Integrated Marketing Communications Plan For GoPro Hero 4

Overview of GoPro Hero 4

2014 GoPro’s revenue was reported as 1.394B worldwide with over 18 million camera sol worldwide. The cost of advertising amounts to $194.3M including marketing methods such as trade shows, print, web, and video media, commercial television productions (Clevenger, Rodgers, & East Carolina University, 2017). The GoPro sales budget has steadily increased over three years and will afford for a marketing and communications campaign with a focus on attracting consumer outside of the adventure environment, mainly through tradeshows. Corporate brand and public relations activity complement the IMC plan and promote brand awareness. Fortunately, GoPro consumers are typically young, with a desire to share their experiences online. Therefore, GoPro can consistently interact with the public through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. However, GoPro feels that increased brand awareness is still a necessary goal to focus on (Florès, 2014). 

The GoPro Hero 4 is a valuable tool for capturing live action professional picture. GoPro’s marketing goal is promoting and competitively position the GoPro in the adventure seeker and extreme sports consumer market. The most effective method for achieving this is creating a robust Integrated Marketing Campaign, summarizing the entire marketing campaign. Followed by a market opportunity analysis, the basis for the market penetration strategy. Outlining an ambitious plan that can aid in the prediction of GoPro marketing success (Carucci, 2016). Nick woodman, the founder and CEO of GoPro has in the past three years introduced three more GoPro cameras as an innovation extended to fit client’s needs. The latest is the 2018 Hero 7. The strategy is that the company wants to retain and capture new customers who are not necessarily familiar and conversant with creation of videos and who have in the past never seriously considered owning or buying a GoPro camera. The gadget comes at a costly price of $400 or $ 550 depending on the market. Before the Hero 7 were the GoPro Hero 6 and GoPro hero 5. Both of the cameras have shown tremendous success in the market.

GoPro Hero 4 will continue to be the top sold camera because the Integrated Marketing Communication plan will continue to reinforce the brand and stimulate the target market for continued support. Our IMC objectives will make all phases of our marketing communication: advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, directing marketing, social media, and online communications effective and working together to stand behind a stable, branded product (Garg, 2015). Due to integrated marketing and communication plans, the GoPro hero 5 was a subsequent hit. It has the greatest features by the time and in 2015, it broke the market by its sales. The company was selling the GoPro Camera Hero 5 at $ 200 compared to other brands. Most of the questions raised were does it have the $200 worth of features that the GoPro cameras have compared to other brands. The answer was possibly. It’s a rugged , has a water proof action camera for the world of leading camera actions cameras. The GoPro Hero 6 was until that time the most budget friendly entry level camera that was ever produced by the company. It was not the best camera in the market, but it was surely a budget camera.  It was not the best but was the best camera for;

• Someone interested in creating video content but does not have enough cash to spend on the camera and the gear.
• Someone who wants adventure but doesn’t have to keep track of a $400 to $ 500 worth of camera.
• For someone who has no idea what GoPro does and does not have enough experience with the brand.

Importance of a Marketing Communications Plan

GoPro slates version is a well though camera with all the best features that a good adventure wants. The 2018, GoPro Hero 7 is an economical gadget with features and prices that will encourage massive sales and consumer liking. The bottom line is that it is really a personal decision to buy if looking for a line action with 4K shoots has super high frame rates and tones of other brilliant features. The communication marketing of the brand has been enhanced by the IMC plan.

Our goals of brand awareness, sales generation, and repeat purchases are what we are targeting with our IMC plan. We need these three things to maintain financial stability and continue our growth rate. Our marketing budget and target audience have been considered into our IMC objectives. We know what we need to focus on to be the primary product for the consumers. We have taken action into brand awareness. The GoPro Hero 4 is one of the top sold cameras because of this. We have focused on marketing communication to increase consumer demand. The marketing focus will continue to be a stronghold with making our product the one most demanded. We believe that we are guiding our IMC plan into changing or influencing our customer’s beliefs and attitudes. The GoPro Hero 4 is for those that lead adventurous lives but also for those that want to capture lives everyday moments (GoPro, inc, 2012).

The IMC objectives include the marketing objectives to enhance purchasing actions and encourage repeat purchases. GoPro Hero 4’s target market will be the focus of our objectives to build customer traffic to physical stores that carry our products, online traffic to our website and all other marketing channels. We want to make sure that our marketing strategy is focused on educating our consumers on where to go to get our product.

GoPro Hero 4 already has a reliable brand and image. The goal of our IMC objectives will continue to use our public relations to reaffirm this brand. We want to continue to increase our market share and increase our sales. We need to focus on our customer base and make sure that we are reinforcing their purchasing decisions. I think GoPro Hero4 does this will all the available accessories and in the different ways that the GoPro Hero 4 camera can be used (GoPro, Inc, 2014).

