IBM unique winning strategy

Do you know which company holds the patent rights for ATM machines, hard disk drives, and magnetic strip cards?

It is the great American-based technology company IBM. IBM is not just famous for its products and services but also for its strategies to compete in the IT market for more than a century.

And this blog will explain the winning strategies of IMB and the story of how they beat their competitors.

Introduction to IBM

IBM or international business machine, is technology-oriented and it is best known for its software, hardware, cloud systems, consulting and hosting services.

They started their business as a computer tabulating company in the year 1911 and eventually, they spread their presence in systems and technology, business services, software, financing and technology services.

All these services helped them to evolve into a top producer of hardware and software products.

Their contribution to their human society is something remarkable , and some of them are,

ATM

DRAM

Hard disk drive

Magnetic strip cards

Floppy disk

UPC barcode

SQL language

Even today, they have been releasing their innovative solutions to upgrade our lives to the next level. IBM’S innovations and marketing strategies help them to gather their customers from all over the world.

So, by this time, you all might be intrigued more to know about their strategies, right? Then without any further delay, let us all witness the greatest strategies of all time!

What is the Marketing mix of IBM company?

The term marketing mix refers to the combination of strategies which the companies used to promote their services and products to their customers.

Thus, IBM’s marketing mix is based on these 5 strategies and they are

Product strategy

Place strategy

Pricing strategy

Promotion strategy

Let us see them one by one,

Product strategy

IBM products are more diverse in nature and they are providing more options for their customers to choose for themselves instead of sticking to only a few products.

All their products are very updated in a manner for example IBM’s cloud data encryption services offer excellent encryption and security to clients’ data.

Well, we are living in a world where every customer is looking for digital privacy and data protection features. Thus, even IMB got updated themselves with releasing their products based on the concerns and problems of the customers.

IBM products are the solutions to the customer’s problems thus their products have turned into a strategy for them.

Some of the other products and services which make us to feel awed are,

Internet of things

IT framework

Psychological registering

Global financing

Distributed computing

Analysis and information

Cloud

Cognitive solutions

Key learnings

Whatever the strategy can be, if the quality and indent of the products are of great quality, then we can able to compete in the market trusting solely on our product.

Place strategy

IBM company follow an exclusive strategy to make their product reach people via various distribution channels.

The company may manufacture a top-notch quality product for their consumers but the company should take the responsibility to distribute it right?

And IBM took the responsibility so religiously, and their distribution channels include,

•   Business partners
•   Delivery centres
•   Official website
•   Warranty service providers

Business partners are one of the most traditional and most effective methods to distribute the products and IBM has attracted a greater number of business partners as well.

IBM has their respective delivery centres to deliver all types of products and global services.

The next way to connect to billions of people is through the official website, IBM maintains a perfect site which shares the new product updates and anyone can know about the information about the products. It helps to find potential customers and interact with them.

IBM has set up many Warranty service providers to extend their services to the customers and they also help them to repair their devices.

Key learnings

•   To compete in the market, one must know how to reach the products to the hands of customers in a faster and more easeful manner.
•   Product distribution channel has a great impact on the success story of any business.

Price strategy

Isn’t setting up the prices of our products has a huge impact on the sales of the company? Then IBM’s price strategy is something more phenomenal as well.

Instead of following one monochromic way of pricing strategy, IBM has come up with two types of price strategy

Market-oriented one: in this type of strategy, IBM products will be priced on equivalence to competitive market prices. For example, IBM cloud services are priced competitively by analysing all the market competitions and the price sensitivity of the products.

Value-based one: it is purely based on the value of IBM company products, according to the needs for the product for the customers. Now You can understand this definition in a better manner; for example, let us take the example of IBM restaurant chain projects, IBM can personalize it for its own trusted customers, and then they will surely set the price according to the value of the products instead of looking at the market competitive prices because it is more of customized one so we couldn’t categorize under general ones.

Key learnings

•   Selecting the perfect pricing strategy according to the products will only help us to survive in the market, and at the same time , it will also help to retain and attract new customers towards our product.
•   Prices have a severe impact on the success rate of the products, so everyone has to choose it wisely.

Promotion strategy

Promoting the products will help us to bring the spotlight towards our product and make our customers know about the existence of such products.

Thus, IBM uses the perfect promotion strategy to advertise its product and they are taking several ways to make that happen.

•   Advertising
•   Direct marketing
•   Sales promotion
•   Public relations
•   Personal selling

IBM’s highlighted promotion activities are their advertising skills. They will use both the print and online media to promote their product.

