Non-traditional marketing
by Andrew Smith on 11/10/07 at 8:18 pm
1 comment
Here is a paragraph from Zappos.com’s "Shipping Notification E-mail":
While most companies spend a lot of money on marketing in order to grow their business, our philosophy at Zappos.com is a little different. Instead of spending a lot of money on marketing, we would rather work on improving the customer experience (running our warehouse around the clock, super-fast free shipping, free return shipping, 24/7 customer support, etc.), and rely on repeat customers and word of mouth to grow our business instead.
It is a bold "marketing" strategy to put in place. During the first month when you only have a handful of customers to serve, it takes a lot of faith to believe that providing an excellent experience for them is going to create a viable business. How much word-of-mouth can 8 customers create? Our instinct is to rush out and spread the word ourselves, which burns through a bucket of cash and usually ends in failure.
Does your marketing strategy require a lot of faith? Have you buckled in for the long-haul?
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Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
Business Marketing » Blog Archive » Non-traditional marketing
Oct 15th, 2007
[...] Andrew wrote an interesting post today on Non-traditional marketingHere’s a quick excerptand rely on repeat customers and word of mouth to grow our business instead. It is a bold “marketing” strategy to put in place. During the first month when you only have a handful of customers to serve, it takes a lot of faith to … [...]