Social Media Marketing and Commercial Innovation

This business analysis focuses on the commercial enterprising activities and the social media marketing of a world leading consumer electronics company, Apple Inc. and how, through its technologically advanced creativity and electronics expertise, it succeeded in introducing the world to a radically new era of multimedia innovation.

Owing to its uniqueness and innovation in its wide range of products, Apple is regarded as the world’s most notable and recognizable brand for electronic devices that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. This multinational corporation has carved out a niche for itself ever since its co-founders —two college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — brought a revolution in personal computing. Now, Apple is the recognized as the world’s largest information technology company in terms of revenue, the world’s largest technology company in total assets, and the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer with 123,000 employees (last recorded in 2017).

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation. One of the greatest in the world, which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. Apple Inc., incorporated on January 3, 1977, designs, manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers and portable digital music players. The Company sells a range of related software, services, accessories, networking solutions and third-party digital content and applications. . The company has opened 506 retail stores across 24 countries, including 272 in the United States and 234 elsewhere, since May 2001. Apple's revenue was reported to be 5.60 b in FY, 2018 which is a 15.9% increase from the previous period.

Revenue of Apple Inc.

The Company's segments include the Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. The Americas segment includes both North and South America. The Europe segment includes European countries, India, the Middle East and Africa. The Greater China segment includes China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Rest of Asia Pacific segment includes Australia and the Asian countries not included in the Company's other operating segments. The Company's products and services include iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, Apple Watch, Apple TV, a portfolio of consumer and professional software applications, iPhone OS (iOS), OS X and watchOS operating systems, iCloud, Apple Pay and a range of accessory, service and support offerings(Appendix 1).

The Company sells and delivers digital content and applications through the iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, television APP Store, iBooks Store and Apple Music (collectively Internet Services). The Company sells its products through its retail stores, online stores and direct sales force through third-party cellular network carriers, wholesalers, retailers and value-added resellers. The Company sells a range of third-party Apple compatible products, including application software and accessories through its retail and online stores.

WEBSITE (Apple.com)

Along with the social platforms, the website will be analysed. The analysis will be based on the company’s international webpage www.apple.com. With a decent website and an easy user interface for its premium customers, there is good traffic on the Apple’s global website. It had a traffic of 498.42 m visits in the last 6 months. The average visit duration was 3 minute and 18 seconds, whereas the bounce rate was 56.39% (Appendix 2). The highest traffic was 27.01% from United States and then 7.06% and 6.52% from China and Japan respectively (Appendix 3). The traffic source on website was 43.40% from search, 38.02% direct, 1.47% through referrals and 4.26%, 1.69%, and 1.17% by social, display and mail respectively (Appendix 4). Out of the total 4.26 % through social media 42.52% was through YouTube, 20.21% by Facebook, 13.39% and 4.44% by twitter and integral respectively. This shows that viewers of Apple on YouTube makes the highest traffic from all the social media

platforms. The official website is the most recommended manner of any communication between the company and its loyal customer. No other social media channel have been higly recommended by the company for any official information and communication.

Apple Social Media Marketing Strategy

All the large brands are cleverly using social media to achieve their business and marketing objectives. One social media account has become a multipurpose solution for many branding and marketing related needs. Businesses are using their social media accounts for connecting with their customers, to run their campaigns and for discussions. Apple is among the largest tech companies of the world. It is the first one to have surpassed the trillion dollar market cap. Social media platforms have emerged as a great marketing solution because of their reach and efficiency. Networks like Facebook offer some great advantages apart from access to a large global audience. These features can be used to build great relationships as well as excellent and lasting connections. Apple has also used social media to deepen its reach among its customers. Its number of followers on each of these platforms highlights its popularity around the globe.

In the age of social media, when brands are furiously trying to create content, promote it, and then breathlessly check for likes and shares, the world’s most valuable company has never put out a Facebook post. It’s never tweeted either.

Apple isn’t a conventional company by any means, but to realize how different it is from its competitors, one merely has to look at its social media pages.

