Apples Traditional Marketing Strategies - Essay Example

Social Media Marketing: iPhone 6 0 Executive summary Marketing activities can make or break a product or company. In other words, even high quality products may fail in the present heavily competitive and globalized market unless they use innovative and advanced marketing strategies. On the other hand, even cheap quality products may excel in the market with the help of innovative advanced marketing strategies such as social media marketing. Traditional marketing strategies like print and television ads are highly expensive and their utility is less compared to modern marketing activities such as social media marketing. Moreover, social media marketing is cheap compared to other channels of marketing activities. Under such circumstances, it is necessary for companies to give more attention to social media marketing instead of sticking with the traditional marketing activities such as print ads and television ads. Even though Apple Inc. is one of the biggest and most valuable companies in the world, it failed to utilize the opportunities in social media effectively for the promotions of its products. Apple seems to be having immense faith still in the abilities of traditional advertising using print and television media. It is imperative for Apple Inc. to use the opportunities in social media more effectively, in order to sustain its success in the market. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Apple’s traditional marketing strategies such as print ads to promote its latest products can be transformed to social media marketing Table of Contents 1.0 Executive summary 2 2.0 A Brief Overview 4 3.0 Analysis of the competition 5 4.0 Traditional advert 8 5.0 The body of the plan 9 5.1 Goals 9 5.2 Targeting the audience 10 5.3 Developing strategies and choosing tactics 10 5.4 Creating content 11 5.5 Monitoring and measuring 12 References 13 2.0 A Brief Overview The twenty first century has already witnessed many revolutionary changes in business and marketing circles because of the introduction of new technologies such as internet and social media. While introducing social networks, even the founders of social networks never thought about the business prospects of their new venture. According to the definition given by Brake and Safko (2009), social media is a collection of applications made with the assistance of Web 2.0. These applications can assist in sharing content such as information, knowledge and opinions. It is also possible to share audio files, video files and photos through social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, MySpace, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube, etc are some of the most popular social media at the moment. According to Rouse (2006), social networking is a process in which a person expands his or her business or social activities through individuals. Social media started to contribute more in business than in socializing in recent times. Social media help business people to innovate ideas and implement new strategies to boost their business prospects. The marketing through social media is often labelled as social marketing and business conducted through social media are often labelled as social commerce. The combination of social media and e-commerce is equivalent to social commerce (Business Insider, 2013). Since social media is capable of providing one of the cheapest marketing channels, all companies across the world are currently using it in one way or another to promote their business. “The greatest benefit of social media marketing is that it can increase awareness about a company within a short time. Social media marketing allows businesses to create a loyal clientele that opts for your products/services regularly” (Designer-den, 2011). Even though the potentials of social media in helping marketing activities are unquestionable, even some of the biggest companies are struggling to use it properly. For example, Apple Inc is one of the biggest companies in the world at the moment. They second largest company in terms of market capitalization. Moreover, it is the most valuable technology company in the world now. Yet, Apple Inc.’s exploitation of social media for marketing activities is not so good. “Apple is a bit late to the social marketing game, as it spent years taking a hands-off approach. Until recently, its strategy seemed to be to just ignore social media. It wasnt until this March that the company launched its first social campaign on Tumblr, promoting the iPhone 5c” (Oster, 2014). Even while introducing latest products such as iPhone 6 and 6 plus, Apple Inc has given more importance to print ads and television ads rather than social media marketing. 3.0 Analysis of the competition Even though Apple Inc. has many competitors, Samsung seems to be the major competitor in the smartphone segment. Samsung’s galaxy series phones are causing huge challenges to Apple’s iPhones in global market. Samsung has many innovative marketing strategies to beat the competition from Apple Inc. The company seems to be following the blue ocean strategy in marketing. “The key to exceptional business success is to redefine the terms of competition and move into the “blue ocean,” where you have the water to yourself. The goal of these strategies is not to beat the competition, but to make the competition irrelevant” (What is Blue Ocean Strategy?, 2013). The blue ocean strategy is used effectively by Samsung in its social media marketing. In other words, the company is able to make the competition irrelevant in social media marketing. “Samsung has recently reached 25 million fans on Facebook in Europe. It seems 3.5% of Europe’s population have one thing in common--they’re