Market research for Apples upcoming product the iScale has been challenging but effective. Understanding that this product will serve not only in the tech industry but the health and fitness industry as well is something that was essential to being able to have a more well rounded and complete research plan. Apple’s objectives as a company are “in a nutshell, to obtain stellar products and services within tight timeframes, at a cost that represents the best possible value to our customers and shareholders.” Researching the company and target demographic for this company has helped to solidify and enhance upon these objectives. Researching each individual industry to understand what constitutes for a “stellar” product and a “price that represents the best possible value” is how the research has been aligned with the companies objectives.

Looking at industry trends we focused on health and fitness. Here we see that as time goes on the mesh between tech and health and fitness becomes more prevalent. As of late, the rise in wearable tech like smart watches and Fitbit’s have been on the rise and the center of popularity. This gives its users the ability to track their workouts and daily activities. This is a good indication of future trends as well. We see that Apple, as a company, is becoming more and more intertwined into the health and fitness industry with each update to their products. One of the implications for this industry however is that this is a focus on the mobile aspect of health and fitness tech and the product proposal is for more stationary item (scale). To counter this we looked into the smart scale market to ensure there is a stable enough market for a product like this.

The marketing strategy here for the iScale is the combination of pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies. These being Profit maximization, competitive pricing, and paid, earned and social media. This is in alignment with current legal, ethical and industry standards. Looking at our campaign it is up to date and in compliance with all FTC regulations in accordance to the truth in advertising portion that suggests how advertising should be conducted. In summation this states how labels and advertising cannot be misleading by a company or its product. This is also how we will keep on top of industry standards for this product as tech industry and health and fitness industries have very different aspects that need to be considered.

The biggest limitations I have encountered with this product market proposal has been really understanding the need for the product in the market space. I had a hard time separating my personal beliefs from what is actually true in the market. Understanding that while this is a great product concept, without a market need it is nothing more than a concept. Understanding the current gaps in the smart scale market to see the barriers to entry has been the biggest challenge. This is where we get the limitations from. This type of product while not entirely new as a concept is fairly new to the market when thinking about what the new age smart scales offer as a product. Because of this, it is hard to obtain accurate data on the smart scale market. These limitations have proven difficult in my research but, I feel with what we have though, there is enough to be successful with this product launch.

Fitness Industry Roundup: Millennials Are Good for Business. IHRSA. (n.d.). https://www.ihrsa.org/improve-your-club/industry-news/fitness-industry-roundup-millennials-are-good-for-business/.

Truth In Advertising. Federal Trade Commission. (2020, May 7). https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising.

Inc., A. (n.d.). Apple and Procurement. Apple. https://www.apple.com/procurement/.

For this assignment, looking at both Pinterest and Twitter as viable social media sites for business advertising is something that is dependent on what you’re trying to accomplish. Both of the sites a a great choice for advertising but, they both have different audiences. It will depend entirely on your business goals and strategy to make the right decision. For the sake of this assignment lets focus on Twitter. I feel Twitter is a site that has a bigger broader audience than Pinterest.

Twitter is a great option for any business that aims to reach a big audience and have interactions with its customers. As a business you can create advertisements specifically or just use posts as a medium to advertise products both current and upcoming. For example, in 2019 Twitter was reported as having 326 Million monthly active users. That not total active users. That is MONTHLY active users. That is an enormous amount of potential reach for any company. On top of their active user count they are also working with Google in SEO to have relevant tweets appear in google searches. This is also a way that you can reach people who arent even on the social media platform. Having this niche ability to reach people outside of the platform is what makes Twitter a great option and almost a necessity in any companies social media strategy.

Another key feature that Twitter offers over Pinterest is that it gives the opportunity for live customer feedback and engagement. The ability to use a verified business site and reply and interact with individual customers at anytime is extremely valuable to not only the companies but the customers as well.

This is all of the features that the site offers just as a user. Looking deeper into the side of the site that adds specific paid for ads you get even more benefit as a business. You are able to specifically target your audience that you wish to sell your product too. This is a way to ensure the people you want to see your ads see them and even bring in new potential customers with the right interests. The algorithm for Twitter helps to suggest your products and company to people who enjoy similar products based of their interests and interactions with the site. This is extremely valuable to a company as its a way to take a lot of the leg work out of marketing to the level of depth the algorithm does for you.

