Your Amazon Account Needs More Than One Person Running It
Managing an Amazon account can often look deceptively simple from the outside. Products are listed, orders arrive, advertising runs and sales are reported.
Behind the scenes, however, a successful Amazon operation involves a much broader range of responsibilities.
Catalogue management, content, advertising, operations, finance, reporting and dealing with Amazon itself all require attention. Yet many businesses place responsibility for all of these areas with a single Amazon Manager.
The problem isn’t necessarily the person. It’s the structure around them.
Amazon is more than a sales channel
Running Amazon effectively requires a surprisingly broad mix of skills. On any given day, an Amazon Manager might be dealing with a catalogue issue, investigating why a product has disappeared from sale, reviewing advertising performance, uploading new content, analysing sales data or raising a case with Amazon.
For businesses using Amazon Vendor Central, there can be another layer of operational and commercial work to manage too.
Individually, these tasks are manageable. Collectively, they can quickly become a full operation.
When one person is responsible for everything, their time naturally gets pulled towards whichever issue is most urgent. That often means the important work gets pushed aside by the immediate work.
The problem with relying on one Amazon Manager
A capable Amazon Manager may understand every part of the account, but there are only so many hours in the week.
If Monday is spent resolving catalogue problems and Tuesday is taken up investigating orders and shortages, there is less time available for improving product content, analysing performance or developing advertising campaigns.
The account continues to function, but opportunities can easily be missed.
Listings may remain live but aren’t being continually improved. Advertising may continue running without being considered alongside conversion. Sales reports may be generated without anyone having the time to properly investigate what the numbers are telling you.
Nothing necessarily goes badly wrong. But nothing receives the attention it really deserves either.
Different areas require different expertise
Amazon increasingly rewards businesses that treat the marketplace as a complete channel rather than simply somewhere to list products.
A strong Amazon operation can involve:
- Catalogue management – maintaining accurate product data and resolving catalogue issues.
- Content and brand – optimising listings, imagery, A+ Content and the Amazon Brand Store.
- Advertising – managing campaigns, budgets and product visibility.
- Operations – monitoring orders, availability and the day-to-day relationship with Amazon.
- Finance – understanding deductions, shortages, chargebacks and other commercial issues.
- Data and reporting – turning Amazon’s data into useful information for the wider business.
- Amazon support – managing cases and resolving the inevitable problems that arise.
These areas are connected, but they aren’t the same discipline.
Good advertising cannot compensate indefinitely for poor product content. Great product pages are of limited value if catalogue problems take the ASIN offline. Strong sales numbers don’t necessarily tell the whole story if operational issues are affecting profitability.
Amazon works best when these areas are managed together.
You don’t necessarily need to build an Amazon department
For many brands, employing a specialist for every area simply isn’t practical.
But that doesn’t mean one employee has to carry the entire responsibility either.
Working with an experienced Amazon partner gives an internal team access to additional expertise and resource when they need it. Instead of expecting one Amazon Manager to be a catalogue specialist, content designer, advertising manager, analyst and Amazon troubleshooter, they can be supported by people who regularly work within those areas.
It also creates more capacity for the internal Amazon Manager to concentrate on the things only they can do: understanding the wider business, coordinating internal teams, managing priorities and developing the overall Amazon strategy.
Building a stronger Amazon operation
As an Amazon account grows, the workload behind it grows too.
More products mean more catalogue management. More sales create more operational and financial activity. More advertising creates more data to analyse. And a larger Amazon presence makes maintaining consistent, high-quality content increasingly important.
The answer isn’t always another full-time hire.
Sometimes, it is simply about putting the right expertise around the people you already have.
At Accresco Partners, we support brands across Amazon Vendor Central, helping with the day-to-day management and development of their Amazon business. From catalogue and content through to advertising, operations, reporting and support, we provide the additional expertise and capacity needed to manage Amazon as a complete channel.
Because running an Amazon account isn’t one job. It’s several jobs working together.