Lesson From Amazon's Kindle App

 

You can lean a lot about marketing and selling a product by looking at Amazon's marketing strategy for Kindle.

Even when you have a great product, marketing and selling the product is always the biggest challenge. When you work in sales, the goal is to find reasons for customers to buy the products and services you are offering. One of the most successful companies to do this is Amazon. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos started the company with the idea that there had to be a better way to do things. It turned out that he was right.

His company is the largest online retailer on the planet, so much so that they have nearly three times the sales revenue of the number two company, Staples, Inc. They have become so successful by constantly innovating, always looking ahead and doing whatever they can to give customers what they want, not just what they are selling.

One of their gutsiest moves has been to offer a free Kindle app for iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Since they sell the Kindle e-reader device, on the surface, this choice seems counterproductive. People read e-books on their smartphones, on tablets and on other mobile devices. Allowing them to download the Kindle app and read their Kindle e-books on a competitors device seems a little like shooting themselves in the foot, but it was the best decision ever.

Amazon has a knack for understanding what customers want, and making it easy for them to get it. So, customers want to read their e-books on whatever device they choose, and pick up where they left off, no matter which device they are using. The Kindle app allows them to do just that. When a customer buys a Kindle book from Amazon, it is stored in the Amazon Cloud. From the cloud, a reader can access their book using either their own Kindle device, or an app on their iPad, iPhone or Android device. What's more, all of the devices can sync with the Cloud and keep up with what page you were on, no matter which way you were accessing the book.

Making the choice to put their technology on every conceivable device, and even giving customers a reason to buy an iPad rather than a Kindle was bold and risky. But, Amazon seems to know that for their customers, it's the content that is important, not the device they use to access it.

By making it easy for customers to use the e-books they buy from Amazon, they build brand loyalty and sell more e-books than anyone else. In fact, CNN Money reports that Amazon is currently selling more e-books than actual physical books.

Amazon was smart enough to realize that although they would like for everyone to own a Kindle device and use it to access books and magazines purchased through the Amazon store, keeping their products tied to just one device would be the easiest way to eventually become irrelevant. Instead, by understanding who their customers are and what they need, they found a way to be there no matter what device people chose to use with no hard feelings. By making it easy for customers to buy, Amazon is raking in the rewards.

Do you have a mobile device that has the free Kindle app? Do you purchase your e-books from Amazon? Let me know in the comments.

 

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for SalesHeadsBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.