COMMENTS
I am not sure is this a joke? It's gotta be an April fools joke.
Marketing the iPad to businesses is a win/win play IMO. There are plenty of consumers that are also business people that could use it for work, but will balk at the price if buying with their own money. However, if the case could be made for an employer to provide for sales presentations and the like, it could open up a new channel of people to see it to. Wrote a blog post back in February about a few uses the construction industry could apply to the iPad
http://dphelan.com/2010/02/24/contractor-uses-for-the-apple-ipad/
As a devoted Mac user and Apple fan/advocate I'm hopeful that iPad will be a great success, but I think getting business people to adopt and use it on a large scale will require a solution for business documents - Pages isn't the answer. As the majority of business associates and clients use pc's and MS software, I have to use the MS Office for Mac suite for word documents and spreadsheets - this won't change anytime soon unless Pages and Numbers are made cross platform compatible - seamlessly. All the other iPad features make it terrific as a business tool, but this issue could prove to be a real problem for business acceptance.
How would you implement the in-store line priority? The 1g iphone launched 3 years ago, I doubt people still have reciepts, or even the phone. That base probably moved on to 3Gs by now.
I'm a fan (and customer) of Hubspot but smirked when I read this. I think Apple is doing just fine in the marketing department. This post felt like another excuse to ride the iPad buzz rather than a really insightful commentary.
They've sold our their pre-orders for a device that hasn't even been released yet. I'm not sure how much better you could do than that?
You can always do better and there are always missed opportunities. I like this post as a thought exercise and a way to get creative.
I'm kinda in @Amrita's camp on this one. Apple doesn't hire idiots in their marketing department and being detached and omniscient is working for them. Leading with "Building Business Advocates" soured me almost right away on the rest of the post. Restaurants and hospitals want cheap and rugged. That really isn't an Apple core brand thing.. though I'd like to see it, but won't ever happen.
but Apple could make their keyboards more responsive!! damn L key :-)
Well, first there are business advocates in Apple's developer community who have been actively persuaded by Apple to build business apps. Healthcare and education are the two business segments really anticipating the release. Especially education because the iPad can scale between K-12, higher ed, special needs and adult education. MacBooks and iPhones could not span that range of generations and needs. The SDK has been out and developers are writing apps now, or porting their iPhone apps.
Apple's a great marketing company, but they need to show apps already developed. That will be the second phase of their marketing plan a few months from now.
I agree with Mike T's comments. People change their iPhones out every 18-24 months. As far as engaging bookworms, that will happen but Apple chooses do it through the business side of things via the counter attack against Amazon's pricing model, and the spat with Adobe over HTL5 vs. Flash. iPad v 1.0's screen may not excel over the Kindle for some age segments if you're reading a long form book for hours at a time. It's an LCD screen. But Apple's focused on the golden jewels- the textbook industry! That brings in a significant revenue stream, not $9.99 best sellers. I wrote about this at the iPad launch at http://newdigitalcafe.com/?p=1049
Regarding your last point on gamers, the apps are already in development. Apple didn't show gaming apps on the original iPhone until the apps came to market, and then did so in creative ways. So stay tuned.
Great comments everyone!
I agree that Apple has done great job marketing the iPad.
You all have made some great points.
@Randy love your thoughts. Completely agree about textbooks.
@mikeT nailed my goal of this post. I wanted to point out what I thought Apple could have done given more resources.
@Amrita Thanks for being a customer. I appreciate your feedback. Not an attempt to write yet another iPad post, but instead apply inbound marketing to a major consumer product launch.
Hello Hubspot,
I am a fan or your blog, posts and strategies, however, as a consumer marketer (and having worked in the video/social gaming industries), I have to say that Apple's strategy haven't seen a glaring error in their marketing strategy. Having launched and life-cycle managed several products/services/brands I know that the goal of the release is to hit one type of consumer at launch and a different set of consumers at different stages of its life. The use of inbound marketing will be critical when they branch out to the "mass consumer". Not so much at launch where they focus on the Apple fans, tech geeks and the "insiders". I don't know if this is part of their strategy or not, but when you go after a smaller subset of a larger market at launch, you sell out - it actually helps drive demand (think of movie or concert ticket sales.).
As for gaming; content drives sales for a platform (in other words, games are what drive the hardware). Ipad is not launching with a library of games that are going to show off the hardware. And Apple has not reached out to the community of developers to make an effort to get development of products made. Hence, their lack of pushing this into the gamer market at this time.
Thanks for all your posts, info and insight. I enjoy reading everything here....in fact, I'll be at your offices tomorrow....