Amazon: Find Anything Here

Let me ask you a question. When I say Amazon what comes to your mind? The e-commerce website which is 20 years old or the largest river in South America which has been around for centuries? I guess it is pretty much a rhetorical question!

The new semester is beginning and I’ve got my list of textbooks. Where do you think I will buy them? Amazon of course. I need some new snow boots, and it’s already snowing outside. Where do I look for some trendy boots which will be sent home to me in two days? Amazon Prime it is. My step stool just broke and I needed one so I could organize my kitchen shelves. Without a second thought I open my Amazon app and choose from a variety of stools to order from. And while I am there, I have a recommendation for the shampoo I always purchase from Amazon. And what the amazing part of this is that my previous bottle was almost over and I would have to purchase one soon. So CLICK and it was done!

Famous for being the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon was conceived as Jeff Bezos (Founder, Chairman & CEO of Amazon.com) drove from New York to Seattle, writing the business plan on the way. Although started in Bezos’ garage, Amazon has grown leaps and bounds since July 1994, and today Jeff Bezos evaluates at almost 30 billion dollars. It has become a household name and has customers ordering not only books, but also gadgets, appliances, cosmetics and clothes!

Amazon has achieved its global position due to the visionary thinking of Bezos, who gauged the advent of the internet revolution. He rightly recognized and satisfied the unmet need of customers to purchase products in all categories at one place , in one click, and from any place they wanted ( with internet reception of course!). And the rest as they say is history.

Amazon has adapted to all forms of digital, is accessible on desktops, smartphones, tablets, and has its own very user friendly app. It is an educational institute for Digital Marketers. It began with re targeting, grew into behavioral targeting, has aced Adwords ans Search with the simple example that if you type in “Buy The New Rules of Marketing and PR” in your Google search, the first link that shows is Amazon.com! It has a customized website, making a personal connection with each user, a record of purchase history, payment information and shipping addresses. Amazon has mastered the art at engaging the customer at the point of purchase. It truly has exemplified what every brand should and that is: Put the customer first.

Every experience at Amazon is so fulfilling, you get what you want (fast), you can track it, you have all the records, and to top it all you have excellent customer service if anything goes wrong. The newest feature which I personally like is the ‘Add to Amazon wish list in your toolbar, making it easy for me to be on browsing any website  yet purchasing at the best rate from Amazon.

Although Amazon is doing great stuff with digital, social media is a field they can explore to their advantage. They do post ideas, and customer stories on Instagram, and have a Twitter account, and a Facebook page, but it isn’t as engaging as the website itself. In this era of content marketing and two-way customer interaction, Amazon can up their game a notch and use these strategies to engage their customers on a different level. Being a huge Amazon fan myself, it couldn’t excite me more to maybe order my favorite pair of shoes by sending a tweet to Amazon! Well that’s just something to think about. As Jeff Bezos has once said, “We humans co-evolve with our tools. We change our tools, then our tools change us.”