality.

This same principle is obviously applied to web development, if your website looks like crap but is rock solid; people are going to remember how it looked and be turned off without even realizing it. Having a clean web services that delivers on only a few key fundamentals is how you win the mind of consumers before they even consciously realize it. (Read more about the reptilian brain to find out about buying behaviors here and expect a follow up post this week)

When pricing and delivering a product to market, a lot of people tend to only thin of the value within the product itself and this leads them to gloss over potential financial gains and/or positioning blunders that will ultimately deliver less than stellar sales figures for your firm. The important thing to remember is not “what does this product do”, but rather “what does this product do for the customer” because the often times the two answers can be drastically different.

The classic saying from an executive at Black & Decker was “We don’t sell drills, we sell holes”. This captures the idea that they are not just selling a product, but that they were instead selling the end result that the product offers the customer. But even this value goes beyond the hole that the drill produces, often times it has fringe benefits such as the feeling of accomplishment (for DIY craftsmen), being readily available for a quick fix as well as the finished product that the product can be attributed to making possible.

Going with the drill example, a drill’s product value would be defined as “The ability to drill holes into any product or location seen fit by the consumer”. In contrast, it’s value proposition could be described as “The ability to accomplish and build things with your own hands to a personal level of satisfaction, thanks to the drills ability to give you the components you need at the time you need it”.

So why is it important to understand the difference between a products value compared to it’s value proposition? The answer is slightly muddy, however the short version is that by delivering a value proposition to your customer you will have the ability to charge more for your product based on the perceived value to the customer with the inclusion of all the added benefits that are not necessarily tangible as a physical item. This perceived value is paramount when/if a company starts to expand it’s product lines in any way at all.

Perceived Value

To quantify the profits that are possible through perceived value are highlighted when you look at the needs that a Lexus fulfills over a Toyota with similar components and functions. While the Lexus version of the vehicle does indeed cost marginally more, the brand image coincides with a different value proposition for its customer base. Consumers will buy the Lexus because they don’t just want the value of a reliable form of transportation (which is what the Toyota offering is perceived as), but instead these customers desire luxury, status, a sense of quality and often times a perceived reward for hard work by simply being able to afford such a more expensive product than it’s less expensive yet very equal counterpart.

So who cares? That is the classic question when taking in any marketing topic of discussion, and not only should you care as a consumer, but especially as a business because understanding your products full value proposition you will not only be able to create an appropriate positioning statement which will resonate with your target market but it will also let decide the profit maximizing price for your product based on the immediate and fringe needs that are fulfilled by your product as a whole.