Companhia das Letras uses smart keyword targeting to help Brazilian shoppers uncover their next page-turner

Ever since Amazon.com.br was first available to the Brazilian market in 2012, Brazil-based publisher Companhia das Letras has been an active seller. In that same trailblazing spirit, they were also early adopters of Amazon’s self-service ad products, immediately following the solution’s debut in Brazil in December, 2020.

The brand was experiencing consistent organic sales on Amazon, however, Companhia das Letras wondered what impact additional advertising investment would make. “We wanted to help support our growth on Amazon with additional efforts. Amazon Ads seemed like the right tool to help us achieve that,” remarked Marketing Manager, Lilia Zambon. “Companhia das Letras is already a well-established brand in the marketplace, but I believe that Amazon helped us to improve our results, as it allowed us to make a wide variety of titles nationally available.”

Making the right investments

Taking note from parent company Penguin Random House, Companhia das Letras took early interest in Amazon’s self-service ad products as a valuable investment. So much so, in fact, that the company dedicated an exclusive team member to the advertising solution to focus on building their brand, monitoring insights, and optimizing campaigns along the way.

Observing positive outcomes of this focus, they invested further into Amazon Ads by partnering with a third-party agency that specializes in it.

Currently, the brand dedicates approximately 30% of their advertising budget to Amazon Ads. To diversify their marketing mix and help further increase product awareness, Companhia das Letras’ advertising budget is spread across multiple channels such as; organic and paid search, social media, physical bookstores, email marketing, and newsletters.

Using best practices from Amazon educational resources

As one of the first sellers using Amazon Ads in Brazil, the company had no prior experience with the solution. But from explanation webinars to online video tutorials, Companhia das Letras utilized Amazon Ads’ online resources to improve their campaigns and to arrive at key business dates, fully prepared with strong strategies.

“In the beginning, we did a lot of testing and learning by trial and error,” recalls Kyara Castro, Marketing Analyst at Companhia das Letras. “Additionally, the conversations, training, and content shared by the Amazon Ads team were of great value.”

Optimized for local search behavior

Not only did the Portuguese version of Amazon Ads help Companhia das Letras’ team navigate the ads console, but the company acknowledges that the ability to use localized keyword targeting was an enormous advantage.

Going a step further than the use of Amazon’s international book categories, Companhia das Letras was able to leverage specific and localized keyword targeting that better connected with Brazilian audiences.

“It was excellent,” said Castro. “This, without a doubt, was essential for making the best marketing choices.”

Driving results with diversified actions

The publisher reported an amazing first quarter with Amazon Ads. Companhia das Letras’ familiarity with the advertising solution helped them to diversify their campaign tactics and to make continuous optimizations using on-demand advertising analytics. This strategic campaign management brought them to an advertising cost of sale (ACOS) of approximately 20%1—a figure the publisher boasts as “quite satisfactory.”

In total, the combined efforts executed through Amazon Ads helped to achieve:

  • Triple-digit growth for Companhia das Letras in early 2021.2
  • An observed ripple effect of success outside of Amazon, with current successful campaigns also helping to drive physical bookstore sales.
  • Over 19,000 new, unique customers since December 2020.3

“Amazon Ads allows us to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, it allows us to run simultaneous campaigns, across both Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Brands," said Castro.

quoteUpOur ability to test and learn, through exploring different techniques, and experimenting with alternative budgets, has helped our valued readers find their perfect book.quoteDown
— Kyara Castro, Marketing Analyst, Companhia das Letras

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1-3 Advertiser-provided data, Brazil, Dec 2020 -Aug 2021