Prime Time for SMART Goal Madness
I love binge-watching shows and watching college basketball. In the roundabout way my brain functions I have a plan to combine these passions. I would like to see Amazon Prime team up with the pandemonium of March Madness for an awesome campaign that would engage Amazon users like myself while increasing sales. This is what Amazon is all about. Amazon engages its customers and helps them discover a variety of products.
Amazon is a giant. The online e-commerce company is stationed in Seattle but extends everywhere across the globe. Amazon revenue in 2018 had a 30.93% increase from 2017 (Macrotrends LLC, 2021). Amazon enjoyed a 20.45% increase in revenue from 2018 to 2019. Amazon had a big year in 2020. Amazon revenue had a 43.59% increase for quarter 4 of 2020 (Macrotrends LLC, 2021). With the presence of a global pandemic, people frequently ordered online and were home to stream more shows. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to see Amazon having a record performance with their annual revenue up 38% (Kohan, 2021). It is safe to say that Amazon will have great numbers again in 2021. With a few suggestions 2021 could be even more profitable. I propose an objective for Amazon to use social media to increase engagement between the company and their customers and will increase sales. One goal for this objective is to increase Amazon’s annual revenue for an increase from 38% to 40% for the year 2021. Another goal is to increase the number of Amazon Prime subscribers to 150 million.
SMART Goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time based (Blitch, 2021, slide 10). This is a scientific process that allows people to form a hypothesis and develop a plan to test the effects of variables. The data is used to make conclusions about the success of the goal. According to Business Insider’s Dennis Green (2018) Amazon Prime members buy an average of $1400 a year from their website. The nonsubscriber typically spends $600 on Amazon per year (Green, 2018). Based on this data, I hypothesize the best way to increase sales for Amazon is to increase Amazon Prime subscriptions. Once customers get signed up for Amazon Prime, it is more convenient to make purchases using your Amazon account. The benefit of Prime deals, and better shipping rates can also influence eager consumers. Amazon Prime obviously generates a lot of buzz during Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday (Cyber Week) during the holidays. This provides plenty of opportunities for online shoppers to join Amazon Prime when great deals are promoted. Because many shoppers are already joining at this time, this doesn’t provide as high a ceiling for potential growth. Looking through trends of quarterly reports in Amazon, there are multiple instances of lower growth in the month of March (Macrotrends LLC, 2021). These are opportunities for greater growth and to raise excitement for Amazon beyond Prime Day and the holidays. This is also the time frame for my promotion plan for Amazon.
Now that the goal of 40% annual revenue increase and 150 million Prime subscribers has been established, there needs to be a plan with measurable components. Key Performance Indicators help determine if a strategy is effective and contributes to a company’s goals (Blitch, 2021, slide 14). Tapping into the modern-day binge-watching culture, the variety of shows available on Amazon Prime, popular features of Twitter, and the current sporting event of “March Madness” (college basketball’s tournament to declare a national champion), we can create a fun event that engages customers, gets them talking about the Amazon brand, and influencing other people to join. The fact that the “March Madness” basketball tournament and this promotion can be done during a quieter time of Amazon’s fiscal year provides the perfect opportunity for greater impact. Amazon could have its own March Madness tournament featuring its most popular shows to stream, and the winners are determined by the voting of fans with the use of Twitter polls.
Let the Madness Begin
Using a rating system to determine the top 32 shows to watch on Amazon Prime, an infographic and a tournament bracket could be made and shared on Twitter. The rating system could be used from Rotten Tomatoes or the average review score given by Amazon reviews for the bracket seeding. The post would include the hashtag #PrimeMadness and would encourage people to like, retweet, and follow for #PrimeMadness event updates. People would also be encouraged to reply to the tweet and let the world know their thoughts about the ratings, or if their favorite show was missing. This provides great opportunities for engaging and replying to posts tweeted by participants. People who like and retweet the post while tagging a friend using the hashtag will be entered in a drawing where winners receive one free year membership to Amazon Prime. The person tagged will also be awarded a free year membership. Because the average Amazon Prime subscriber pays $1400 a year, the $238 for two subscriptions is a very small price to pay for any subscribers Amazon gains from the first part of the promotion (Green, 2018).