In conclusion, Twitter offers many different functions to its site that allows for companies and businesses to take advantage of and become a better performing business. Utilizing these tools they provide will help in numerous ways and allow you to grow your business in ways that wouldn’t be possible without utilizing this site. I would strongly recommend any company uses Twitter to aid in their social media marketing strategy.

References:

Anyan, S., Karpenkova, A., & Chichioco, A. (n.d.). Why Twitter Is Still Important for Your Business. Why Twitter Is Still Important for Your Business | Clutch.co. https://clutch.co/agencies/social-media-marketing/resources/why-twitter-still-important-your-business.

For this blog I will be focusing on the social media king, Facebook. I use Facebook almost daily and I am very familiar with this site. I have been a member for more than 14 years and have had the ability to see how this site has changed over time. I have used the marketplace function as well as even helped with placing ads for my wife’s business. There are many different functionalities to this site and they keep evolving as time goes on.

There are many different types of marketing present on Facebook. Depending on who you follow will determine which types of marketing you see. For example, If you do not follow an celebrities you most likely will not see any influencer style marketing. This is one of the different styles that I personally see. Other styles of marketing that affect me personally through Facebook are Content marketing, Multi level marketing, and SEO marketing.

I think the SEO marketing is the most common style since this is what prompts all of the ads I see. They use the search terms and things I interact with or spend screen time with to show me similar things to what I have been looking at. This makes it almost like a never ending cycle of ads that are similar to each other but all fall within the things I am interested in. This is extremely smart for Facebook and being more efficient with ads but, sometimes it can be too powerful. For example, if I look something up quickly that I am not interested in I will see ads for that things for the next few days until it realizes I do not interact with the ads.

This social media marketing is very strange. I know it exists but, I don’t pay , much attention to it. Or so I think. I find myself in conversation referring to ads I’ve seen on Facebook or products that I think might be cool that I saw while scrolling through my newsfeed. It also has made it so that I understand more about ads and how they target their demographic. With this understanding I am able to help my wife create ads for her business and make them the most efficient ads that they can be. Understanding these ads through my studies at SNHU has given me a deeper understand of the “why” behind the ads and allowed me to almost control my fate when it comes to what I see on my feed.

For this blog I have chosen to look at the all mighty Facebook as my social media platform of choice. I have been an active member of Facebook for well over 10 years now and I feel I have a very good idea of how Facebook works and how it has changed over the years. There are many different Facebook marketing implications that I find myself interacting with on a daily basis. From full blown advertisements to ads that are embedded in videos. It seems on all social media sites, ads are just a given at this point. As I age I begin to see things for more than just face value. As I do find ads to be rather annoying sometimes. I also have the adverse feelings to them when I realize how much they can help smaller businesses get noticed on a much larger scale. I use Facebook on almost a daily basis. Most of the time its just to kill time and I am not going on to the site with an intended purpose. So, for this reason I am more open to clicking on ads an “window shopping”. In doing so I can sometimes come across brands I would have never even had the opportunity to find if it wasn’t for the ads coming across my news feed. This sometimes makes me find myself cruising a site through an advertisement where I have actually made purchases from. Even though this is very rare for me to do, I still do it occasionally.

To talk about a specific example of when I have responded to a particular marketing implication was just last fall. It was the beginning of hunting season here in Maine and I was in search of a new jacket. My current Jacket was great but, way too hot for early season hunting. I wanted to find something lighter and more breathable for those 60 degree days where sitting in layers is just too uncomfortable. While scrolling across Facebook it seemed the Facebooks gods have been listening because the perfect jacket was sitting there in my news feed via an advertisement. This is an example of the site using their AI learning algorithm to see what you’re most interested in. I then purchased the jacket I had found through an ad originally and was extremely satisfied with my purchase.

This is not the first time something like this has happened either. I love to “window shop” as I mentioned. Using these ads as a medium to find new brands and products I hadn’t previously seen or heard of is very convenient for me. It allows me to passively find the things I am looking for. This is something I actually really like about these types of ads because as I mentioned before its a great way to find a lesser known brand that has great high quality products. If it wasn’t for these types of ads I would never of had the chance to find these companies and give their products a chance.

