Tactical E-Marketing and Communications Planning

Tactical e-Marketing and Communications Planning

Today companies need a smarter and faster marketing communications in order to compete effectively. A tactical e-marketing and communications plan can streamline and improve the overall marketing process. This paper provides a tactical approach to an e-marketing strategy for Apple and its portable digital music player - the iPod Shuffle. The strategy will include a pricing and promotional approach; how technology applications are used to support the overall strategy; changes to the traditional delivery mechanisms; the approach and elements to be considered in tactical communications; and, finally, existing methods and metrics to assess the effectiveness of e-marketing.

Tactical Approach

The tactical approach to be implemented involves defining objectives and related strategy surrounding product, promotion, price and place. These fundamental elements of the marketing mix address how organizational and consumer objectives are attained. The following presents objectives and related strategy set forth by this plan.

Product

Improving the iPod Product Line

Future iPods should store more video and have longer battery life, and improved screen resolution. Entertainment companies are providing more programming online, which may become as easy to download as music files.

One strategy is to extend the storage capacity by creating a "Stick" similar Sony™ memory stick to stick to support the video feed replays and tune greater varieties. This solution should be a memory stick of 1 MB with a smaller size specifications than specifications than Sony™. This approach will support the recent flash memory product release for the iPod in 2005 ( Marchetti, 2004).

Another is to use iSwap™ software, which gives the ability to integrate instant messaging between iPod users. Instant messaging would notify the user if there were new tunes that are available for swapping with other iPod users or from vendors.

Also to be explored is iBand™, through which topical interest messaging can be developed to provide smart messaging about band events related to the tunes that the consumer is listening to. For example, if a U2 song is being downloaded then the local U2 concert schedule would be downloaded and available for ticket purchase.

Capability for to copying DVD's to iPod is another opportunity by providing units with record and play back of instant videos. Providing for wireless connectivity that permits synchronizing or playing them on stereos without the need to plug in cables is also valuable.

RFID Embedded technology will allow cell phone owners to download iPod Tunes, digital photos from iPod from iPod video feeds. This could be done by placing an RFID tag on the iPod that the cell phones can read and access information from it.

Finally, Apple should explore making iTunes an open technology standard instead of limiting it to only run on iPod (Orlowoski, 2005).

Promotion

Continuing to leverage marketing associations with other strong brands.

Apple understands that by making strong associations with other very strong brands, it establishes the iPod as a platform. Ultimately, this provides a way to get the iPod experience into consumers' hands (Snyder Bulik, 2004). Apple has partnered with Hewlett-Packard, Kate Spade, Bose, and BMW. Some of the tag lines from these relationships include: "BMW: iPod your BMW."; "Bose SoundDock: Insert iPod. Hear what happens."; and "Alpine Electronics: Take your iPod for a drive."

Partnering with retail promotions with iPod giveaways.

Marketers at corporations and small businesses are giving away iPods to motivate and lure customers. The trade publications, Incentive, states that iPod minis are the number one motivational electronics product (Bernstein, 2005).

Implementing cross-promotion marketing with iTunes

Partner with other corporations to engage in cross-promotions involving iTunes. Apple in that past has partnered with Pepsi providing codes on bottle caps for free downloads of songs from iTunes.

Using performance based affiliate marketing

In order to measure the success of the objectives mentioned above iPod will need to partner with an Affiliate marketing provider like Google or CJ Advertising. The performance-based approach would allow iPod to pay on a transactional basis rather than upfront cost. The transactional costs will vary based on number of leads generated on the website. The affiliate provider should have access to global content publishers on the internet. Tracking is achieved by rewarding potential clients with loyalty points when accessing a certain ad. The link exchange approach is being replaced by a smart "Tri-part" setting (Holland, 2006) where the merchant will link to iPod from their blog site if iPod would directly link to their lead generation site. The Affiliate provider should also be able to generate a "designer" ad with several "foot prints" that appeal to different segments. In this case, iPod online Ad for teenager would be more on variety and free iPod if you buy these iTunes. Where as an Ad about "Quality Design" of the iPod can appeal for a mature market. Finally, these Affiliate provider should be able to provide detailed tracking reports on which online advertising program is working with which brand as seen in the Table 1 below:

Table 1 - Online Advertising Tracking Sample

Source: Web Trends, 2005.

Price

Pricing is one of the most difficult components of the marketing mix. The main objective is to continue reveiving the highest possible price point. Apple should continue with its higher price objective while consumers view the product purchase as a life-style choice and continue to foster culture surrounding the iPod as a life-style choice.

iPod is becoming a commodity and commodity pricing strategy (Wilson, 2000) suggest lower prices overtime. This would be a good tactic for iPod for two reasons: competition with Sony is intense; and historically Apple products have been "over priced" and the market punished the company for that approach, where the rest of the market had competitive pricing.

Place

Place refers to distribution and represents one of the four aspects of marketing. Opportunities exist to