How to Choose an Amazon Marketing Agency (What Most Brands Get Wrong)

By Andrew Morgans, Founder of Marknology

The Problem Most Brands Don't See Until It Is Too Late

You are six months into an agency relationship. Revenue has not moved. Monthly reports arrive but nothing has changed. You cannot get a straight answer about what is actually happening in your account. The agency keeps pointing to market conditions, Amazon algorithm changes, and "awareness campaigns" as explanations for flat sales.

This is not an edge case. It is the default outcome when brands hire an Amazon agency based on price, name recognition, or a compelling case study deck.

I have spent over a decade managing Amazon growth for brands at every stage, from $500K startups to $100M+ category leaders. Marknology has facilitated over $2 billion in revenue across 300+ brands in 11 marketplaces since 2015. We have helped 17 clients cross the millionaire threshold on Amazon and facilitated 12 successful brand exits. The brands that get burned by bad agency relationships almost always made the same hiring mistake: they evaluated the pitch instead of the process.

Here is what to look for instead.

The Questions That Actually Separate Good Agencies from Good Salespeople

Discovery calls are not the place to be polite. The agency will have a polished presentation. You need to disrupt that presentation with specific questions. Here are the ones that matter.

1. Do you own or operate any Amazon brands yourself?

This is the single most telling question on the list. Agencies that have actual skin in the game, meaning they run a brand with real inventory, real PPC spend, and real margin pressure, think differently than agencies that only manage other people's money.

When I built Marknology, I also built Waggedy, a live pet brand on Amazon. Every strategy I recommend to a client has been tested on Waggedy first. That is not a marketing claim. It is how you build conviction about what actually works in a specific category.

A good answer: "Yes, we run [specific brand]. Here is what we tested last quarter and what the data showed." A weak answer: "We consider ourselves students of Amazon."

2. What is your contract structure?

Annual contracts shift the incentive structure in the wrong direction. If the agency knows you are locked in for 12 months, the urgency to perform in months 2 through 11 drops considerably.

Month-to-month means the agency earns your business every single month. Marknology has operated on month-to-month contracts since day one. That structure keeps us honest and it keeps us focused.

3. Who will actually manage my account day-to-day?

Large agencies sell on senior expertise and then assign accounts to junior managers running 40 to 60 accounts each. Ask for the specific name, title, and account load of the person who will be in your Seller Central every week. If they cannot answer this before you sign, that tells you everything.

4. Can you show me a brand that was struggling when they came to you and explain what you changed?

Anyone can show a chart that goes up and to the right. Growth is easy when you take on brands at the right moment in their trajectory. Force them to show you a rescue story. What was wrong, what was the diagnosis, what was the specific intervention, and what did the data look like 90 days later? A team that cannot walk through that sequence has not been doing the work.

5. What happens in the first 90 days?

This separates strategic firms from execution shops. The answer should include a phased plan: catalog audit in week one, baseline reporting by week two, first optimization cycles by week four, and measurable milestones by day 90. "We optimize campaigns and content" is not an answer. It is a deflection.

6. What have you gotten wrong for a client, and how did you handle it?

This question is uncomfortable. That is exactly why it is valuable. Agencies that cannot answer it have either never been honest with clients or are hiding failures. Every operator at Marknology can tell you a story about a strategy that did not work and what we learned. That transparency is not a liability. It is how you know whether they are operating with integrity.

7. Which Amazon marketplaces have you managed outside the US?

International expansion is the most consistently underused growth lever in Amazon brand building. Brands that expand from US-only to three marketplaces in year two see 40 to 60% revenue increases without new product development. Ask for specifics: which marketplaces, which categories, what the localization process looks like. Marknology manages brands across 11 marketplaces including the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Japan, and Australia. If an agency cannot give you specifics on international, they are leaving a major growth lever untouched.

Red Flags That Should End the Conversation

Some answers do not need evaluation. They need a polite exit.

• Guaranteed ranking positions or guaranteed top-10 BSR. Amazon does not work this way. Any agency promising specific organic rank outcomes is either misleading you or does not understand how the algorithm functions.
• No client references available. If they cannot give you a single current client you can call, they are hiding something. Satisfied clients are the best sales tool available. Agencies that protect client identities "for confidentiality" reasons are often protecting themselves.
• Reporting that is a PDF of screenshots with no context. Your monthly report should explain what changed, why it changed, and what the next move is. Screenshots of Seller Central dashboards with no narrative is noise, not reporting.
• A "dedicated account manager" working from a template playbook. Playbook management works when every account looks the same. No Amazon account looks the same. If the answer to every category question sounds pre-written, it is.
• Pressure toward a 12-month commitment before you have seen 30 days of results. A confident agency does not need to lock you in. Annual commitments before proof of performance protect the agency, not the brand.

What Managing $2B Across 300 Brands Actually Teaches You

When you manage over $2 billion across 300+ brands in 11 marketplaces, patterns emerge that you simply cannot learn from managing a single account or a handful of brands in one category.

Here are three patterns that consistently separate brands that scale from brands that plateau:

Brands that plateau between $500K and $1M on Amazon almost always have a listing content problem, not a PPC problem. Most agencies respond to plateauing revenue by raising bids. That is the wrong diagnosis. When conversion rate is failing, adding spend accelerates the bleed. The fix is in the listing, the images, and the review velocity. Marknology's approach starts with the conversion rate before it touches the ad budget.

International expansion is the single most underused growth lever. The brands in Marknology's portfolio that have executed clean US-to-international expansions see 40 to 60% revenue increases within 12 to 18 months without adding a single new SKU. The barrier is not Amazon. It is agencies that do not actually know how to execute the transition.

The brands that exit successfully all had clean catalog structures and defensible review velocity before any acquisition conversation started. Marknology has facilitated 12 brand exits. The common thread was not revenue size. It was operational cleanliness: SKU consolidation, review moats per ASIN, and clean PPC attribution. Brands that start building these assets early have dramatically better exit outcomes.

A Framework for the Final Decision

After the discovery calls, the references, and the contract review, the decision usually comes down to three questions:

1. Do you trust the people, not just the pitch? The best agency relationships are built on honest communication when things are not working. That requires trusting the people, not just believing the case studies.
2. Can they prove they have done this in your specific category? General Amazon experience is table stakes. Category-specific experience, meaning the same competitive dynamics, the same buyer psychology, the same seasonal patterns, is what drives real results.
3. Is their contract structure aligned with your success? Month-to-month contracts with performance components create the right incentive structure. Annual flat-fee retainers do not.

If all three are yes, move forward. If any one is a no, keep looking. The right agency is out there. Taking an extra 30 days to find them is almost always better than six months recovering from the wrong one.

Common Questions