Amazon: Social Media and Mobile App Initiative Report

Amazon.com, Inc. Social Media and Mobile App Initiative Report
Mario Arthur-Bentil
Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc.1200 12th Ave. South, Ste. 1200 Seattle, WA 98144-2734
Executive Summary
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer. Our Amazon Webstore allows businesses to create custom e-commerce websites using Amazon technology. We have been very supportive of small businesses throughout this time, but now it is time to take our interaction with small businesses to the next level. Social media usage is on the rise, as well as mobile device usage. Now is an opportune time to push forward with a Social Media Initiative that will enable us to reach out to our current clients and new clients. This will consist of a mobile application, mobile advertisements and higher social media interaction (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Small businesses under our umbrella will be able to have a greater reach to their customer base. There have been arguments both for and against the use of social media and mobile advertisements. This report aims to look at both sides and come to the conclusion that both are beneficial to Amazon.
Keywords: Social media, small business, new customers
Amazon.com, Inc. Social Media and Mobile App Initiative Report
Research Plan
Six stages for initiative:

1. Create a Social Media Outreach Team.
a. Assemble a team consisting of external social media marketing specialists and members from our Communications and Marketing divisions.
b. This team will work together until the date of the project implementation.

2. Survey Conduction of Current Social Media Usage
a. Conduct a survey with our current stakeholders and potential clients and customers to gauge their social media usage, customer outreach and ad deployment.
b. Assess successes and challenges stakeholders face in mobile device contact with their customer base.
c. Produce a chart book highlighting the results from the survey.

3. Mobile App and Ad Creation
a. Work with the IT and Marketing teams to create mobile ads and apps that fulfill outreach and marketing means.

4. Pilot Introduction
a. Launch the mobile products in a three month trial run.
b. Analyze the use and the feedback from mobile viewers.
c. Use results to reassess the pilot launch for a permanent introduction (to be discussed at later date).

Resources and Budget
To make this project a success, I will need 100 hours of marketing labor, 300 hours of IT labor, 75 hours of communication labor, and 50 hours of outreach labor. I will also need $3000 to hire an external team to help with the social media campaign.

Research: Social Media

Social Media has shaped an unparalleled level of clearness between businesses and consumers. Businesses are always seeking ways to advance their product contributions and finding key motivation points for their clients. Similarly, consumers are constantly providing valuable opinions and seeking the best deals for products and services. As a result, it has become common for businesses to consider social media a primary method of reaching their target demographics.

“Apps” have become a protuberant part of the social media space. Social media platform such as Facebook have developed App Marketplaces for third party developers to promote and sell their compatible apps. By permitting the incorporation of apps, social network platforms can expand their services and offer more opportunities to involve users. Moreover, since monetization is a growing concern for all social media platforms, the application of app marketplaces is one of several favorable means of revenue generation for both enterprise and consumer social media services.

This report looks at the Social Media market according to two segments:

Enterprise Social Media stages are intended to create internal and/or external networks for organizations. While most Enterprise Social Media vendors offer both network capabilities, most platforms tend to focus either on internal collaboration or on external collaboration. In either case, enterprise social media services are intended to create and support user collaboration through private or public groups.
Consumer Social Media amenities are geared to providing consumers with a cooperative space to link and form groups relating to broad or specialized interests. Most consumer social media services utilize features such as user profiles, blogs, and video sharing. Key consumer social media services include: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many others.
With the worldwide popularity of Facebook, the consumer social media space has grown at a extraordinary rate within recent years. While initially popular in the US, social media has expanded globally as well. Many countries in Asia and Europe have developed their own social media services and are making efforts to infiltrate the US marketplace. Similarly, US social media services are aggressively targeting foreign markets in order to create a global social media presence.

Figure 1, shows the daily usage rates forecast of social media use from 2012 to 2016.

Figure 1

Research: Mobile Advertisements
Global mobile advertising spending is forecast to reach $18.0 billion in 2014, up from the estimated $13.1 billion in 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. The market is expected to grow to $41.9 billion by 2017. Gartner said that display formats will make up most of the revenue, but video will show the highest growth.
"Over the next few years, growth in mobile advertising spending will slow due to ad space inventory supply growing faster than demand, as the number of mobile websites and applications increases faster than brands request ad space on mobile device screens," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. "However, from 2015 to 2017, growth will be fueled by improved market conditions, such as provider consolidation, measurement standardization and new targeting technologies, along with a sustained interest in the mobile medium from advertisers."
With regard to the different ad formats used in the mobile sector, mobile display ad formats are collectively the single biggest category of ads, and will remain so throughout the forecast period, although this category will shift to mobile Web display after several years of higher growth in in-app display. Uptake of the audio/video format by the end of the forecast period is higher because the tablet form factor will drive video, and the tablet market continues to grow.