Our IMC strategy will contain all of our objectives, and the procedure will be implemented and put into practice. We will continue research and observations of our marketplace, new competitive products, and continue with promotional opportunities. The GoPro Hero 4 will continue to change, and there will be times when our IMC plan will need to be altered and reassessed. The marketing campaigns will need to be redressed and refocus as both our target market and the product itself will need to change.

Our IMC objectives will be measurable, specific, and quantified as needed. Our sales objectives are something that can be measured and quantified. These are more short-term and will be more straightforward to measure and easy to quantify. Others, like brand loyalty, is something we need to maintain and will continue to grow our core customers (Graves, Shenaq, Langerman, & Song, 2015).

IMC Objectives

Sales

The sales plan includes both direct sales from the business-to-business market segment as well as direct sales to consumers through e-commerce. For sales, a marketing and communications campaign focuses the majority of their efforts on independent specialty retailers, big-box retailers, mid-market retailers and e-commerce channels. GoPro believes that the extensive display of variety across these direct sale channels accounts for its success (Harrington, 2016). The sales objective for all the GoPro hero version is to have the biggest market share. Their pocket friendly prices have ensured a continued increase in sales for the camera both in america and around the world.

                    GoPro Camera Version and Prices

Sale Objectives.

The primary objective is to position the GoPro Hero as a permanent mount anywhere camera for use with novice everyday users to professional adventures or athletes.  This objective can be measured best through camera sales.

Sale Goals.

The percentage of the total market sales of the GoPro line has declined significantly based on a31% drop analyst believing GoPro is unable to expand beyond its core market. GoPro has set a new plan to help reduce cost and increase sales by no longer selling entry-level cameras such as Hero + and Hero + LCD which cost the company over 50 million dollars. Concentrating on these specific lines with added user-friendly software will attract non-adventures seekers to test out the camera line (Hetrick, 2015).

Sale Plan.

The sales plan calls for streamlining the GoPro Hero series beyond that of their target audience. GoPro has also announced the production of a drone called Karma, which will reach beyond the limited GoPro audience. GoPro has a very good sales plan. In 2018, it stopped the possible production of its drone project known as Karma. The market plan is now fully concentrated on the camera sales. According to the CEO and Founder of GoPro Nick Woodman, said that they would no longer pursue the lines in camera drone manufacturing as a result fo changing market dynamics and a decrease in the share value of GoPro in major stock and security markets. With the focus fully concentrated on Camera production, the latest version is a price friendly and has massive features for camera activity.

Budgeting.

The sales budget as a percentage of the total budget has been drastically reduced as well as discontinued products.  Also note that stopping low selling items will assist sales objectives, by a strong emphasis on its higher selling cameras.

The primary objective for the plan is assembling a project that focuses on streamlining the GoPro Hero series for everyday users as well continues consumer loyalty among adventures and sports enthusiast.  This IMC plan was drawn together with data from numerous research sources such as annual reports and statistical data (Lee et al., 2017). 

An area where the organization has the advantage to learn more would be to conduct customer analysis. In this analysis, the organization can look into what the typical customer is for the Go Pro. Knowing this helps to better direct the new marketing to the groups that the organization wants to reach with the new product. In the analysis, it becomes clear that the majority of the customers continue to be the adventure seekers and the sports enthusiast that want to capture footage of the fantastic things they are doing in their field (Lin, 2016).

Marketing and Communication Strategies

They tend to be a younger crowd that looks for moments that they can share on social media or even on websites dedicated to their sports or crafts. They tend to want to be able to catch these moments for learning purposes as well to be able to be more successful at the competition or the activities that they participate in. The customer analysis also shows that these consumers seem to get more of a thrill because they can record their adventures. The other area that can be explored is the target market analysis.

The target market analysis will show which market needs to be explored and marketed too. This will give new insight into what groups can be reached and encouraged to purchase the Go Pro Hero 4 in the future and have that group become loyal (Liu, Bynum, & Hultman, 2015). There is a massive target for the family based consumer to buy these items so that they can capture special moments when they have children that play sports or have other activities that they want on film and can later share them. They can also have the opportunity to capture amazing moments from vacations such as swimming with dolphins, sliding down an inner tube with sharks all around them, or swimming with fish in the Bahamas. These are moments that families can capture on the Go Pro Hero 4 and they will be amazing works of art in themselves because of the value of the camera.

These families can capture moments when their children start walking or even capture a fantastic routine for the first dance at a wedding (Lumsden, 2014). Exploring the opportunity for the newest target market can open a whole new segment of potential consumers for the new Go Pro, and it can cause a new wave of fans for the product and the other items that are offered with it. Conducting this analysis is one way that the organization can take advantage of the opportunity to gain more knowledge.

