Background Information on the organization

Apple Inc. is a profit organization that was constituted as a legal corporation on 3rd January 1977, is an American company that spans many countries across the world and develops and designs software, customer electronics, and online services. It had 132,000 employees as per the statistics are given in and recorded its highest turnover of 265.6 billion dollars in the 2018 fiscal year which was an improvement from the previous year which had about 229.23 billion dollars.

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The company's products range from hardware such as the iPhone smartphone, iPad computer tablet, iPod music player, Apple Watch smartwatch, and many more to software such as the iTunes media player, Safari web browser and the macOS and iOS operating systems for the computers and smartphones respectively.

Apple Inc. is a B2C marque as much as it is B2B. It is B2C since consumers buy most of the products for their personal use, and at the same time it is a B2B brand since it also sells its products to other companies. Their main competitors in 2018 are Samsung Electronics and Microsoft. Samsung Electronics also produce high-end smartphones that are almost at the same level as the Apple smartphones while Microsoft computers are widely used since they are comparatively cheaper than Apple MacBook.

Evaluation of the Approach to CRO Employed by Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.'s product is the primary thing about its marketing strategy. The products aid in achieving market share, brand loyalty, and awareness. The company is known for its innovativeness in marketing, original design and style, excellent marketing strategy and their excellence in communication with their consumers (Patrutiu-Balte 2016). This has enabled Apple to be the most successful smartphone manufacturing company for their creative way of doing business. A collaboration of new and original hardware coupled with a beautiful design, performance, and features that are easy to use captures the consumer's interest in an instant. They use the same marketing strategy for all their products.

When they make a product say an iPhone, it may, for instance, sell at $1000 in its first month selling the product first in the United States before shipping it to the rest of the world after about three months. A couple of months later and the company will rebate its prices. This strategy has aided them in staying at the top of the market regarding their shares. Apple also has a clearly defined product line which consists of the iPhone, iMac, iPod, iPad and Apple TV among others.

Apple also has a product mix where they sell a set of products that are related together rather than individually since it brings a lot of profit than the later. This implies that an array of products sold together make much more profit than when sold separately. For instance, they sell their MacBook and desktop computers along with their peripheral devices such as a mouse and keyboard. They also have promotions where they sell the iPod at a lower price if one purchases an iMac at the same time. They focus more on the design and ease of use of the product to entice their consumers.

Apple products captivate every type of consumer in the market from different customer segments such as age, gender, profession, to name a few. They target the whole market and have products that are suitable for any consumer. Their unique brand name and logo is embedded in the minds of their consumers. This is due to their aggressive marketing and high-end products.

They communicate with their consumers through various online media such as website advertisements and the iStore. They introduced iAds where any company can advertise their product their and Apple also advertises their products there.

An Analysis of Apple Inc.'s Approach to CRO in Comparison with its Main Competitor

The smartphone industry is one of the most non-static and is known for its high innovations. The competition in this industry is very high, and currently, Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Limited are the two companies that dominate the industry. Apple is highly valued for its design which is the primary value of the company (Saura 2017). The company's reputation today is founded on the desired strategy that it portrays at the unveiling of each product. The company aims to maintain customer loyalty, and this is shown by the long queues witnessed outside Apple stores when a new product is launched. Apple dominated the market for a while until Samsung dethroned it. Samsung produces cheaper products that are still sleek and appealing to their consumers. Their marketing strategy is robust and robust. Samsung banks on global advertising, the use of expensive posters or even high impact audiovisual campaigns which usually garner a lot of attention from their consumers while Apple relies on the design of its products to entice customers.

Samsung's aggressive marketing has helped it in becoming the leading brand in the smartphone industry and acquired the most significant number of market shares. Since its inception, the brand has been distinguished with low smartphone prices in comparison to the price of an iPhone with the same capability. Samsung has attracted techies due to its open source license and customization of innovative mobile features and technical skills. The company's brand positioning is such that it has a product for everyone.

Samsung uses comparative advertising which complexes to implement and is potentially dangerous for those who use it. Their advertisements directly tackle their competitor, and their message can be easily misinterpreted since it is double-edged. Apple, however, uses a more emotionally appealing approach to market its products.