all fans of Samsung on Facebook, making the preeminent electronics company the number one brand on the old continent” (Vasquez, 2013). The following illustration provides a rough idea about Samsung’s growth in social media marketing. (Vasquez, 2013) Some of the activities that helped Samsung to become a prominent player in social media marketing are: its ability to create the best social content, social advertising and segmentation, and social customer care (Vasquez, 2013). A lot of innovative marketing strategies have been implemented in Samsung as part of the customer relationship management through social media. “Marketing innovation in Samsung is meant for creating fresh approaches at every level of customer contact and to drive sales” (Wolf et al. 2006, p.6). In order to cater the needs of people at different parts of the world, Samsung has created 44 Fa­cebook Pages for 28 countries in 25 languages (Vasquez, 2013). Most of the other companies on social media are not much keen on developing customized Facebook contents or pages. Such companies usually create Facebook pages only in English language. As a result of that these companies cannot communicate effectively or build relationships with people who are unaware of English language. Majority of Samsung’s competitors are its clients also. For example Apple Inc., Sony, Dell and Hewlett Packard are purchasing electronic components such as DRAM, NAND Flash, LCD panels, AP Mobile processor, Lithium Ion batteries etc from Samsung (Farhoomand, 2013, p.13). Samsung is able to utilize this situation with the help of social media. In other words, the reliability of the competitors on Samsung has helped the company to improve its corporate image through social networks. “We are growing approximately by 300,000 fans every week,” says Suzy Lloyd, European Head of Samsung´s Social Media Marketing. This success has been driven using an analytics-driven understanding of our customers, developing localised campaign strategies and driving engagement using quality creative content that supports two-way communications between us and our fans”(Vasquez, 2013). 4.0 Traditional advert (Beasley, 2014) The above print ad was prepared by Apple Inc. for the promotion or marketing of its latest iPhone 6 and 6 plus. It is evident from the above ad that the company tried to give more attention to the size of the phone in this ad. In the above ad, Apple tried to compare the size of iPhone 6 and 6 plus with the earlier versions of iPhone. In other words, Apple is keen on convincing the people that the latest iPhone is bigger in size. However, the above ad gives no clue about the features and quality of iPhone 6 and 6 plus. It should be noted that modern customers are more interested in knowing the features of a phone rather than its size. It is a fact that the potential for bigger phones is bright in modern smartphone market. That is why Apple gave more importance to size rather than features while making the above print ad. 5.0 The body of the plan 5.1 Goals The major goals of the intended social media campaign for iPhone can be summarised as follows: To improve the customer relationship management To answer customer queries To settle customer problems To improve the communication between the company and its customers “One of the key focuses for customer care is to address concerns early: Social media are real early warning systems for any reputation issues that might move to more traditional media. Social media has always been about engagement, listening and responding and thats what we strive to achieve. Our fans are invaluable to us” (Vasquez, 2013). The major purpose of the intended social media campaign of iPhone 6 and 6 plus is the improvement of customer relationship management. Ultimately, the success and failure of a product in the market is determined by the customers. It is necessary to develop an attachment among the customers towards iPhone with the help of social media. Once the attachment is developed, it is easy to market iPhones in any part of the world. It should be noted that social media can extend its hands to any part of the world. No other communication channels are able to do so. At present, the acceptance of iPhone in some parts of the world is not as good as that in America or Europe. Social media campaign is intended to increase the acceptance of iPhone universally. Another goal of the intended social media campaign is to settle customer complaints and answer customer queries about iPhones as soon as possible. At present, many people are struggling to get proper service for their iPhone products in their countries because of the lack of Apple’s customer service centres. For such people, customer service can be received through social media. 5.2 Targeting the audience Many of the recent studies have shown that the passion for iPhones is decreasing among the youth community at present. “Apple, for instance, dropped several spots or remained flat on several teen brand opinion polls, including marketing agency’s Smarty Pants’ Young Love survey. And while 67% of affluent teens still say they intend to purchase an iPhone as their next upgrade, reports Piper Jaffray, Samsung pulls in second with a strong 22%” (Faw, 2013). Even though social media are highly popular across all age groups, youths seem to be the major users of it. Therefore it is possible for Apple to target the youths with the help of social media in order to regain its lost grounds. In short, the intended social media campaign would mainly target the youth segment of the customers. 