In order to increase successful marketing strategies, Apple needs to understand the significance of what the consumers wants and needs. Additionally, they also need to understand the relationships with their past, present and future customers because these are the people who make Apple thrive in business sale margins. Apple targets many age groups, but their primary targets are towards teenagers, young adults, students and professionals. Apple targets these age groups in numerous innovative ways, which is as follows:
Ad campaigns - They use young, energetic and enthusiastic people to advertise their products on displays such as billboards.
Students discounts - In the summertime, Apple allows student discounts in post secondary education. Furthermore, Apple can sometimes adds in free Beats wireless headphones with the purchase of a Macbook.
Brand positioning - Apple sells products with luxurious design concepts, along with simplicity for a user friendly experience. This way it is easy for the consumers to navigate around the product with no hassle involved.
It is also important to understand the external environment for successful marketing strategies. As following new innovations take place in the near future with newer products, Apple needs to understand their existing customers and how to keep them as permanent customers. In order to compete with their competitors, Apple needs to implement a strategy to really out do themselves and their competitors. They need to come up with brand new features in their products. One way for their goals to be achieved is to not only develop a brand that attracts their customers, but also to attract general users of third party consumers. Some strategies include:
Converting customers who use non-Apple products and giving them a warm welcome to show them how easy and simple Apple products work. Apple is all about simplicity and a user friendly experience.
Apple using retail chains in upscale affluent areas, which targets rich and middle class people. Even though they target everyone in general, they are more geared toward wealthy customers.
Apple is a company that is very quiet on the concept of social media. They don't really pay attention or have the need to promote their products through social media like other competitors do, in order to increase sales margins. However, they do have an official Twitter account that has a strong following. The funny thing is they don't tweet at all! Apple also has a YouTube channel with over 250 million views and still counting. Using this platform, they showcase some of their newest products just so they can be seen at the trending/popular home page of Youtube. This technique will allow the world to see their videos and bring about more consumers, which ultimately is a smart marketing strategy. However, nowadays they don't have to do this at all. For the most part, Apple does not heavily rely on social media for their marketing because there are social third party sites showing off and promoting Apple products. Apple has their own unique take on social media through their retail website Apple.com. This is where you can find customer images that was captured by their iPhone's, along with journalist quotes and articles about products. This is all jam-packed into a huge colossal page called the news room. The news room is similar to Instagram (social media outlet), but with much more photos and detailed description of each product. They also included live chat where you have the ability to interact and ask questions right away to one of their online chat representatives.
A Youtuber sharing informative details on Apple's newest release.
Ultimately, Apple's customers are the ones doing all the talking for them. With daily blogs, articles, and famous tech youtubers doing video reviews. This technique is a 'word of mouth' technique, which helps customers find informative key details on a specific apple product that they may want to purchase. In this way Apple doesn't have to do anything extra with media sharing sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and etc. As long as the customers handle all of the social media posts, marketing and coverage for them, Apple can sit back, relax and enjoy the show!
Apple is one of the most monumental and prosperous tech companies in our era today. They have captivated the hearts of their consumers, with groundbreaking innovations for everyday usage. As an example, professionals like the EMT (Emergency Medical Technician), who uses their iPad as an on-the-go ECG/EKG monitor to see their patient's heart rate, CO2 levels, respiratory rate, and body temperature in emergency situations. They would also use their iPhone's to communicate to other colleagues quickly. This is done by just pressing down the microphone button for a few seconds located in iMessage keyboard, which works just like a walkie talkie radio. You may ask yourself, what does it take to get to the positioned route that Apple is taking? Well, there are a lot of key elements here, which include: strategic planning, the managerial process of constructing and conserving a fit between the organizations objectives and resources, and evolving market strategies and opportunities.
Apple sets their prices at a fixed standpoint and they never bargain for less. They also carry out their prices the same all over the globe, which means there is no room for under retail pricing/sale. However, if there is another refreshed model of product(s) coming out next year, then the previous products will decrease in price.
One of their most popular and famous product line from the iPhone series is the iPhone 6S or the 'S' models of their phones. This is a perfect example of Market development, which means attracting new customers to existing products, with few little changes in the product. Attracting new customers as well additional sales amongst existing customers bringing in new customers
Apple has been a very dominant company for over four decades. They continue to develop and grow each year and use many principles of strategies, These strategies include: strategic planning, market penetration, SWOT analysis, and competitive advantage.
Apple has stated their business mission as follows, "we believe we're the face of the earth to make great products and that's not changing. We're constantly changing focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex"- Apple CEO Tim cook
Performing SWOT Analysis allows companies to identify their competitive advantages. Here are some for the iPhone series.
Strengths:
Strong brand image and advertisement
Sophisticated supply chain-infrastructure
High profit margins in sales
Effective innovation process
Jony Ive - Chief Design Officer at Apple Inc. leads the way, making high quality products being built and designed
Returning customers demanding more new products every year
Weaknesses:
High pricing of the products
Steve Jobs is not alive to give great curated ideas for products
Behind competitors in certain areas with specs and designs features
Forcing users to switch to the latest product by reducing support for previous products this didn't do well with apple customers
Icloud security concerns
Opportunities:
Market Share Growth
Creation Of new product lines
Purchasing Beats Electronics for 1 billion dollars
Distribution network Expansion
Demand for smartphones are growing
Threats:
competition, competitors like samsung continue to cut into apple's market share, especially with cheaper offerings for similar featured products
intensifying competition from india and china
lawsuits on patents
Apple is huge on simplicity, design and presentation. I'd like to say They cater more to professionals such as doctors, business people, teachers, To anyone who can afford their product really. Especially hipsters, also people who are on the move fast. who want everything done in quick speed of time. and want an elegant and luxurious product. That not only performs well, But can subdue things such as paying for your coffee off your IPhone at merchants and Not having to carry your wallet, To hailing a car from the uber app from your wrist with apple watch. These are some of the things why people crave to get their hands on apple products such as their flagship product the IPhone. Competitive advantage is a set of its distinctive attribute, of a company and its products. That are recognized by the target market as remarkable to those of the competition. The main competition for apple in the market are companies like Samsung, Sony, Microsoft. For example one of apple's marketing strategic methods in selling is, They tell the consumers what their product does exactly at keynote events and relate it the real word scenarios and show visuals life videos and photos with analysis of data from previous years of sales and growth from it. Apple has advantages over its competition in few areas like health, which is a huge thing for apple because its competitors fail to do so and don't target that area like apple does. with this healthy living mindset. Apple attracts athletes this way, health and fitness coaches to doctors, Also the general public it attracts them to actually go and work out also this way for the negative people its shedding light to people who think technology is making people more lazy and ruining lives when in reality it's shaping up lives and encouraging to making healthy life choices by exercising
Apple's competitive advantage, implementing health into their products
Strategic marketing planning from the legend Steve Jobs
