How to choose an
Amazon agency
Short answer. Look for an agency that audits your account before it pitches, works on listings and inventory as well as ads, leaves you owning every account, and is paid in a way that does not reward spending more of your money. The ten questions below test each of these.
Know your numbers
first
You will get more from every agency conversation if you arrive with four numbers from the last 60 days: monthly Amazon revenue, total ad spend, TACoS (ad spend divided by total sales), and unit session percentage for your top ASINs from the Business Report.
Those numbers let you judge the answers. An agency that hears a 4% unit session percentage and talks only about bids is telling you something about how it works. If you have not pulled them before, the Amazon PPC audit checklist shows where each one lives.
Ten questions
to ask
Question 01
What would you change in my account first?
A good agency asks for access or data before it pitches and comes back with specifics: which ASINs, which campaigns, which search terms. A pitch deck with no reference to your account means you are being sold a template.
Question 02
Do you manage listings, creative and inventory, or only advertising?
Advertising sends shoppers to your listing. If the listing does not convert, the agency can only make a losing position cheaper. Know exactly which of the five jobs (listings and creative, advertising, inventory, account health, reporting) are in scope and which stay with you.
Question 03
How are you paid, and what does that reward?
Retainers, percentage of ad spend, percentage of sales and hybrids are all common. None is wrong, but each rewards something. A percentage of ad spend pays more when you spend more, so the next question matters. Ours is a percentage of total Amazon revenue, organic and advertised, so ad sales that only replace organic sales earn us nothing.
Question 04
When will you tell me not to spend more?
Listen for a rule tied to conversion. Ours is the Conversion Gate: no scaling spend on a listing below 2% Sponsored Products click-through rate and 10% unit session percentage. An agency without an answer here will tend to recommend more budget by default.
Question 05
Which number do you report on?
ACoS shows the efficiency of ad spend. TACoS shows whether advertising is growing the whole business, organic sales included. An agency that reports only ACoS can show improvement while total sales stand still. Ask to see a sample report.
Question 06
Who will actually work on my account?
The person on the sales call is often not the person in your account. Ask who will be, what their experience is, and roughly how many accounts each person handles.
Question 07
Will I keep ownership of every account?
The right answer is yes, always. Your Seller Central account, advertising account, Brand Registry and creative files should stay yours, with the agency added through user permissions. An agency that asks for your password, or wants to run ads from an account it owns, is a red flag.
Question 08
What does the contract commit me to?
Check the minimum term, the notice period, setup fees, and what happens to campaigns and creative when you leave. Long lock-ins protect the agency more than they protect you.
Question 09
Can I see results for a brand like mine?
Ask for case studies with numbers, in a category and size close to yours, and if possible a call with a current client. Screenshots of ACoS alone say little about whether the business grew.
Question 10
Which marketplaces do you work in?
Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk run as separate marketplaces with their own ad accounts, competition and rules. If you sell in Canada, ask how they handle bilingual listings, GST/HST and cross-border inventory. Our guide to selling on Amazon Canada covers the differences.
If you have hired an agency before and been disappointed, four follow-up questions get past the sales deck. If you already work with one, our guide on checking whether your Amazon agency is working shows how to test the answers against your own data.
Follow-up 01
How do you separate branded from non-branded results?
Ads on your own brand name convert well and pull the average ACoS down, so they can make an account look healthier than it is. Ask how they report the two separately, and how they judge whether an ad sale would have happened anyway.
Follow-up 02
Are we optimising for profit, growth or efficiency?
Growth usually means accepting a higher ACoS for a while. Efficiency usually means slower sales. Agree which one comes first, and what happens when they conflict, before anyone touches a budget.
Follow-up 03
Will I see every change you make?
Every Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaign has a History tab that lists changes to bids, budgets and settings. Ask whether the agency will explain changes in its reports and whether you can review them yourself at any time. The answer should be yes to both.
Follow-up 04
What happens the day a best seller loses the Featured Offer?
Sponsored Products only serves while your offer holds the Featured Offer, and the campaign keeps showing as delivering when it stops. Ask how they would notice, who would act, and how fast. The answer shows whether anyone watches the account between reports.
Red flags
to walk away from
- Guaranteed rankings, sales figures or ACoS targets before anyone has looked at your account
- Asking for your Seller Central password instead of user access
- A minimum term of six months or more with no performance exit
- Reporting that shows ACoS and never TACoS or total sales
- No published case studies with real numbers
- A plan that starts with raising budgets before checking the listings
What a good first
90 days looks like
The order of work tells you whether an agency understands the channel. A sensible first quarter usually runs like this:
- Month one: a full audit, fixes to the listings carrying most of the revenue, and a clean-up of search terms spending without converting. The savings from that clean-up tend to show within weeks.
- Month two: campaign structure rebuilt so discovery and proven terms are separated, converting terms moved to exact match, and inventory forecasts checked against the next peak.
- Month three: budget increases on the ASINs that clear the conversion thresholds, with TACoS as the measure of whether it is working.
Listing and rank improvements take longer than ad savings. Be wary of anyone promising both inside a month.
Common questions
How much does an Amazon agency cost?
It depends on scope, marketplaces and ad spend under management. Most agencies charge a monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend or sales, or a combination. We scope our fee after an audit, because a three-ASIN brand on one marketplace and a 200-ASIN catalogue across three need different work.
How long before an Amazon agency shows results?
Savings from cleaning up wasted ad spend usually show within the first few weeks. Listing changes, organic rank and TACoS improvements take longer, typically a few months, because Amazon needs sales history before rankings move.
Should I hire an agency that only does Amazon PPC?
Only if your listings, inventory and account health are already in good shape and someone else owns them. If conversion is weak, a PPC-only agency can lower costs but cannot fix the reason shoppers are not buying.
What access should I give an Amazon agency?
User permissions on Seller Central with the specific rights they need, and access to your advertising account through Amazon's own tools. Never share your login. You should be able to remove their access at any time without losing anything.
See where your account stands. It costs nothing.
Twenty minutes on your listings and ad account. We show you where the spend is leaking and what it is worth to fix, whether or not you hire us.
- We look at your real numbers before we recommend anything
- You keep ownership of every account
- No setup fees, no annual contract
Or run the free PPC audit tool on your search term report.
More guides
The Amazon PPC audit checklist
Twelve checks to run before you raise an ad budget, with where to find each number and what good looks like.
HiringAmazon agency, in-house hire or freelancer?
How the three options compare on cost, skills covered, control and risk, and a simple way to decide.
HiringIs your Amazon agency working?
Six checks you can run yourself in Seller Central and the ad console to see whether your agency is growing the business or only managing ACoS.
Want someone to
fix it for you?
Twenty minutes on your listings and ad account. We'll show you where the spend is leaking and what it's worth to fix.