5.3 Developing strategies and choosing tactics Even though there are many social media, Facebook and Twitter seem to be the most favourite ones for the people all over the world. Therefore, the intended campaign should concentrate more on social media marketing through these two highly popular social media. It should be noted that viral marketing is one of the major marketing activities in the modern business world. The core of viral marketing is mouth publicity or Word of Mouth (WOM). “Recently, there has been a growing interest in understanding how WOM (Word Of Mouth), particularly online WOM (which is a form of social media), impacts sales, diffusion, and other marketing performance measures”(Stephen & Galak, 2010, p.5-6). According to Mkh marketing (2013), WOM contributes 10 – 54% of the marketing impact for a brand. Moreover, WOM can surpass the traditional marketing activities in terms of results. A 10% increase in WOM would result in a 1.5% sales hike. With the introduction of social media, a new term called eWOM or electronic word of mouth is getting popularity. It is a fact that many social media users across the world have the habit of discussing the features of the products they purchased with their friends using social media. Since the credibility, reliability and validity of traditional advertisements are decreasing, modern customers are interested in collecting information about a product from any of its owners. They know very well that the major intention of the marketers is to sell their products or services at any cost. Therefore, they will exaggerate the merits while hiding the demerits of the products or services offered to the people. Therefore, modern customers are not much interested in trusting the words of the advertisers. On the other hand, they are ready to give importance to the words of actual users of a product. As a result of that, the scope of WOM or eWOM is increasing day by day. Social media is the best platform for conducting marketing activities with the help of WOM or eWOM. In short, the intended social media campaign would definitely give more attention to eWOM or WOM as a marketing strategy. 5.4 Creating content There are many other strategies to improve Apple’s social media marketing campaign. Even a simple image and a caption that provides solution to a problem related to iPhone would help Apple to increase its relationship with customers through social networks. Allowing customers to share their contents through Apple’s social network pages such as Facebook would increase customer interests towards Apple Company and its products. Asking interesting questions and helping customers to solve them is another marketing strategy that can be adopted by Apple in its social media marketing. Such strategies would help Apple to know the preferences and interests of the customers properly. Providing daily quotes about Apple products or iPhone by celebrities or other respected people would help Apple to improve the sales of its products. 5.5 Monitoring and measuring The success of social media marketing is usually measured with the help of measures such as “Likes” and “Followers.” For example, the “Likes” received for Apple’s Facebook page is definitely a sign of its social media marketing campaign. Same way, when the number of “Followers” on Apple’s Twitter account increases, the company can consider its social media marketing as a success. However, these measures are incapable of providing statistics related to return on investment. It is quite possible that the people who liked Apple Facebook pages may not return to that page again. According to Bob DeStefano (2015), the success of social media marketing can be measured successfully with the help of three things: Reach, Engagement and Conversion. In his opinion, Reach refers to the number of people impacted with the help of social media content whereas Engagement refers to the attention received by a particular message to actually do something with it. Conversion on the other hand refers to the number of people converted from users to customers. In short, the success of Apple’s social media marketing campaign can be measured or analysed with the help of measures such as “Likes” and “Followers” as well as things such as Reach, Engagement and Conversion.   References Blaikie, N.W.H. 1991, A critique of the use of triangulation in social research. Quality & Quantity, 25, pp. 115-136. Business Insider. 2013. Social commerce. February 6, 2013. Beasley, M. 2014. Apple debuts new iPhone 6 print ads featuring actual-size images of the phones. 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Consumer as Chief Marketing Officer, [Online] Available at: https://mkhmarketing.wordpress.com/tag/electronic-word-of-mouth-and-social-media/ [Accessed 29 January 2015]. Oster, E. 2014. Apple Hires Musa Tariq to Head Social Media Marketing. [Online] Available at: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/apple-hires-musa-tariq-head-social-media-marketing-159302 [Accessed 29 January 2015] Rouse, M. 2006. Social networking. [Online] Available at: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-networking [Accessed 29 January 2015] Stephen A.T & Galak J. 2010. The Complementary Roles of Traditional and Social Media Publicity in Driving Marketing Performance. INSEAD Working Paper, October, pp. 1-40. Vasquez, R. 2013. Samsung Reaches 25M Facebook Fans, Becomes No.1. [Online] Available at: http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1944-samsung-reaches-25m-facebook-fans-becomes-no-1-brand-in-europe [Accessed 29 January 2015] Wolff, M. F, Jones, T and Lee, D. 2006. Samsung, Others Adopting Value Innovation. 2006. Research Technology Management. Sep/Oct2006, Vol. 49 Issue 5, p5-7. What is Blue Ocean Strategy? 2013. The Wall Street Journal, [Online] Available at: http://guides.wsj.com/management/strategy/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/ [Accessed 29 January 2015] Read More