The next series of tweets containing the hashtag will include polls asking Twitter users which show they prefer of two choices. There would be one tweet with a poll for each matchup of the bracket. For example, one poll would have voters choose between Fleabag and The Man in the High Castle. These shows are rated #1 and #32 respectively by Rotten Tomatoes (2021). The next tweet would have users vote between #2 and #31, and so on. Each tweet would use the #PrimeMadness hashtag, and include a link to the Amazon page for each show. This would mean 31 total polls would be sent out. The first round of polls could be voted on for one week, then the next rounds (sweet 16, elite 8, final four, and the championship) could be spaced out every three days. If voters follow Amazon’s Twitter account, and like/retweet a poll, they are also entered in drawings for a free year of Amazon Prime. This means 62 total free memberships will be awarded during the tournament (31 winners, and 31 people tagged by winners in their tweets). People may participate for as many of the #PrimeMadness polls as they want. As fans vote, share, and participate with the polls, they aren’t only competing for awards, but are also helping to add followers to Amazon’s social media accounts, expanding the reach of Amazon’s brand, and are even bringing awareness of the great shows that are available on Amazon Prime. Amazon could also offer a discount to Amazon Prime members for college basketball apparel and memorabilia to tie it all back to March Madness and the college basketball tournament.
Twitter is the featured social media application of this campaign. Amazon can additionally advertise and link their tweets from the rest of their social media applications. Infographics of results and tournament progress can be shared across all platforms and the Amazon home page.
Measurements
The key to accurately determine which elements make a goal successful is having a variety of data sets to analyze. Ultimately, Amazon will want to know if the goal of a 40% annual revenue increase was met and if they had 150 million Amazon Prime members. If an objective was or wasn’t attained, how do we know which factors contributed? Amazon can look back to see how many new Amazon Prime users were added during the time of the campaign. Amazon can check the number of purchases, or views that the 32 featured shows had during the same time and compare to previous years. It will be important to compare the amount of activity and growth from Amazon during the month of March and April of 2021 to previous years. I would find it interesting to look at the change of basketball-related sales specifically in March from 2021 to past years.
The Amazon social media accounts include data that can answer many questions. What was the growth of new followers during #PrimeMadness? Was the hashtag ever trending? Were the tweets liked and retweeted? How many participated in the polls? Was there as much enthusiasm in the final poll as the first sixteen? How many replies did the tweets get? Did Amazon do a good job of listening and monitoring during the campaign? Was the interaction with the participants favorable and positive? How many link clicks happened with the polls? Did more subscriptions or purchases happen on mobile device apps than computers? Were more of the devices Apple or Android? Not only does all of the information addressed from these questions help tell the story of any success of Amazon’s goals, but also help make decisions on better methods for future campaigns.
Social Media helps to achieve these SMART goals as they provide the means to share polls, interact with followers, and bring in future subscribers of Amazon Prime. They also provide useful metrics to make informed reliable conclusions. Twitter is the primary social media platform for this campaign, but all other platforms and Amazon’s home page are used to help bring customers to the Twitter tournament campaign. Positive outcomes from the social media efforts would increase followers, and more importantly raise engagement rates. I would also expect to see a higher amount of traffic to Amazon.com generated from the links shared from social media, especially Twitter.
I enthusiastically ask Amazon to consider this project. I would be interested in seeing how the voting of Amazon Prime shows would turn out, and I’m always looking for college basketball apparel bargains. With a low cost of investment, there is opportunity for a huge ROI. What say you Amazon? The ball is in your court!
References
Blitch, K. (2021, March 9). ROI, KPIs, & Social Listening [PowerPoint slides].
Digital Commerce 360. (2021, March 1). Amazon prime has 126 million members in the US. Retrieved March 12, 2021, from https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-prime-membership/
Green, D. (2018, October 21). Prime embers spend way more on Amazon than other customers — and the difference is growing. Retrieved from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-customers-spend-more-than-others-2018-10
Kohan, S. E. (2021, February 2). Amazon’s net profit soars 84% with sales hitting $386 billion. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2021/02/02/amazons-net-profit-soars-84-with-sales-hitting-386-billion/?sh=2c7d64c91334
Macrotrends LLC. (2021). Amazon Revenue 2006–2020 | AMZN. Retrieved from Macrotrends: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue
Rotten Tomatoes. (2021, March 1). The 58 best Amazon Prime tv shows. Retrieved from Binge Central: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-tv-shows-and-movies-original-to-amazon-prime-video/
Sabanoglu, T. (2020, December 1). Number of Amazon Prime members in the United States as of December 2019. Retrieved from Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/504687/number-of-amazon-prime-subscription-households-usa/