And here the clever part is, IBM advertise on the trending news articles, so that people will never miss that advertisement, right?

Even they apply the same rule to online media as well.

And direct marketing means IBM will have direct dealings with their corporate customers where they will explain their recent updates to their clients. Mostly these direct marketing can be done to our existing clients. For example, IBM sending an email promoting their new product is also a type of direct marketing.

IBM’s sales promotion is all about how they will exclusively promote the product during a particular occasion. thus, it will impact the sales of the particular product because mostly IBM announces many offers and free trials during those occasions.

This is one of the brilliant tactics is to trigger a sense of scarcity in people’s minds so they may think like, if they don’t buy the product, the prices may go up after the occasion.

Next, in public relations, IBM will do many sponsorships activities like an environmental conservation activity or may a small marathon. But by doing these acts, IBM is connecting to the hearts of people.

Naturally, everyone will tend to appreciate the acts of IBM, right? Isn’t a great promotion,even though it comes under an emotional way of marketing strategy it will work out in the best manner.

Personal selling is like appealing directly to the customers,mostly these types of promotions will be done to customers who are in the very remote area.

Key learning

In order to compete with our competitors, promotions are the best tools to be used, when we efficiently use that tool, it will result in phenomenal success.

Promotional activities require the understanding of the psychology of the customers, and we have to make them feel that “ this is the right time to buy a product, else we may miss it out.“

IBM Business strategy

IBM ‘s business is not only confined to one set of customers, they are doing business with major global financial institutions, government sectors, health care, retailers, educational sectors etc.

Thus, it helps to acquire more diverse customers from all over the world since they serving to different clients.

In addition, IBM’s mergers, joint ventures, and acquisitions helped them increase their productivity at a reduced cost.

By knowing the trends of the world, IBM has started to channel their business investments on cloud-based applications rather than focusing only on the hardware. With this kind of approach, IBM’s revenue boosted up to $18.75 billion in the year 2020.

Key learnings

•   Widen up the customer base will help the business to grow stronger.
•   The nuances of knowing when and where to invest the money are the most critical point to stay ahead of our customers. 

Marketing strategies

Promotional strategies will also come under marketing strategies, but in addition to that, IBM has a unique marketing strategy and it is also known as IBM’s STP. It can be abbreviated as segmentation, targeting and positioning and these are steps which are most prominent steps in IBM’s marketing strategies.

Let us see it one by one.

Segmentation: as the name suggests, it will segment the people based on factors like demographic, psychological and spatial. Why do we have to segment our customers? it helps IBM to know about the needs of each customer.

Targeting: after segmenting the customers, IBM targets those potential customers and presents them with their highly customized products and services to them.

Positioning: IBM uses the user benefit strategy to position itself.

And marketing can never be ended without stating the usage of social media.

So yes, Even IBM perfectly uses social media for its marketing, but they have been in social media even before the popularity of Twitter and Facebook.

It helped them to acquire millions of followers and IBM is running several accounts on social media. They didn’t put everything under one account, instead, they divided into several categories.

Key learnings

the beauty of marketing is, we must create the image that product quality is higher than it is.

Finding potential customers is paramount when it comes to marketing else our money and time will be wasted because only potential customers will buy your product and not the other ones !

Little tired of hearing some theoretical information?

It’s time for story time!

IBM case study

IBM code and response campaign

This is one of the most successful campaigns of IBM, natural disasters like floods, tsunamis, typhoons and earthquakes are something that can be prevented we can predict but we cannot prevent them.

But IBM resolved to build a centre where it highly creates so many innovations about protecting ourselves from these types of natural damages. Thus, they invented superior coders from all over the world to come up with a solution for this problem, like reducing the damage caused by such calamities.

This campaign was a very successful one, nearly 900 million came to know about this campaign and thus IBM created brand awareness near to a billion people.

And nearly one lakh programmers participated in the campaign.

IBM smarter planet

This campaign is all about making Earth a better place to live with the help of digital technology.

Through this campaign, IBM created a congestion management system, digital health care services, greener construction etc.

They have collaborated with major companies to make this campaign a successful one.

Thus, IBM has used these campaigns as stepping to register their brand name on their customers and corporate business mans

Henceforth the above-mentioned strategies are the unique ways followed by IBM to compete against their competitors like Amazon, HP, Oracle, Dell, Accenture etc. All these strategies will make our business grow in a significant manner but we have to grasp the actions of IBM and implement them according to the type of businesses. Will you?