How PCG helps publishers outsource their Amazon Marketing Services

Relationships with Amazon are complex and there are also no silver bullets for solving all the challenges it presents. However, optimising your Amazon sales across all titles and over time will have a long-term, powerful, cumulative effect. The Publishing Consultancy Group (PCG) helps by supporting a variety of publishers and an Industry Association in their quest to optimise their performance with Amazon through ‘one-off projects’ e.g. Case Study – Raintree and ‘ongoing support’ as illustrated below.

Following on from a successful initial Amazon related project with Pitch Publishing (PP), please see PCG Testimonials, who asked PCG to help them understand why their Amazon sales were underperforming and what methods they could use to improve them, they asked us whether we could lead their relationship with Amazon. PCG was honoured to be asked as the outsource partner for PP and delighted to agree to help them.

This case study illustrates PCG’s ‘Programme of Work’ for publishers such as PP who decide to outsource their Amazon sales and marketing requirements and how we partner with them in helping to optimise their online Amazon performance.

PCG employs the below step by step approach in delivering our support to publishers:

Step 1 –  Audit.

We conduct an audit of the clients current Amazon approach by:

• Collecting appropriate information about their business.
• Defining their business objectives.
• Defining their outsourcing objectives and what success criteria (KPI’s) would be applied.
• Supporting gap analysis to establish any areas that required further investigation.
• Understanding their business distribution partnership.

Step 2 –  Initial Report.

A tactical ‘Go To Market’ (GTM) plan using the intelligence gathered in stage 1 is created outlining PCG’s recommendations as to how the client through best practice sales and marketing approaches could optimise their Amazon performance.  This report also details how PCG will feedback to clients monthly on sales performance.

Step 3 –  PCG’s Monthly Delivery Methodology.

The GTM plan defined in step 2 outlines PCG’s strategic approach in helping our clients.  This plan is executed monthly in step 3.  Whilst the GTM plan is bespoke for each client, it’s largely divided into four distinct areas of delivery:

• Product & Marketing Strategy – we help to identify which frontlist and backlist titles we should focus on, how we can strengthen individual product pages by improving copy, utilising free A+ in-store merchandising and where appropriate, what opportunities exist for paid in-store promotions and sponsored advertising.
• Brand Strategy – we work with our clients in ensuring that their brand values are correctly reflected online. This helps to best inform key messaging / positioning of titles and promotions including publisher Amazon Stores.
• Author Guidelines – all publishers need strong author relationships. PCG have helped clients to define the responsibilities of their authors more clearly and how in partnership they can work together to proactively promote titles online.
• Reporting – we support the crucial and often overlooked collection and interpretation of data via the Amazon Brand Analytics portal.

Deliverables and Highlights.

PCG’s outputs for PP include:

• Glance Views – we have increased these by 20%+ month on month for PP titles.
• Sales – despite the difficult reported market conditions, positive single digital growth was reported in 2022 for PP in the UK.
• Amazon Store – since the creation and implementation (October 2022) of the PP Amazon Store by PCG, we’ve continued to update and maintain it for relevant seasonal opportunities and drove 2.4k+ unique visits to it in the first quarter alone.
• Planning templates and visual timelines –strategic marketing plans, promotions, product pages and advertising initiatives for frontlist and backlist titles have been created, implemented and maintained.  This has helped PCG in partnership with PP to structure our monthly approach.
• Authors – we’ve managed to reduce the excess external communications for PP with authors by providing them with a clearly defined role in helping to promote their titles and drive sell through.
• Competitive analysis – whilst PCG’s focus is on PP’s titles on Amazon, we are helping them to turn our findings to their advantage and improve performance against the competition.
• Performance – PCG’s monthly audit & analysis of Amazon performance has provided PP with ongoing guidance and recommendations.  This extends to areas outside of Amazon including the supply chain via the management of their inventory, current metadata practices including category and keyword use and how these impact on the quality of their product pages and their wider trade and publishing strategy.

PCG has commissioned Amazon Optimisation projects for the below clients.  Some very kind words about our services can be found here:  Publishing Consultancy Group Testimonials.