It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of apple products or not, but there’s a lot to be learnt from apple’s marketing.
Let’s see how they handle social media.
Twitter: No tweets, no retweets, have not liked any other tweets so far. NOT A SINGLE ONE.
YouTube: Comments are disabled
Website: A well designed and progressive site with an option to build your own iMac. (IKEA effect)
OoH: You can see their hoardings with beautiful and colourful images on most arterial roads.
Video Ads: Yup, they spend quite a bit on it.
For Apple, marketing is something that’s like a Carrier Strike Group. I’ve previously written about how marketing campaigns should act as a Carrier Strike Group in one of my blog posts.
Apple doesn’t do social listening, they have brand authority, hence comments are disabled on their video channel on YouTube. They invest a lot of money to not only make fantastic commercials, but to get the best out of it by making it reach maximum prospects. Publishing those on their video channel on YouTube also makes it easier for their audience to view it anytime, and to get to know about their products.
Their video channel is a very well organised one with playlists and sections segregated as per the product. Here is an article “How an YouTube channel can boost your Business growth?”
Online → Offline → Online → Offline
Paid media → Owned media → Paid media → Owned media
The above is how their marketing loop looks like, and it just continues again and again, wherever their prospects are. It never starts and it never ends. Let’s see an imaginary case.
Tom starts from his home to office and sees an billboard on his way while driving. He does have an interest in buying a new iPhone, but he totally forgets due to office work. He gets an iPhone ad the same day on his mobile, but doesn’t show much interest since he’s tired. Days pass, and his work keeps him busy.
On a weekend, he’s promptly reminded of the iPhone by a digital ad. Guess what he’d do next? He isn’t going to make the purchase straight away. He’d visit Apple’s YouTube channel and get to know more about the product he wants to purchase. After spending some more time on their website, he’d make the final purchase then.
Let’s see the no. of touchpoints and prompts made by apple,
- Billboard
- Digital Ad – 01
- Digital Ad – 02
- Apple’s YouTube channel
- Website
Above are some minimal amount of touchpoints Tom went through, this is from a brand that has a high brand authority.
Out of the 5 touchpoints, 3 are paid media and 2 are owned media. 1 is Offline and the rest 4 are Online.
How about organisations that don’t have brand authority like Apple?
The process would ideally expand further, no. of touchpoints have to be increased, educational content should be doubled, a balance has to be struck between owned media & paid media.
For your organisation, it may be about creating an industry-specific strategy, choosing the appropriate platforms, creating content that’d work for your target audience, etc. The whole process depends on your industry, target audience, ticket size and life cycle of the product, and may be different from what Apple does. But what’s important is to find the marketing strategy that’d work for you.