Apple uses the blue ocean strategy which means that it analyzes what its competition is doing and strives to improve on it so that they could have an ambitious plan. Samsung, however, employs the red ocean strategy where it gains a competitive edge by going into an established market and working on the shortcomings of their competitors (Baltes 2015). Samsung tends to fill the market with numerous products that are designed and made over a short period since they manufacture many of the components they use in the making of its smartphones. The red ocean strategy is disadvantageous since it leaves a firm at the mercy of Porter's five forces.

Samsung has a strong social media presence and are present on almost all the social media platforms and has connected with important applications to target their audience with social media campaigns. Apple, however, has a minimal presence on social media and promote their products through TVCs. It is needless to say that Apple's brand sells itself and it does not need a lot of advertisements to get people hooked on their products.

Apple launches online advertising campaigns to reach their consumers, and their smartphone advertisement always has a white background that exotically entices the consumers. Their advertisements still highlight the benefit of the product to the target audience. Samsung uses a dark blue background, and the product is promoted as somewhat vibrant, slim and fast, and the advantages of the product are thoroughly explained.

Samsung set in motion the "Incredible Art Piece" marketing campaign to promote the Galaxy Note stylus pen, and it ended up becoming a Guinness World record with a huge number of artists working on a single piece of art. Apple also launched "Your Verse" in 2014 to bring to light how different customers use the iPad to do various activities in their unique way, and it became more of a narrative of people using an iPad instead of the intended product (Armstrong 2015). Both companies engage their customers in the promotion of their products.

Samsung uses social media and all other possible channels for marketing to promote its products while Apple uses its publicity to interact with its customers. When a majority of people are seen using or owning an iPhone, others feel compelled to have one. Samsung launched a countrywide digital campaign in India showing its idea to take customer care services straight to the doorstep of the customers in rural areas. This initiative made Samsung very popular because it showed that it cares about the customer and would go to great lengths to make sure that they are satisfied with their services. Apple is considered a great innovator and is popularly known for its breathtaking designs and new software while Samsung Electronics is seen as a follower of Apple regarding innovation.

Apple and Samsung keep researching on the different marketing strategies that would prevent both companies on the lead in the smartphone industry. So far, Samsung is a leader in the industry while Apple is a leader in innovation while Samsung is a contender to it.

2. Key Elements Required in the Implementation of the Digital Marketing Strategy to Deliver an Improvement in CRO

An Analysis of the Online Journey of a Key Customer Segment to Produce a Customer Persona that Supports Digital Marketing Decisions

Digital segmentation is the process of dividing your customer database into several homogeneous groups. The groups differ from each other and maybe by age, gender, social status, among others. This is an invaluable tool when you are trying to communicate with your target audience. Segmentation allows you to expand your budget and make the most of your marketing revenue by providing the correct service or product to the intended users. Customer needs and values are the pillars of effective marketing and segmentation; whose purpose is to indicate the intentions and propensity to purchase.

A customer persona is a partially fictional depiction of your consummate customer based on research done on the market and existing data about your current customers. When developing a persona, one should consider including detailed information on customer objectives, behavior patterns, statistics, and incentives (Kingsnorth 2016). A comprehensive buyer persona aids one in deciding where the focal point of their time, steer product growth and permit agreement across the organization.

Personas help businesses to understand their customer data and utilize it to deliver personal experiences throughout the customer's journey. A marketing persona is an amalgamated sketch of a primary segment of your customer base. For content marketing, one would need personas that would aid them to supply a substance that would be the most pertinent and convenient to your customer base. This method can be applied to both B2B and B2C markets.

It is recommended that one produces three to five personas since the number is small enough to hold the value of specificity and large enough to represent a majority of the customer audience (Chaffey 2016). Having a customer persona has a lot of benefits for any digital marketing. First, the personas associate content to services and products by linking content against buying stages. Secondly, it aids in the creation of content assets that are much more engaging such as infographics and blog posts by fine-tuning the style and tone to entice the numerous types of buyers.

Customer personas provide a more objective oriented criterion for determining content preference since a customer's needs and wants can be studied rather than depending on a manager's preconception. They also endorse a more calculated point of view to marketing by distinguishing the various types of content that is suitable to the interests and concerns of your audience, therefore, making it much more pertinent and sharable. Creating a customer persona endorses the amalgamation of digital marketing with other mechanisms mainly if cross-mechanism personas are designed to link multichannel c...