For this assignment I have chosen Apple as my company of choice. I chose Apple because I use many Apple products currently. From their Phones to their watches and computers I support them well. When thinking about Apple and their company the things that come to mind are innovation and usability for people of all ages. To fit into this already dominated marketspace I have chosen to create an Apple “smart scale”. This will fit well with their new direction of the company to focus on fitness and health within their products. This product would be the size of a normal scale but, with the connectivity to your favorite apple device. This will allow for you to keep the item at home and check in with it once a day when you finally arrive home. It will sync with your activity tracked by your other apple device and be able to provide you with more accurate data involving health and exercise.

To do market research for this I would first look at the smart scale market and see who the major players are or even if there are any at all. Next I would think about my intended customer. This would be how I would understand what would be a good area to launch the product and understand what an appropriate price point would be. These would also be the research objectives. Understanding who exactly the product intends to sell to and understanding what areas of the country would be best for testing of this product. I also feel a great way to get research is to through primary research. For example utilizing surveys and conducting interviews with people would be very easy with a company like Apple. A great way to get these interviews would be in a passive manor with people who make purchases in Apple stores. After all we would like to target people who already use Apple products. Simply asking people at the end of their purchase inside and Apple store or online would be a great way to have a short interview and receive real results. Similarly, hosting small focus groups would be another way that Apple could utilize real data from potential customers on this product. With Apple being so big into tech already they can seamlessly integrate a survey or interview with the intended demographic and understand potential interest in something like this.

As mentioned before, Apple has been going in a direction focused on health and fitness with their latest updates to products and updates. This is something that the general public would expect from a company like this. The accessibility to this product will be very easy and something that should be able to be used by a very wide variety or people and incomes. The only issue that might arise would be with very low income families in the 25-40k per year income range. Other than that this product will be aggressively priced to allow it to not only be competitive in this space but, also the new power house backed by Apple and all of their products that will be able to communicate with this new one.

When researching an example of illegal or unethical SEO practices there isn’t a clear and definitive sections to find this. There arent any regulations by governments that restrict companies from their tactics rather the liability is through the SEO companies like Google and what they consider ethical. The example I have found is that in 2014 a law firm in Michigan sued its former SEO provider for their practice and tactics. These techniques ended up violating Google’s guidelines. Which negatively impacted the law firms site traffic in their opinion.

The main point in this article is that the SEO company Rainmaker Institute which specializes in marketing services for the legal profession specifically. Violated Google’s guidelines by building “link farms” for all of the law firms legal domains. This essentially was creating duplicated content which is something that really rides a very fine line between ethical and unethical “black hat” SEO practices.

There are some guidelines that SEO companies can follow to ensure they are practicing ethically. For example, Offering different links for separate websites (which is the example in this case), relative information, Inbound links, and adding a site map. Although this isn’t all of the methods that you can follow. These are some of the ways companies can ensure they stay ethical. To understand what an unethical practice would be its simply the inverse of what was mentioned above. The biggest thing is consumer deception when talking about unethical SEO practices.

There are many benefits of being ethical in SEO. One of which is simply to be transparent and honest in your strategy. With implementing this type of strategy it builds trust with your customer. If they click your link for the first time and they are bombarded with things they don’t expect like mentioned above. Odds are, you lost your company. Practicing in an ethical manner has many hidden benefits that the consumer might even be unaware of that will keep them coming back to your site.

Another benefit of being ethical with your SEO is the simple fact that in keeping your SEO ethical it allows your site and the way you market to be a lot more smooth. It creates better flow within your site and helps the consumer have better direction when navigating your site. This will also create more return on investment when you are more transparent because with every consumer click they are seeing exactly what they expect when visiting your site. When a consumer experiences that. They are more likely to come back if your site satisfies their initial need.

Sources:

About The Author Greg Sterling Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, & Greg Sterling Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land. (2014, August 04). Lawyers sue seo firm for violating google guidelines. https://searchengineland.com/lawyers-sue-seo-firm-violating-google-guidelines-192492

Ltd, O. (2013, January 14). Ethical seo vs. unethical seo. https://www.optimus01.co.za/ethical-seo-vs-unethical-seo/

When looking at strategies for search engines people often don’t know what is best for their business. Whether that is a paid or organic strategy people don’t know the pros and cons to each. The two really go hand in hand when looking at how they work. Paid strategies get put out for people to see using their search criteria and your paid strategy to get your site in front of the people that you have selected as your intended demographic. Organic strategy does the same thing but, it uses peoples previous searches and site activity to push your content to the beginning of the list of options on the given search engine.

