September 2007 Archives
But I think he's wrong on this one.
In his blog post How to spend $20 million, he mentions that Apple would have been better served by making early adopters feel more unique by giving them access to buy something truly unique - something that they can show their friends - and that says something about themselves.
I disagree here. The moment it comes to money, people always tend to choose the opinion that makes them feel less foolish. Conventional opinion at the moment seems to suggest that they were foolish to pay 200 extra dollars for a phone that they could have got later for the "normal" price. This is just human nature. People don't want to be told that they're fools- especially with money! And they certainly won't accept any touchy feely expression or "special access" privileges unless it's accompanied with a material offer - such as Apple's 100 dollar return..
The story these early adopters will say now to themselves is -
Yes I bought an expensive phone by mistake, But the company that sold me this also made a mistake here. And they've tried to make up by paying for it. I think this is a good company - I don't need them to pay everything - after all, I too made a mistake. Paying half is fair enough..
That's why Apple is right in this respect.. Nuff said
Well, when you are going to drop the price on a product, you will find that some customers who just bought the product are pissed off. You need those customers to stay with you, and continue to be your fans - especially if they are early adopters. So you try giveaways, special deals, and the like.
Apple has done just the same - something it has (to the limits of my knowledge) never done before - PAY the customer back!!! Well almost.
The new price is 200 dollars lower than the previous price and they are going to give a store credit to their iPhone early adopters for 100 dollars. Essentially splitting the difference.
And of course if you'd also like to split hairs on this, this is money that will be spent on Apple products, so the only "loss" to apple is the material cost of the product
Nice - I wish more companies could do it.
GM Onstar
But who knows - there may be other applications where this could be useful too...
"One to beam up Scotty!"
When Plaxo began, anyone joining the plaxo network would automatically send invites (or Plaxo would send the invites on his/her behalf to all the friends and contacts in their address book - the moment the address book was uploaded to their site.
Other sites simply take notice and copy..
The upside for these companies
1) This giant directory of interlinked people can then be serviced with social networking tools supported by Google Ads
2) more money from the Ads means the side could get acquired
The downside
1) People just ignore the emails
2) The sites are seen as spammers
3) More people leave the site, or turn into non-active members.
You can only try a marketing tactic so many times - and if people have seen it before, they stop responding to it.. Too many marketeers think of marketing tactics in the same way as they see ads - "Use an ad often enough and people will take notice".
This has been proven wrong time and again. Be unique or be a "very quick" follower.