Facebook:

Facebook is the leading social network used by marketers for achieving their marketing objectives. Its popularity is the highest of all social media platforms and it also boasts of the largest audience. Apart from that, it offers a great social media experience which brands can use to engage their customers better. Several of the large brands have active social media teams to continuously interact with their fans on Facebook. Apple has several accounts on each of these platforms. Its main account has 11 million followers whereas there is also a support page that  has less. An unofficial page named Apple has around 11 million followers too. However, Apple has not used Facebook for active promotions as most brands do it. That is a surprising fact since Facebook has become the main marketing tool for several businesses. There can be several reasons behind it. When all the birds flock to the same field, it grows a little crowded. Apple uses its own website and blogs more than these social media channels. Facebook exposes your business to a very large crowd of followers. However, if you are not a shrewd marketer, you may also be through some mess. Apple is either shrewd or likes being lazy. As per the recent last week data the fan following of Apple has decreased by 7,607 whereas for its competitor Xiaomi USA the fan following has increased by 147,738 (Appendix 5).

Its Facebook page for instance, has over 7 million likes. But where other brands’ feeds would be full of information about their products, Apple’s is completely empty.

Twitter:

Apple’s main official page has not made any tweets and yet it has two million followers. The support page on the other hand tweets to followers on important technical issues. It is for education and awareness. Apple likes keeping its users aware of the latest technical features of Apple products and their use and care. This is a smart use of social media tools for customer service and engagement. Apple Music page has the highest number of followers at 9.33 Million. On the other hand ITunes page has around 1.3 million followers.  The Apple Music account on Twitter is highly popular which is evident from the high number of followers, likes and retweets. Apple’ social media activity is higher on Twitter than Facebook. The reason is real time engagement. In terms of video marketing, Twitter and YouTube are more attractive than Facebook.  In the last 15 days the follower on twitter for Apple have increased by 28,655 and for its competitor Xiaomi USA the following has increased by 327 and for Samsung Mobile USA the following has decreased by 2298 (Appendix 6).

Apple Twitter account

Apple has a Twitter account too, and over a million people follow it. But they might as well be following a ghost — Apple has never tweeted.

Instagram:

Apple’s Instagram page shows very high level engagement. Instagram is an attractive social media network for engaging users. Its many features are suitable for promotions and engagement. Apart from its album like look and feel which makes it suitable for promotions, its comments and conversations features also make it a great tool for communication. Apple is a popular brand thereby Number of responses are very high. The brand’s main Instagram account has around 7.5 Million followers whereas that of Apple Music has higher than 3 million followers. The brand talks very little on these pages and still the level of engagement is high. Instagram is mainly for sharing multimedia content. In the recent years, Apple has increased its use of such content in its marketing efforts. Apple’s Instagram has been created short time back, and has nearly 14 million followers but has not been highly active as its Korean and Chinese competitor, Samsung and Xiaomi respectively.

YouTube:

On YouTube, the brand has used several accounts to reach its customers. Apple’s main account has 6.8 million followers whereas Apple support account has around 93 K. This is the era of video marketing and Apple uses videos actively for promotions. This is why YouTube is a very important platform for Apple to engage its followers. It’s also a great platform for running social media campaigns. Several of Apple’s 245 videos have attracted very large number of visits. Its iPhone X unleash video has received more than 8 million visits in just a month.

Apple YouTube channel

Apple’s use of social media is very different from most other brands. It does not use social media for just marketing or promotions or only customer service. Its Facebook account shows no action. However, it uses the other social media platforms for customer engagement very well. The brand uses Twitter, Instagram and YouTube mainly for engaging its users. Apple’s social media strategy looks much different from any other brand. While it has not overlooked the potential of social media altogether, it has utilized these channels with caution. The only major challenge with the use of social media is that you need to be careful. Otherwise, a brand may also end up spoiling its image unintentionally. Many have committed such errors.

Apple doesn’t use Social Media to sell

Apple’s reticence on social media is partly because it doesn’t need to be there — it doesn’t need to prod users to buy its products. Apple’s launch events create enough buzz to make sales, and users literally queue up to get their hands on its latest offerings. Also, Apple’s managed to create a cult following for itself — it’s carefully created a brand that’s aspirational and exclusive. Showing up on social media would only put it back on the same playing field as its thousands of competitors.

But Apple seems to recognize the power of the medium. It uses social media, but in ways that benefits its customers. Its @AppleSupport twitter handle, for instance, helps users who have concerns about their Apple products, and shares how-to videos and tips. Its @AppleMusic twitter handle shares new music and interviews with musicians. But whatever Apple does on social media, it’s very careful to not try to sell products there through organic means.

