Article Contributed by Guy Kingston

The Amazon website is a master class in the dark arts of selling.

However, be warned, like the other Amazon, it is a dangerous place to be: those who go there thinking they are in control, and that they are there to observe and possibly exploit it, end up being trapped by it.

What follows is the confession of an Amazon-addict – but one sufficiently skilled in the dark arts himself to know what is being done to him, and to admire it, even as it is being done.
To begin with, Amazon provides a neat illustration of the difference between Marketing and Selling.

Marketing is everything that Amazon does to get you to visit their website – advertising, banners on other websites, links, direct e-mailing, and so on.

Selling is everything that Amazon does to get you to part with your money once you are there.
Amazon owes much of its success to its ability to lead a customer, who came with only a specific product in mind, on to other purchases. This is, of course, the equivalent of a shop display that tempts someone who came out with a definite shopping list to consider buying items he never imagined.

Having no shop window beyond a home page, Amazon makes the most of it by using affinity marketing.

In the case of a returning customer, this means Amazon try to customise his home page by plastering it with products that have been bought by other customers who have also bought things he has bought in the past.

Where nothing about a customer is known, Amazon try the scatter shot approach and fill the home page with the most popular items in general.

However, on the pages relating to specific products, Amazon zero in on the individual customer again, by references to other items in the form of “those who looked at/bought this item also looked at/bought X, Y, and Z” – with an easy one-click link to each.

Of course, one imagines that in about 99% of cases those links are ignored – but the other 1% is where Amazon makes its money.

This manipulation could be scary, but Amazon counters that by encouraging the customer to feel he is in control. The customer is invited to treat Amazon as a personal space, like a “social networking” site.

He can post a profile, rate and review products on-line, make lists, and join discussion groups. He is even made to feel part of a “community”.

The whole point is to give him the impression of a safe environment – so that he keeps coming back.

However, while it is a necessary first step for the customer to keep coming back to the website, it is not enough: the whole point is not for him to keep looking but to actually buy.

Here is the real genius of the Amazon system: they make it very, very easy to buy.
If buying each item involved filling out a form on-line, Amazon would never have survived. Amazon owes its survival and its success to the unsung Einstein of Selling who invented “One-Click ordering”.

It is so easy that it becomes addictive. It makes no difference to the sale of an item a customer really came to buy in the first place – he would have bought that anyway – but its effect is devastating when combined with affinity marketing: the customer who came to buy X decides he might was well buy Y and Z while he is there – because it takes only two more clicks of a mouse.

If any further encouragement were needed to get the customer to make those extra clicks, Amazon is the master of “artificial scarcity”: stating that only a limited number of items are left in stock can panic a customer into an immediate one-click decision to buy, rather than risk postponing until none are left.

Finally, if all this sounds frighteningly cynical, it must be said in Amazon’s favour that its after-sales service is usually – emphasis on “usually” – very good. However, this too is good salesmanship: Amazon’s strategy is not to sell to a customer once but to sell to him again and again until he becomes an income-producing asset over the years. Amazon is one of the minority of businesses who understand the great truth that keeping a customer is as important as attracting him in the first place, and that the art of selling is not selling once but selling for life.

About the Author:
Guy Kingston produces and presents the Mind Your Own Business podcast, offering free business advice to entrepreneurs and business owners. As well as audio podcasts there are more articles like this, compelling videos and a must-read blog. All at www.myobpod.com or you can network and join in discussions on the MYOB Facebook group.

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