The market segmentation then becomes the natural transition point that needs to be looked at as well. It is essential to understand the geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation of the market the organization is working with. Knowing what region or location the customers are in, age range and if they are male or female helps better guide the organization on where they need to grow.  Also understanding which consumers show loyalty to the brand and personality, lifestyles, and class plays a significant role as well (Luther, 2011).

Go Pro finds itself in the digital/video camera market. In this market, there is substantial competition from established brands. When we look at the tournament, none of the major players have developed a camera like that of Go Pro. At present Go Pro has an action camera market share which currently dominates 47% of the market, compared to its rivals Sony, ION, Polaroid, and various others.

For this reason, the GoPro cameras are the leading manufacturers of action cameras in their market. The most active market that GoPro dominates as far as geographic regions are concerned is that of the Americas and Europe (Norris, 2014). Since 2010 Go Pro has seen tremendous rises in revenues beginning in 2010 with 64 million and reaching 1.3 billion in sales in 2014, of which 2/3rds of it is just from the United States (Percy, 2018).

The Need for Market Research and Observations

Go Pro has many opportunities as any other major company that runs a business. In regards to technology Go Pro is always finding a way to develop or acquire the latest technology to enhance their cameras, and because of this, they had this to say in their 2014 annual report (Pisani & Dolder, 2018).  What is also an opportunity for Go Pro is the ability for the company to be up to par with the latest content management, editing, and sharing capabilities for its devices.

For this reason, GoPro has developed the GoPro app for it to be used with the mobile devices, as they explain in their 2014 annual report:

GoPro still has the chance to reach other markets that have not been penetrated. One of these markets is located internationally. As Go Pro explains in their 2014 annual report (Smith & Zook, 2012), their biggest market that has not been fully met in Asia, which would be a massive acquisition in sales if they can implement the right camera for the right price in some of the countries located in these regions due to the sensitivity of costs for consumers.

The product lifecycle of Go Pro is at its growth stage. Since the foundation of GoPro their brand and product have been expanding, and just going a few years back their sales volumes increased significantly. Also, they started to be publicly recognized, as their name is a household name in their biggest market. Finally, competitors have been trying to imitate what they have done, and because of this GoPro has made versions of their cameras to compete for the minor price action cameras in the market. All these results are critical traits in what is found in the growth stage cycle; this is only appropriate for Go Pro to be placed in such a category (Vannini & Stewart, 2016).

When assessing the marketing strategies for the GoPro Hero 4, you start with two steps: the procedure (what exactly are you trying to accomplish), and the execution of the strategy (how you are going to achieve the goal). The GoPro Hero 4 has two primary approaches in the marketing plan- strategic assessment and tactical assessment.

Strategically assessment is strategically to figure out the consumers purchasing habits and marketing to the specific needs of the GoPro’s target market. The strategic assessment is how to figure out all aspects of a product, along with demographics, habits, lifestyle, personal preference, the consumer wants and needs, product lifecycle, attitude and many other factors to generate an overall marketing campaign for the GoPro Hero 4. Some features to look for and market to the future target market are night-vision, waterproof, pixels, on-body accessories and the shutter speed (Wong, Radel, & Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2013).

Tactical assessment is genuinely figuring out who exactly is the target market and generating a tactical plan to market to those people. The target market is middle-class men and women that are extreme sports enthusiasts, music lovers and amateur videographers from the ages of 16 to 40. When the target market is formed, specific tactics need to be thought out and analyzed to answer the question (why should a consumer buy this product?) (GoPro, inc, 2012).

Changes and Reassessment of IMC Plan

When branding the GoPro Hero 4, specific steps need to be strategically thought out in the sense of the target market that we are branding a product for; these steps include the objective, goals, plan, budget, and tools. (GoPro, inc, 2014).

The objective of the GoPro Hero 4 brand was to create a brand that is simple, distinctive and speaks to the target market. The brand GoPro is precisely what the product is designed to be: a professional camera for consumers that are on the go. The blue and black in the brand design, along with the blue squares create a water symbol that can include a little foreshadowing to the customer that the camera is either used for the water or is waterproof.

The goal of the GoPro Hero 4 is to persuade customers to not only motivate people to do something extreme and capture the moment but to persuade customers to buy the GoPro Hero 4 camera. To convince customers, we need to show statistics on not only how our camera is different from similar cameras, but why we are better than the leading competitors. The Go Pro Hero 4 features include 2-hour battery slot, night-vision, waterproof, 60 frames per second, a one-touch button for Wi-Fi, and many accessories to change the lens and body-wear. Somebody wear that extreme sports enthusiasts like to purchase is the headgear. This gear is a shatterproof case that goes over a head/helmet, so motorcyclists, surfers, swimmers or BMX riders can capture what they are doing without using their hands (Lee et al., 2017). The adventures used in GoPro is a testament of increased innovation in the camera production industry. The target groups are the adventure seekers in BMX, motorcyclists, surfers, swimmers, skiers and any other adventure events.