Social Media: The Solution
Social-media marketing is an excellent way for businesses to broaden their exposure to the public at a much lower cost than traditional marketing. Establishing a presence on widely used platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can help target new customers and make your brand more visible. Additionally, the two-way communication facilitated by social media can improve customer service and enables businesses to gain new information about their customers and tailor communications based on that knowledge. When using social media for marketing products, social media could be easily utilized to create cost effective strategies and campaigns that can create viral results.
Social media is able to bring people together, especially when promoting global products or cause-related campaigns and ideas since it allows people from the different geographical location to meet at a single point and express their views. Social media marketing could always be a fun and creative method of doing business.

Social Media: The Problem
The wrong online brand strategy could put us at a viral social disadvantage and may even damage our reputation, i.e, when we make a mistake offline, a few will know but when we make a mistake in front of hundreds or thousands of you online audience, most of them will know. Using social media for marketing and advertising could be more time consuming than companies expect. In order to get social media’s full effect, we need to understand how it works, when and how to use it and which channels to focus on depending on our end goal of using social media. Social media can have a negative influence on worker productivity. Employees may waste valuable time using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. They could also use social media to attack the reputation of Amazon. When social media is used excessively or in the wrong way, it could have serious detrimental outcomes on both mental and even physical health of individuals.
Mobile Advertisement Is The New Premier Platform
Most mobile phone users are within an arm’s reach of their devices over 90 percent of waking hours, including times when other media are not available. With mobile phone penetration near 90 percent for U.S. adults, conversations are possible all the time with everyone. The concept of “mobile” literally means “not in one place.” Mobile devices become part of a person, not “part of one of their locations.” This is a powerful concept, for two opposing reasons: Customers can almost always be reached Customers can almost always be interrupted
Since mobile marketing can be an interruptive channel, increased marketing efforts in this channel may be disconcerting to many consumers who vividly remember the days of unregulated outbound telemarketing nationwide. Thus, it is very important to let mobile consumers determine how and when to hold conversations. In comparison to other personalized messaging channels, having a unique ID – phone number – will dramatically improve CRM integrity for marketers who have historically relied on inexact transaction linking techniques such as:
• Using cookies which are periodically deleted by 20 percent to 50 percent of all PC users
• Using flash cookies (LSS) which are sometimes deleted and often considered a privacy invasion
• Using IP addresses which are often dynamically allocated by internal routers or Internet service providers
• Using postal addresses which require standardization, change-of-address management and special matching logic to achieve even 98 percent matching accuracy rates
Mobile phone numbers are the core delivery addresses used by wireless carriers for all information transmission thru them. By having this ID available during marketing conversations, the ability to reference prior interaction history can improve personalization and meet customers’ conversation expectations. It is important to acknowledge that the growing use of WiFi with mobile devices will decrease the data linkage value of mobile phone numbers. In spite of this, the overall customer data integrity and quality of customer relationships will improve due to having phone numbers in many mobile interactions.
Considerations
A business can easily set up a presence on multiple social media channels; however, none of these platforms will help them gain customers without an investment of time and effort. An unattended Facebook page or Twitter feed can leave a negative impression on potential customers and cause your business to lose fans and followers. Businesses should consider their resources before developing a social media marketing strategy to ensure that they can provide the attention and frequent communication needed to embrace social media effectively.
Strictly speaking, social media is not a new phenomenon; people have been providing recommendations and opinions to friends and contacts for millennia via channels through which a two-way conversation can take place. In modern history, such channels have included face-to-face discussions, letters, phone and, more recently, e-mail. So what is new today?

We see a number of characteristics that distinguish today’s “digital social media” interactions from other types of social conversations. It enables one-to-many or many-to-many conversations and features content created and posted by consumers of that content. Social media is also very easy to use, highly accessible and highly scalable, and it operates in real time. Finally, and perhaps most important for companies seeking to protect and enhance their reputations, social media is entirely public and transparent.

References
Harris, H. (2012). Social Media On The Go. PC World, Pages 64-65.
Whitfield, L. & Lopez T. (2011). How Effective are Mobile Ads at Driving Traffic? Wired, Pages 26-31
Grunewald A. (2012). Mobile Advertising Begins to Take Off. Wall Street Journal
Stephen A. (2014). Making Mobile Ads That Work. Harvard Business Review

Mobile Advertisement Survey. (2013). Gartner Inc.
Mobile Banking Survey. (2013). Board of Governors.
Yamahon, T. Social Media Market, 2012-2016. (2012). Enterprise Journal. Pages 30-42.

References: Harris, H. (2012). Social Media On The Go. PC World, Pages 64-65. Whitfield, L. & Lopez T. (2011). How Effective are Mobile Ads at Driving Traffic? Wired, Pages 26-31 Grunewald A. (2012). Mobile Advertising Begins to Take Off. Wall Street Journal Stephen A. (2014). Making Mobile Ads That Work. Harvard Business Review Mobile Advertisement Survey. (2013). Gartner Inc. Mobile Banking Survey. (2013). Board of Governors. Yamahon, T. Social Media Market, 2012-2016. (2012). Enterprise Journal. Pages 30-42.