Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down four traits that make Amazon dominant: obsessing over customer feedback, reinvesting profits into long-term experiments, optimizing for lifetime value instead of quick wins, and building a culture that supports it all. They use concrete examples like Prime, AWS, and Amazon's review system.
Today we're going to talk about 3 marketing traits to emulate from businesses like Amazon.
So Amazon does a lot of things that have helped them grow. The first trait that you need to emulate is obsess about your customers. I always say the 3 things that made Jeff Bezos successful is number 1, he obsesses about his customers. Number 2, he obsesses about his customers. And number 3, he obsesses about his customers. And that's really helped Amazon grow because He'll do what's best for them, even if it hurts him in the long run. Great example of this is adding reviews. When he first started adding reviews to Amazon, people thought he was crazy, but he's like, wait, I don't want people to buy products if they're no good. And everyone's like, well, you'll make less sales. But you know what happened? It built more trust. People started coming back to Amazon, the good products flourished, and his revenue increased. And that's an example of obsessing about your customers. And it's a great business and marketing strategy And a lot of people just take that for granted.
Number 2, and maybe we can do 4 here. I just changed the title to 4. So number 2, back in the day, everyone was like, Amazon, they don't know what they're doing. They're not profitable, blah, blah, blah. And you didn't realize that Jeff Bezos was actually— most people didn't realize that Jeff Bezos was aiming for the long-term. Like I didn't know at the time, I was just like, okay, you know, I'm a kid, right? What do I know? So Jeff Bezos is known for being very aggressive with experimentation and reinvesting the profits, right? So, When they tried and failed on the phone, like that was an experiment. They tried on AWS, look, that worked out and they broke it out and it's a profit machine now, right? So you can take that from a business standpoint, also apply it to marketing, being aggressive, experimenting, and in the early days, not trying to be too profitable and just trying to learn as much as you can, right? I'm not saying, you know, profit's not important. It is. I think it's understanding, you know, what your profit really is and then You know, going from there, right? So most people wouldn't do that because I think a lot of marketers are very short-term focused where it's like, let's take the money, let's realize the gains. But the longer you defer, the longer you're able to build something a lot bigger if that's what you want to do.
So yeah. Number 3, optimize for LTV, lifetime value. Amazon loses a lot of money in the short run and in things that people don't realize. With their Prime, it's not just about the shipping. It's not just about the movies and the TV shows. They spend so much on content, not because they're expecting to make a killing on content. They spend so much on content so that way you're an Amazon customer and then hopefully you buy shoes from them. Literally, they're hoping you buy shoes from them. They don't care if you spend an arm and a leg on content. That's an example of just getting you into their ecosystem and optimizing for lifetime value instead of just short-term revenue.
Fourth, last but not least, this is more applicable to business. But look, if you want to build the ultimate marketing team, at the end of the day, you have to have the best culture. And the best CEOs in the world all obsess over culture. And Jeff Bezos isn't the CEO anymore, he's the chairman now, but he got it right. I mean, he focused on people and he did a really good job with that. And sure, you know, people might poo-poo like, oh, he's a billionaire, he doesn't treat people right. But at the end of the day, if you look at the ratings overall for Amazon as a company, and you look at how the company is run from the top down, it is very much a machine, right? And I think he's built a great culture in not only focusing on the customers, but also focusing on his people as well. So that is it for today. Go to marketingschool.io/live, that's L-I-V-E, to learn about our virtual and our live events. We'd love to see you there, and we'll catch you later.
Bye.
