What Your Business Can Learn From the Smart Marketers at Zappos

Possibly the most lucrative industry to arise during the 21st century, online shopping has become a household term that nearly all Internet users partake in on a regular basis.

From outerwear to innerwear, pajamas and jewelry, a large percentage of clothing sales are now digitally processed through online stores. It is without a doubt that Zappos, the online retailer specializing in footwear, has secured a spot in the market as the number-one online shoe store. Much of Zappos’ success ($820 million valuation) can be attributed to terrific marketing strategies, led by CEO Tony Hsieh’s radical management style.

Smart Marketing – The Importance of SEO and PPC

Zappos is considered a leading company in the area of “Retail Apparel and Paid Search” for the past two years. Out of the top twenty online retailers, Zappos accounts for over ten percent of all paid search impressions. In addition, Zappos performs extremely well in a variety of key metrics, including clicks, ad coverage, and click-through rate. The correlation between the efforts of Zappos in online marketing and its overall success as a company is no coincidence.

As any digital marketing professional will tell you, a strong digital marketing strategy is crucial to selling any product. So, what is digital marketing? It’s basically informing consumers the details of goods (products or services) through methods such as SEO, SEM and email marketing.

There’s also digital offline marketing, which is marketing using electronic devices that are not online. A great example of this are the commercials you see on TV and hear on the radio. Both digital online marketing and digital offline marketing can help your business grow.

Putting Purpose alongside Profit

When Forbes journalist Dan Pontefract visited Zappos’ headquarters in Las Vegas, he was immediately greeted by hordes of smiling workers – and not just the receptionists. He describes the office space: “their collaborative mindset is infectious, one that encourages everyone to scale the culture. Positivity is ubiquitous.”

This atmosphere can be credited to CEO Tony Hseih’s personality and work ethic. The company culture radiates from the products all the way to the customers. As soon as successful search engine optimization is leveraged to bring traffic to the store, customers feel confident in the item that they are purchasing, and the culture they are buying into.

Zappos: An Extraordinary Business Model

There is a litany of seemingly simple things that, as a baseline, must exist for an online retail store to be successful. This includes a friendly web-design, thought-out ads, and a strong customer support base. However, Zappos did not achieve its market position by performing the base minimum. In the digital age, there may be thousands of people with ideas just as good as yours, or even better. Its what sets companies like Zappos apart that accounts for their success.

The effects of Tony Hsieh’s work ethic undoubtedly trickle down to his each and every worker at the company, an ethic that in turn shines through their product.

Zappos offers more than just a superb product; it boasts an incredibly positive work environment and the ultimate client experience. These qualities make for an extremely attractive culture that, for a consumer, is easy to buy into. When these qualities are combined with superb marketing through SEO and paid search tools, the possibilities for success are infinite. Zappos is sure to remain a frontrunner in the online retail space.