The main goal for any company is to make a certain profit through the open market by putting a product or service out to the public in hopes that the public will consume it. The way of putting you're product out there is through promotions. A promotion is communication by marketers that informs, persuades, and reminds potential buyers of a product in order to influence an opinion or response. The ultimate responce being to go out and buy that product.
Phil Schiller : senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple Inc
Apple uses two primary methods of promotional strategies towards its public. The first being advertising. In fact Phil Schiller (senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple Inc) revealed that Apple spent $933 million on advertising during 2011. Meanwhile their second main method of promotional strategy being personal selling. Apple Stores are home to many young and knowledgeable sales representatives who are trained thoroughly in both product information and customer service. With the release of new products and upgrades the company produces every few months or so, it is important for sales representatives to stay abreast of the latest technologies entering the market. Walking into any Apple Store you will realize that employees are often young and most likely fall within the Generation Y or X age range. Today, technology explosion has caused people to either accept the new changes or quickly fall behind. The employees of Apple, however, grew up in this technology era so they have quickly adapted to making them the perfect retail employee.
Apple uses these promotional strategies to adapt the concept of AIDA. AIDA is an acronym that stands for attention, interest, desire, and action.
Apple gets you're attention through its websites creative graphics and global headlights mostly including a highly aticipated product or institutional advertising for the company. Take its "New" ipad campaign for example the trailer for the Ipad tries to get the consumer interest by telling you things such as "best display ever on a mobile device" or "state of the art camera lenz".
The trailer then goes on to tell you about its software features such as social network apps, stock market app, and communication methods the product in equiped with.
Apple's form of exacuting the AIDA method has apperently worked out with the third generation Ipad selling 3million units in just its first weekend. Mind you the starting price for the New Ipad was $599 at the time.
As I have stated before Apple has worked to greatly seperate themselves from the pack when it comes to their products. You don't simply call an Ipod a MP3 player, or a Mac a computer. Through selective adveretising, clever names for products, and very customer frienly stores Apple is now in a league of it's own compared to most electronics companies.
To be more spacific Apple does it's homework. The companies look at the numbers, meaning sales, revenue, etc in different parts of the world. So in places where sales are lower then others the companie becomes more sales oriented while in the U.S. Apple does'nt try to persuay customers to break their loyalty from other companies any more. Instead Apple often finds itself competing with its own past products trying to sell a more current one. Image, names, and slogans are also something that can not be over looked when looking at Apple as a whole success story. With it's traditional "I" put behind the name of most of it products Apple has helped build an identity for its products. As well as its stores that have an exclusive enviornment yet making the public feel like all of Apples products are accesable to the "average" user. Stylish, durable, and efficient. If the customer can have these concepts of any company (Apple) then it is likely to give that company his business.
