Amazon Sparks Sales to Over $52 Billion

h3graham    July 10, 2018

If you were to ask someone if they know what Amazon was chances are you wouldn’t just get a ‘yes’ but they have probably purchased something off the site at some point.  Amazon is the largest e-commerce company in many parts of the world and they understand the effect of a solid social media strategy.  Not having physical stores and selling everything online via social media platforms, apps and their websites they really are experts at what they do. There are over 310 million active Amazon customer accounts worldwide with 90 million being Amazon Prime accounts spending an avgerage of $1300/year. The other 220 million are spending an average of $700/year. These sales have lead Amazon to an annual net ecommerce of goods totaling $52.8 billion in 2017, that is nearly 4x its closest rival Walmart.
So how does a company get this big and achieve such great results all online…social media and good marketing!

Amazon uses all social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and they have even created their own social network; Spark. They have over 29 million likes on Facebook, 2.84 million Twitter followers, 1.4 million Instagram followers and 69,000 followers on Pinterest.

Lakshmi Nidamarthi; DIrector of Biz Tech with Amazon states ” the internet is the single greatest innovation in history; it has changed how we live, communicate, socialize and acquire knowledge”. Without the internet Amazon would not exist. Having social media platforms to use to promote your product, answer customer inquiries, sell items, and advertise is huge for marketing. Everyone can have a social media account but Amazon truly believes in helping their customers and making sure they answer their questions. They have people dedicated to certain social media sites simple to answer complaints, questions, issues, order statuses etc By being so attentive with their customers they build loyalty and customers who want to come return.

Along with their other social media platforms Amazon created its own; Spark. Spark is a social network for shopping, it is designed to create social engagement that will lead to direct product purchases.  Customers can go on Spark and fill out a questionnaire based on their interests then Amazon will gear certain products to them, almost like personalized shopping.

 

Lessons for Others

Amazon is a large company of over 560,000 employees worldwide and they are constantly growing, finding the next latest and greatest and by being innovative with things like Spark it makes consumers want to deal with them.

Organization: Amazon.ca
Industry: Online Retail
Name of Organization Contact: Lakshmi Nidamarthi, Director of Biz Tech

Authored by: H3Graham

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.


References

1.) Amazon (2018) https://www.amazon.ca/

2.) Workwander (2018) http://workwander.com/blogs/6-companies-with-excellent-social-media-presence/

3.) eTail (2018) https://etaileast.wbresearch.com/amazons-engaged-buyers-drive-social-media-revenue

4.) Twitter (2018) https://twitter.com/amazon

5.) Facebook (2018) https://www.facebook.com/Amazon/

6.) Instagram (2018) https://www.instagram.com/amazon/

7.) Amazon Blog (2018) https://www.aboutamazon.com/

8.) Youtube (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7DZNgKjz0M

9.) Spark (2018) https://www.amazon.com/Spark/b?ie=UTF8&node=16907772011