Promotion: how does Amazon promote its products?
Amazon was started in 1994 as an online bookstore, within the first 2 months it was selling books in 45 countries. The founder Jeff Bezos had great passion and wanted it to be the largest bookstore in the world. It started by offering 1 million different book titles, beating all competitors at the time.
“Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds” (Jeff Bezos, Amazon, 2007)
Over the years Amazon has branched out into everything from grocery shopping to technology to keep up with the ever-changing advances, similar to its branding, everything from a to z shown by the arrow on its logo. Its products include books, music, toys, kitchen products, art, tools, DVDs and electronics. Amazon's vision is to monopolise the market and have a key share. But how does Amazon promote its products? Here is a contents list of what is covered in my blog.
The Marketing Mix, the 7 P's
What is Amazon's marketing strategy?
Customer focused
Build a community
Brand familiarity
The Marketing Mix, the 7 P's
Companies use the marketing mix, which consists of 7 Ps: product, price, people, promotion, process, place and physical evidence. Here are examples of Amazon's marketing mix.
Product - Amazon's products are constantly developing over time, keeping up to date with new technologies. Amazon is inventing its own products such as Alexa, a ground-breaking voice-activated personal assistant. It also allows other sellers to sell their products through Marketplace. (Version Museum, 2019)
Price - Amazon uses consistently low prices through maximising customers and increasing market share. Prices for products are on average cheaper than other competitors, and it fluctuates them regularly to maximise the profits. Amazon offers benefits to loyal customers through Amazon Prime, building brand loyalty. (Tech wiz time, n.d.)
People - Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon. He is a man with a vision and the drive to follow it through. He believes in collecting data on his customers and developing products, shopping experiences to suit those people and therefore developing a very successful people-focused business. (Wikipedia, 2020)
Promotion - Amazon uses outbound marketing channels. This video shows a Christmas TV advert for Amazon using popular music. It reinforces Amazon's logo and branding as someone you can love and trust. Amazon is there for its customers and bringing a smile to their face, just like its logo and promoting the message that Amazon is all about its customers. (YouTube, 2019)
Process - Amazon is innovative and keeps up to date with competitors. Its latest development of the Amazon Go stores reinforces its brand and uses the latest technology. Download the app, do your shopping and simply walk out. The easiest shopping experience all tracked by the app and purchases accounted for, no tills or queuing. (Google play, 2020)
Place - Amazon started out as an online store selling books. Its website is the main place for selling its products, though the company is constantly striving to develop and branching out into new ventures. Amazon has progressed to have physical stores to sell its products.(Amazon, 2020)
Physical evidence - Amazon advertises itself as “delivering smiles to customer’s doorsteps”, and the image is on every package, physical evidence and reinforcing the brand. Its logo also reinforces that Amazon sells everything from a to z. (Logo my way, 2017)
What is Amazon's marketing strategy?
I have chosen to focus on Amazon's promotion of its products. Through research, I feel that the key to Amazon's success in marketing is:
Customer focused
Build a community
Brand familiarity
Customer focused
Amazon believes in “driving customer engagement at every level” (eTail, 2020). When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he began by putting the customer first. He wanted the best shopping experience, efficient service ensuring fast delivery, quality product, up to date with technology, at a good price, and then customers will return.
“If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends”, said Jeff Bezos (Argwal, 2016).
Amazon tracked its customers' shopping habits and made their shopping experience personalised with individual website pages and targeted emails recommending products. This made the customer feel at home and special to the company. On social media, Amazon has a reputation for always being there for the customer, responding to comments personally using names and quickly. Amazon engages with its customers using customer reviews, Q and As section and ‘was this review useful?’ on its website. This allows Amazon to build trust in its products through the customers and develop loyalty. Amazon is constantly introducing new features and offers to engage with its customers and keep ahead of competitors.
