David Pickard: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” How does an entrepreneur market a budding business? Does good marketing center around product, people… or both?

Initially, the concept seems logical enough. If you want to sell your product or build your brand, you have to build awareness around it. However, this is quite the misconception.

In late 2009, Simon Sinek gave a TED Talk which he titled ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’. During his talk, he posed a question to the audience: How does entrepreneur Steve Jobs create such a successful brand? Many people have started computer companies and failed. Why did he succeed?

The secret is that most entrepreneurs focus on marketing the product. Instead, successful marketing focuses on the entrepreneur’s purpose, intention, and passion.

What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Apple’s Marketing

According to Simon Sinek: “If Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?” “Meh.” That’s how most of us communicate. That’s how most marketing and sales are done, that’s how we communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say how we’re different or better and we expect some sort of a behavior, a purchase, a vote, something like that. Here’s our new law firm: We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients, we always perform for our clients. Here’s our new car: It gets great gas mileage, it has leather seats. Buy our car. But it’s uninspiring.

Here’s how Apple actually communicates. “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” Totally different, right? You’re ready to buy a computer from me. I just reversed the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.”

Market Yourself and Your Passion

That means that in order to be successfully market as an entrepreneur, your first duty is to market yourself and your passion. You are the fundamental building blocks of your brand, your company, your product. Without initially establishing yourself, your purpose, your identity and your intentions, there is little chance of success.

How do you address this? Build yourself like you would build your product. Invest in yourself, so that later people will invest in your brand.

Watch the video below from Entrepreneur’s article ‘25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs’. It demonstrates common characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, many of which can simply be learned through practice.

Take a look and consider these simple ways to build yourself and consequently your brand!