Apple’s Promotional

But it isn’t as though Apple never sells on social media — it’s just careful to demarcate its promotional posts from its organic content. Apple has run several ad campaigns on Facebook, but they’re promoted posts, and thus much closer to traditional ads. Last year, it had run a campaign for its Apple Watch, asking users to choose it as a gift. Apple’s also a Facebook campaign targeting people using high-end phones, in which it urges them to switch from their phones to Apple.  

And while Apple doesn’t directly promote its products, it has been using Twitter to promote its launch events. Like last year, Apple’s been promoting a tweet that announces its upcoming event.

Apple’s unique social media strategy helps it avoid many of the pitfalls of social media. Most popular brands’ official handles become magnets for unhappy customers, and it’s not uncommon to see promotional product videos peppered with queries, complaints and angry rants. Apple cleverly sidesteps this negative publicity by having no official handles at all. And when it needs to use social media’s immense power, it simply buys it through a paid campaign on Facebook or Twitter.

SWOT of Social Media campaigns and strategies

Strengths:

• Having enough campaign funds
• Having formal-looking social media brand pages
• Large and highly engaged fan base or followers who are focused
• Presence on leading social media networks related to your industry. This is the platform your target audience spends a lot of their time on
• Providing contagious and compelling content
• High volume and velocity of conversations, comments, likes and shares on the main sites.

Weaknesses:

• Having very few fans or followers
• Inactivity on social media sites
• Not enough advertising funds
• No or fewer comments from viewers
• Getting too many negative comments
• Few likes and shares
• Reduced fan engagement

Opportunities:

• Having no or few competitors
• Having influential people as page fans
• Forming partnership with influential social media personalities
• Latest social media platforms and trends
• Rise in the number of internet users
• A breaking news which will help start an engagement
• Connecting your business page to company website
• High-quality digital products which you can sell

Threats:

• Having too many competitors
• Getting negative comments
• Very high number of dislikes on social sites
• Aggressive campaign by your competitors

Competitive advantage in the Marketing strategy of Apple iPhone –

Apple’s major competitive advantage is its technological advancement & visionary thinking which made it most desirable brand in the world. Telling someone you own an Android doesn’t have the same effect as telling someone you own an iPhone. It’s the name which makes the difference.

Vertical integration has given Apple competitive advantage, as it owns chip manufacturers, controls manufacturing, follows extremely strict software standards, and operates in a nearly closed ecosystem of proprietary 400+ worldwide retail stores. With these advantages, the company has more control of its value chain and, more importantly, its component costs.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis above, in order to succeed with the objective, in this part various recommendations have been conducted so that Apple Inc. can apply to their channels in order to improve the efficiency of their activity.

The overall object of the future recommendations is to increase customer engagement – the

customers cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement. First and foremost it is important for the company to be more active on YouTube because YouTube videos are one of the easiest ways of informing the customers about the company’s new range of products as well as about its functionalities. Apple being an electronic device company, YouTube videos can also be used for educating the customers about the use of some important features which users of the device are not aware of, as many individuals are usually not tech people. The tutorial videos can help increase its customer network. This can help make the product more user friendly for the customers of the company.

The company has not been active on Facebook and Twitter as there are no posts on Facebook, nor any retweets on Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are one the widespread used social media channels around the world thereby Facebook and Twitter are the easiest ways of customer engagement and interaction. Company can also publish news about the latest technology for its followers to remain updated in this ever changing world which can help the young tech enthusiast to think beyond the horizon. Being active on these social media channels can improve the sales and market share of the company for its latest products all around the world.

The company can post the posters on Instagram and let the brand reach deep within the hearts of the people that its brand identity remains unforgettable for the young people as it is becoming one of the most widespread used means of social media around the world.

The company can also try to effectively use its Linkedin profile because for now it has been using Linkedin profile just to share job profiles. The company can try turning the professionals into their loyal customers as these people are considered to be highly brand conscious and contains highest loyalty in terms of their purchasing behavior.

REFRENCES

https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-retail-stores/

https://myassignmenthelp.com/case-study/apple-swot-&-pestle-analysis.html

file:///C:/Users/krishna/Downloads/Introduction_of_Apple._Inc.pdf

https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/pages/detail/112216768789769-apple-inc?accountCharts-accounts=7224956785%3B457620044697481

https://www.similarweb.com/website/apple.com#social

Apple Has A Social Media Strategy That’s Completely Strange, Yet Makes Perfect Sense

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/marketing/analysis-segmentation-and-marketing-mix-of-apple-marketing-essay.php

https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-apple-iphone/

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