Strategic Marketing: Top-Down vs Outside-In Approach and Amazon's Marketing Strategies

Running Head: STRATEGIC MARKETING 0
STRATEGIC MARKETING
(student name)
11-24-2018

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Top-down marketing approach........................................................................................................4
Pros of the top-down approach of marketing..............................................................................4
Cons of the top-down approach to marketing..............................................................................5
Outside- In marketing approach......................................................................................................5
Pros of the outside- in approach of marketing.............................................................................6
Cons of the outside- in approach to marketing............................................................................7
Amazon marketing strategies..........................................................................................................8
1. Amazon SEO.....................................................................................................................8
2. Advertising........................................................................................................................9
3. External marketing..........................................................................................................14
4. Technological advancement............................................................................................16
Why Outside In approach of marketing strategy is better than Top Down approach of marketing
strategy...........................................................................................................................................17
Customer satisfaction through outside in strategy.........................................................................18
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................21
References......................................................................................................................................23

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Introduction
Marketing strategies are the forward-looking approach, to a long-term planning with the main
motive of gaining competitive advantage, along with strategic planning, where the company’s
strategic situation is analyzed. According to that, it is formulated, evaluated, and selected
market-oriented position in the competition, which will contribute the marketing objectives and
goals of the company. For studying this topic, focused over a statement, that is “The best
marketing strategies aren’t top down, they’re outside in, starting with the customers’ needs and
wants,” amazon.com, Inc. will be considered.
Amazon.com, Inc. is an American based cloud computing and electronic commerce company,
founded on 5 July 1994, by Jeff Bezos, and is based in Washington. It is one of the largest
worldwide internet retailers, according to market capitalization, and revenue. The company
initiated by offering books online and now it is sell streaming videos, MP3, software, electronics,
furniture, video games, apparel, toys, food, jewelry, and audiobook. The latest products added to
the brand list are Kindle e-readers, fire TV, fire tablets, and echo devices (Amazon, 2018).
The company’s mission is always center around the online customer of the company, who are
kept on the priority every time. The focus is on the customer of the company, which is the reason
for the successful internet retailer worldwide. Moreover, the vision of the company is to become
globes most customer-centric brand and create a place where individuals can visit and search for
their required product online (Forbes, 2018).
One of the advantages observed of the company over other companies is its delivery time. For
example, Alibaba group, one of the major competitor of this brand, has the largest sales online in

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this industry. Nevertheless, Amazon competitive advantage is that it delivers the products with
guaranteed time like one-day delivery, or two-day delivery.
To justify the statement, “The best marketing strategies aren’t top down; they’re outside in,
starting with the customers’ needs and wants,” Amazon marketing strategies will be analyzed.
The concept, pros, and cons of both the marketing strategies approach, that is top- down, and
outside –in will be discussed in detail. The comparison between both the approaches will be
helpful in justifying the statement.

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Top-down marketing approach
The top-down marketing approach is one of the traditional methods of marketing, where a new
idea is been generated and is implemented to target customers in the market. This is the oldest
and well-known strategy in the business world and is responsible for keep uniformity in the
company. According to this strategy, the salesperson of the company tries to appeal to the
executives and key decision makers from a potential customer. Generally, large or encompassing
goods are included that will be implemented in the whole organization (Bhave & Mishra, 2014).
This system is important for ensuring large deals more efficiently. In simple words, the need of
the potential customers is identified and is offered to those customers. For example, the
enterprise software system including Oracle and SAP are used in global companies, where the
software company provides training and resources to the customers so that the purchased
products worked for them (Mura & Mariani, 2016).
Pros of the top-down approach of marketing
 Large contracts- one of the advantages of this approach is that the contracts for which the
teams are working are generally large in nature, and are responsible for large revenues
 Lock out competitors- the stress of competitors are not once the deal has been done since
the nature of the deal is not timely, that is not reselling the goods each year (beverland ,
2016)
 Large product roll out- this is one of the benefits from the large sales, this strategy
facilitate huge product rollouts, where the advantage is that the company will sell a
physical product that is to be maintained