Now this goes without saying that the pros of the paid strategy is that your site gets put in the position to see many visits by potential customers without ever having a long lifespan on the internet. The cons to this is the fact that this can be extremely expensive to maintain and establish not to mention that simply putting your site on the front page wont guarantee that your site will be the one clicked or be successful. When looking at organic strategies, its almost the exact opposite. You get all of your sites success over time for little to no cost. The more people visit your site the more it will show up for people searching the same criteria. The cons to this type of strategy would be that there is no guarantee that your site will get the traction needed for this type of strategy to prove effective. If you do get hits on the site it will take much more time for this to happen in a way that you as the owner would be happy with.

I feel the most effective method of these types of strategies is to have an healthy combination of both strategies. I feel that paying the fee initially is a great way to get your company out there and seen. After some time though it should be appropriate to not have to pay for the SEO and allow your site visits to happen organically.

One retail brand that I believe is ethically responsible is Starbucks.

After doing a little research I have found that they run their business in such a way that it incorporates great sustainability practices with its coffee bean farmers. They encompass the idea of quality, economic transparency and social responsibility and economic leadership.

The company has been accused of not acting in a sociably responsible manner a few times. one of which was in 2018 when they were accused of being racially biased which led to the brief closure of over 8,000 stores nationwide. Essentially what happened was their training was to close stores for a few hours nationwide to address a racial bias solution. All it really did was waste time according to some of its employees.

I feel this company is green for both the environment and profit. I can see this in their attempts to eliminate plastics and other things in their stores to make a more green footprint. I also see how they are in the business for making money. This is very evident by the sheer prices of their drinks. It is a very “upscale” coffee shop.

What is the brand strategy being used by the top dog? What is the brand strategy being used by the underdog?

I chose to go with Toyota vs Honda for my top dog vs underdog. I love cars and this was the obvious choice for me. For this battle Toyota is the top dog. Their main focus is on reliability and safety. This is evident through all of their ad campaigns and the perception the general public has on these vehicles. Honda drives their strategy towards more creating products they make consumers lives better all while innovating in technologies to try and overcome top dog Toyota.

How can the underdog improve its strategy so that it can gain more market share and surpass the top dog? Provide three recommendations.

The underdog needs to improve its strategy by trying to directly insert its self into that market. They can find some sort of statistic that will break the public’s opinion of Toyota’s reliability. For example they can see how many civics are on the road today compared to corolla from 10 years ago. They could also go after their competitors gas mileage and compare the two brands by model. Lastly, they could do a blind test inside a vehicle to see which people prefer. From my experience its way nicer inside a Honda than a Toyota.

Why do you believe consumers prefer the top dog over the underdog? Which do you prefer, and why?

I think its simple when it comes to this. The public wants reliability when they are shopping for a vehicle in the segment that these companies play in. Everyone has a perception of Toyota lasting a long time and being low maintenance. I personally don’t go with the top dog. I prefer Honda simply because they have very similar gas mileage, similar price, similar options on cars and have just as good reliability in my opinion.

References:

Toyota Motor Corporation. (2020). Design. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://global.toyota/en/mobility/toyota-brand/toyota-design/

American Honda Motor Co. (2020). About Us: Honda Services & Quality Cars | Honda. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://www.honda.com/about

In this case study article the segments that they intended to go after was women’s Clothing. They identified that they lacked presence in this market and it was a very poor distribution of sales throughout their products. So, in 2014 they launched their “I Will What I Want” campaign. This was the largest global women’s marketing campaign they had ever run. The strategies implemented really revolved around empowerment of women.

I feel that four to five key points to remember when implementing segmentation strategies are as follows. Research your competitor, know the needs of your audience, identify your target market demographic, and do the necessary research on your market. Generally speaking, doing these few things will lead to a successful implementation into a market segment.

A new market segment that I have noticed recently is in the auto industry people are steerin away from cars and really pushing the SUV market heavily in the united states. A compact SUV with good gasmileage will sell over a compact car with great success the auto makers have found. This is one of the main drivers (pun intended) that led to Ford stopping all production of cars except for the mustang. Honestly, I agree with the decision. Certain brands dominate that market segment and why wouldn’t you allocate all your resources to making the vehicles that are your highest selling even more valuable. This is a tactful move for Ford to also enter into the newest market segment of electric vehicles. There really isn’t currently a big market for electric SUV and trucks which I feel will be their next biggest move.

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781305161689/cfi/64!/4/4@0.00:31.2