We all know that Apple is among the largest companies in the world. You can likely travel to any country (well… pre-covid) and show the Apple logo to someone and they will recognize it. A company this large likely has an enormous online presence, and they do, but you may be surprised to find out that Apple on Twitter and Facebook does not have any posts. Now, their Facebook does show their cover photo updates, which boast a number of comments, but they do not have your standard posts. They also do not have a single tweet on their official @Apple account, but they do have tweets on other accounts like AppleTV, iTunes, App Store etc. So how does apple track return on investment or even performance indicators?
Let’s start with their objectives… the thing Apple does well is sell. They are also great at retaining brand loyalty, odds are you own an apple product or have seen one in someone’s hand in the last day. Apple’s objective is to get people to buy into their brand, both physically and through subscriptions etc. What about their marketing objectives? I’m sure everyone has seen an ad from Apple whether it is a graphic, a fancy commercial online or on TV, or a billboard at a football game. One of their main objectives is to make people see their products and build an association with them. Apple is known for their design and functionality between devices, and they do well at supporting those elements in their advertisements. So how can Apple identify a key performance indicator with their ads? They have to know their goals — things like views, engagement, and reach.
I often get Apple’s ads on social media like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. Surely, they are tracking their views, engagement, and reach from their ads. Apple’s marketing budget must be high. In 2017, the last recorded data on Apple’s marketing budget was $1.8 billion. WOW. Return on investment is crucial for a number that high. Without a team of marketing geniuses and data analyzers I don’t think any company would be comfortable spending that much on ads. The company likely has an entire team dedicated to different partitions of social media to study and track their analytics for reach, engagement, and views. For example, they likely have a team that just tracks YouTube analytics, or another for Facebook that track all the mentioned KPIs and more such as likes, and followers. Apple’s twitter has 6 million followers but no posts, but I’m sure as ads show up on feeds, the account gains more followers.
Social media is a key investment for Apple, especially with a budget that large just 4 years ago, who knows what the budget is in 2021. For that much money I would want to see 10+ million vies per video released on YouTube, tens of thousands of shares of ads on Facebook, and millions of likes on Instagram. If those numbers could double year over year, I think the investment would totally be worth the money spent.
