by Hock Ng
copyright 2005
Apple Computer just announced that their
earnings from the last quarter more than
quadrupled mainly due to robust holiday
sales of the iPod digital music player.
More than 10 million iPods have been
sold since it was introduced in 2001.
There are some important marketing lessons
to be learned from all this. First of all,
Apple has created a product for a hungry
market that has the financial means to
purchase it even with the relatively high
price point. If you find a hot and hungry
market, create a product for it and you
are almost guaranteed to succeed.
Lesson #1: Find a hot and hungry market
Ever since the introduction of the MP3
file format, we have seen the popularity
of converting songs from a CD so that they
can be stored on the computer. Even the
Napster episode showed us that there is
a huge market for a device like the iPod.
Here's the summary of the first lesson -
don't sell shovels to fishermen and fishing
poles to gold miners. Rather, sell the
shovels to gold miners and the fishing
poles to fishermen. Create a product that
already has an existing market.
Lesson #2: Create different versions
Now Apple just announced the introduction
of the iPod Shuffle - a lower-priced version
of the iPod with flash memory instead of
hard drive storage.
This strategy is called versioning.
First create a product that sells. Then
create another version of the product for
a different market segment. In this case,
Apple first came up with a more expensive
product and followed it up with a cheaper
product.
Lesson #3: Create the halo effect
The halo effect is essentially this:
increasing sales of one popular product
will generate more sales for your other
existing products. In this case, the
tremendous popularity of the iPod has
created enough buzz that more people are
buying Macs.
In the past, Macs have made inroads only
to a small segment of the market. But now,
we're likely to see Apple increase its
market share of personal computers in the
months to come.
So whatever you are selling, there are
definitely some general marketing lessons
to be learned from the success of the iPod.
Think about it the next time you use your iPod.
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Hock Ng is the editor of The Marketing Tools
Review, an online newsletter highlighting the
latest marketing tools and strategies,
especially for internet marketers. To find out
more, please visit:
http://www.marketing-tools-review.com -----------------------------------------------
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If you use this article, please drop me a note at
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Thanks!