Build a community
Amazon developed Amazon Prime, which was its most successful venture as it rewarded loyal customers with extra benefits and gave an element of prestige. It has developed a community; it’s a community that Amazon has now been nurturing for 24 years (eTail, 2020). Amazon Prime offers lots of benefits for the customer: they get free and fast shipping for millions of products, cloud storage, various free streaming movies and television shows, streaming music, and a Kindle owners lending library (Miller, n.d.). So Amazon is meeting its loyal customers’ needs.
Brand familiarity
Amazon found that the more customers engaged with the brand, the more loyalty and recommendations it got. So it advertised Amazon’s brand on its website, packaging, billboards, adverts on TV, social media, blogs, presentation events and videos. This builds familiarity and trust in the brand. “Amazon’s key to success is to promote itself and its products across a plethora of social channels and facilitate conversation, engagement, and discovery among its millions of followers” (eTail, 2020). Amazon invests research in up-to-date technology to keep up with competitors and offer the best products for its customers. In March 2020, Amazon launched a new experience, a TV show and shopping experience in fashion, called Style Code Live. Each segment has a direct link to buy the fashion products. It engages the audience and encourages sales. Amazon is always striving to offer the customer more.
“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” (Miller, n.d.)
So what I will take away from my research into Amazon is to have my customers' needs at the front of mind when advertising on social media and to develop my proofreading product to support customers. I will aim to build a community of regular clients and engage with them to build strong relationships. I will aim to post on social media regularly, update my website and use email marketing to customers to build familiarity with my brand.
I am a freelance proofreader with a love of learning, feel free to contact me if you need support with your writing. Thank you for reading 'Promotion: how does Amazon promote its products?' Want to find more out about what I believe in?
Check out my blog "Proofreading: what I believe in" on my website www.alisonproofreader.com, or say hello on Twitter at @alisonproofread, or Instagram at @alisonproofreader, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
References
Amazon (2007) ‘The Evolution of Amazon’ in Amazon [online]. Available at: https://sites.google.com/a/ewg.k12.ri.us/amazon-wiki/the-evolution-of-amazon [accessed 27 May 2020]
Amazon (2020) ‘Find your store’ in Amazon [online]. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/find-your-store/b/?node=17608448011 [accessed 28 May 2020]
Argwal, P. (2016) ‘Amazon business model’ in LinkedIn [online]. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/pragatiagarwal6/amazon-business-model-65773845 [accessed 29 May 2020]
Duhigg, C. (2019) ‘Is Amazon Unstoppable?’ in The New Yorker [online]. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/21/is-amazon-unstoppable [accessed 28 May 2020]
eTail (2020) ‘Amazon’s Social Media Marketing Strategy to Inspire Buyers’ in eTail [online]. Available at: https://etaileast.wbresearch.com/blog/amazons-engaged-buyers-drive-social-media-revenue [accessed 28 May 2020]
Google Play (2020) ‘Amazon Go’ in Google Play [online]. Available at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.ihm.richard&hl=en_GB [accessed 28 May 2020]
Logo my way (2017) ‘The History of Amazon and their Logo Design’ in Logo my way [online]. Available at: http://blog.logomyway.com/history-amazon-logo-design/ [accessed 27 May 2020]
Miller, G. (n.d.) ‘Four keys to Amazon’s Marketing success (and how to improve them)’ in Annex Cloud [online]. Available at: https://www.annexcloud.com/blog/four-keys-to-amazons-marketing-success/ [accessed 29 May 2020]
Tech wiz time (n.d.) ‘Amazon Prime free 30-day trial banner’ in Tech wiz time [online]. Available at: https://techwiztime.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/amazon-prime-free-30-day-trial-banner-techwiztime.jpg [accessed 28 May 2020]
Version Museum (2019) ‘Amazon.com Design History’ in Version Museum [online]. Available at: https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/amazon-website [accessed 28 May 2020]
Wikipedia (2020) ‘Jeff Bezos’ in Wikipedia [online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos [accessed 28 May 20]
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