The budget allocated for the Go Pro Hero 4 is $200 million. In 2012 the budget was a little over $36 million. As the product got more popular, the budget changed to $76 million in 2013 and $151 million in 2014 (Lee et al., 2017). In the next three years, with the economy rising, and the products and competition from Sony and new smartphones, a larger budget is necessary to not only create new technological software inside the camera that has not been done before but keeps up with the technology that is already in place. Many marketing tools come into research, market, and brand the Go Pro Hero 4. Advertising, promotion, public relations, personal selling, sales promotions and many other tools come together to create the brand. In 2014 through to the latest brand of 2018 Hero 7 GoPro, the company has set to improve the general feel of the camera. The biggest competitor the iPhone camera has one of the greatest resolution.  Hero 5, Hero 6 and Hero 7 definitely have the best ability to shoot at a higher resolution. They do not have limited Field of View (FOV) and has quality comparison (Lee et al., 2017).

Conclusion

To sum up, the research have clearly highlighted the marketing and communication plan of GoPro Inc. besides branding and sales, the report has focused on opportunity analysis and growth cycle analysis for GoPro company. Although recent competition and declining 2015 4th quarter sales have challenged the company, GoPro conducted a candid examination of its standing in the market. As a result, GoPro formulated a plan to gain market shares and brand awareness in the general retail consumer segment. The IMC plan divided business into various departments which were easy to carry out evaluations to make sure GoPro regains its giant market share.

References

Carucci, J. (2016). Gopro cameras for dummies. Place of publication not identified: John Wiley & Sons.

Clevenger, K. L., Rodgers, B. A., & East Carolina University. (2017). Developing a supplemental archaeological methodology: A photogrammetric study of shipwrecks using a low-cost ROV.

Florès, L. (2014). From 360° communication to integrated marketing communication. How to Measure Digital Marketing, 193-217. doi:10.1057/9781137340696_7

Garg, S. (2015). Stereoscopic Surgical Recording Using GoPro Cameras—Reply. JAMA Ophthalmology, 133(12), 1484. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2015.3879

GoPro, inc. (2012). Video cameras: GoPro Hero Camera. GoPro.

GoPro, Inc. (2014). GoPro Camera: Library equipment. San Mateo, CA: Author.

Graves, S. N., Shenaq, D. S., Langerman, A. J., & Song, D. H. (2015). Video Capture of Plastic Surgery Procedures Using the GoPro HERO 3+. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, 3(2), e312. doi:10.1097/gox.0000000000000242

Harrington, R. (2016). Learning to Shoot with the GoPro HERO 4 and Session 4. Carpinteria, Calif.: Lynda.com.

Hetrick, J. (2015). How to use the GoPro Hero 4 Black: The book for your camera- the Hero4 Black edition.

Lee, C. K., Kim, Y., Lee, N., Kim, B., Kim, D., & Yi, S. (2017). Feasibility Study of Utilization of Action Camera, GoPro Hero 4, Google Glass, and Panasonic HX-A100 in Spine Surgery. SPINE, 42(4), 275-280. doi:10.1097/brs.0000000000001719

Lin, L. K. (2016). Surgical video recording with a modified GoPro Hero 4 camera. Clinical Ophthalmology, 117. doi:10.2147/opth.s95666

Liu, Y., Bynum, D. K., & Hultman, C. S. (2015). Response to Video Capture of Plastic Surgery Procedures Using the GoPro HERO 3+. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery – Global Open, 3(12), e573. doi:10.1097/gox.0000000000000556

Lumsden, R. (2014). Communication and skills competence using GOPRO technology in a Canadian medical radiation science programme. MedEdPublish. doi:10.15694/mep.2014.003.0008

Luther, W. M. (2011). The marketing plan: How to prepare and implement it, 4th edition.

Norris, D. (2014). Build your own quadcopter: Power up your designs with the Parallax Elev-8. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Percy, L. (2018). Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications.

Pisani, N., & Dolder, P. V. (2018). GoPro, Inc.: Will Entry into the Drone Market Help its Comeback? doi:10.4135/9781526445902

Smith, P. R., & Zook, Z. (2012). Marketing communications: Integrating offline and online with social media. London: Kogan Page.

Vannini, P., & Stewart, L. M. (2016). The GoPro gaze. cultural geographies, 24(1), 149-155. doi:10.1177/1474474016647369

Wong, H. Y., Radel, K., & Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. (2013). Building a marketing plan: A complete guide. New York, N.Y.: Business Expert Press.

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order