It is the era of social media, and corporate organizations are using it well to market themselves and leverage the competitive advantage in the market. Tech industry is not left behind with giant companies such as Apple and Samsung making use of social media to reach their customers and engages with them productively. Apple Inc. is one of the largest corporate brands, with numerous product portfolios. Apple Inc.'s most notable product line is the Apple iPhone. The iPhone product line contributes to about 67% of the total sales the company makes. Since its introduction in the year 2007, the iPhone product line has contributed mainly to Apple Inc., passing the trillion-dollar market cap (Caruso, 2015). The marketing strategy the company uses in addition to its brand name has a fair share of the success. However, the company does not use its social media for marketing; instead, it uses it to engage its customers productively.
Customer segment
Apple Inc. sales its products at a premium price; for instance, the iPhone product line is nearly hitting the 1000 dollar mark. The products have a specific target of individuals who shares particular traits. The iPhone customer segmentation consists of individuals who have a passion for Apple Inc.'s products. These are individuals who appreciate quality design and performance without caring much of the products' prices. They also belong to an age bracket of 35-44 years old. These are individuals of the middle and upper class that want efficiency, quality, and advanced tech-based phones that serve them better and match their class.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Social media tool
Apple Inc. applies a unique social media marketing strategy. The company has social media platform pages but does use them less frequently to reach its customers. Instead, they are used to engage the clients and educate them on numerous issues about the iPhone product line. The first tool is Facebook. Apple has numerous Facebook pages with a significant page having 11 million followers. It also has other supporting Facebook account with hundred thousand of followers with an unofficial Facebook account with 10 million followers. It uses the Facebook account as education and engagement tool to interact with the customers. Another social media tool is Twitter. Apple Inc. has numerous Twitter accounts where it engages with its customers. It has Apple Music page whose number of followers has hit 9.33 Million. It also has the iTunes page has around 1.3 million followers. These are among Twitter accounts the company frequently uses to engage clients (Kim et al., 2016). Instagram and YouTube are also other social media tools the company uses to promote its iPhone product line. With such tools in place, Apple Inc. is in a position to stay in contact with the customers and understand their position on iPhone products.
Social media engagement
To some extent, Apple Inc.’ dormant social media pages have affected the rate of iPhone sales in the market. The low rate of social media related sales on the iPhone product line is a reflection of the target individuals’infrequent visits to Apple’s social media page. Apple’s iPhone sales rate is high, but a low rate links to social media marketing. In 2019, 40% of the smartphone used in the United States belong to Apple's iPhone product line. However, out of such percentage, only 7% of the sales are linked to social media marketing. Besides, a look at the user-generated content related to iPhone also indicates that the social media use to promote iPhone products by Apple Inc. is also low. Most of the social media contents on iPhone products are educative and interactive. The goal, in this case, is not to promote any new product from the iPhone product line or market it to its consumers in a manner that makes it stand from its competitors. However, the content mostly tunes on how better clients use such products, their design and also, handling complains the customers have on the products.
Effectiveness of the strategy
Apple Inc. social media strategy is good for customer engagement and interaction, but not as a sales generating source for the company. People measure the effectiveness of a social media strategy by the number of useful comments the company gets from the target individual. Persons also measure the effectiveness by the number of sales the company generates from such a page. In this case, Apple Inc.’s social media marketing strategy scores low, and thus, people cannot term it an affective market strategy for its iPhone product line (Bishop &Soldan, 2015).
Apple vs. Samsung on social media
Samsung wins it all when it comes to marketing using social media pages. Unlike Apple, that is anti-social media marketer, Samsung utilizes social media fully to market its Samsung products which are strong competitors to the iPhone product line. For instance, Samsung uses its social media analytics in the name of the Crimson Hexagon to gain both instant insights into its customers and detailed reports on the conversations they're having about its products (Caruso, 2015). Kim et al. (2016) argue that although Samsung does well on promoting the product using social media pages, Apple Inc. does base on educating its customers and engaging the customers using social media platform which is specific to products such as iPhone, iTunes and App stores.
Recommendation
The first recommendation is to encourage Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to enhance the culture of social media usage. Currently, social media users have hit billions in figures, and it provides an excellent platform where companies connect to customers. Apple Inc. needs to use such a chance to increase the sale rate for the iPhone product line. Secondly, they need to get strategies that can help them analyze and use social media in a proper manner. They can get a chief information officer to analyze and make use of social media information effectively.
References
Caruso, R. M. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 8,943,054 . Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Kim, Y., Dwivedi, R., Zhang, J., &Jeong, S. R. (2016). Competitive intelligence in social media Twitter: iPhone 6 vs. Galaxy S5. Online Information Review , 40 (1), 42-61.
Bishop, A., &Soldan, E. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,209,987 . Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
