Choosing an Amazon marketing agency is harder than it should be. Most agencies won't tell you their real pricing until you're on a sales call. Case studies are cherry-picked. And every agency claims they're "full-service" when half of them just run Sponsored Products campaigns and call it a day.
We're an Amazon marketing agency, so we're writing this from the inside. That means two things: we know what good looks like because we do this work every day, and we have zero interest in pretending to be a neutral third party. What you're getting here is the evaluation framework we'd use if we were hiring an agency instead of being one.
We started as Amazon sellers before we became an agency. That seller-first perspective shapes everything in this guide. The questions we recommend asking are the ones we wished brands asked us more often. The red flags we list are the ones we see brands ignore until it's too late.
If you finish reading this and decide SupplyKick is a good fit, great. If you finish and hire someone else because they're genuinely better for your situation, also great. The goal is helping you avoid a bad hire.
Most articles skip this question because they're written by agencies trying to sell you services. But it's the first thing you should figure out.
You're spending more than $10K/month on Amazon ads and managing it yourself or with a general marketing team. The platform complexity at that spend level makes specialists worth the cost.
Your Amazon revenue is growing but margin is shrinking. That's often a sign of inefficient ad spend or poor inventory planning that an experienced agency can fix.
You tried hiring in-house for Amazon and couldn't find someone with deep enough platform knowledge. The talent pool for experienced Amazon marketers is small and expensive.
You're launching a new brand and don't want to burn six months learning Amazon's ad system through trial and error. Agencies compress the learning curve.
You're doing less than $30K/month in Amazon revenue. At that scale, the agency fee will eat too much margin. Use Amazon's self-service tools and learn the basics yourself.
You have an internal team member who's genuinely good at Amazon PPC and has time to stay current. Good in-house people beat mediocre agencies every time.
You're pre-launch and haven't validated product-market fit yet. Fix the product first, then worry about scale.
The hybrid model works for some brands: Keep PPC and content strategy in-house, but hire an agency for specialized work like Amazon DSP, video ads, or international expansion. This requires clear scope boundaries and a strong internal operator who can manage the agency relationship.
The term "Amazon marketing agency" covers everything from one-person PPC shops to full-service operations managing your entire Amazon presence. You need to understand what you're actually buying.
PPC-only shops run your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns. They don't touch your listings, content, brand protection, or supply chain. They're specialists, often good at what they do, but narrow. Typical pricing: $1,500–$5,000/month depending on ad spend and complexity.
Channel specialists manage PPC plus listing optimization and basic storefront work. They'll refresh your A+ Content, update titles for keyword optimization, and maybe help with creative direction. They won't manage inventory or deal with account health issues. Typical pricing: $3,000–$8,000/month.
Full-service agencies handle PPC, content, listings, brand protection, inventory coordination, and account health management. They function as your internal Amazon team without the overhead of full-time hires. This is where SupplyKick operates as a full-service Amazon agency. Typical pricing: $5,000–$15,000/month.
Growth partners do everything full-service agencies do plus strategic consulting, international expansion, retail partnerships beyond Amazon, and advanced analytics through tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud. These partnerships work best when you're doing $5M+ annually on Amazon and need someone thinking three moves ahead. Typical pricing: $15,000–$50,000+/month.
What almost no agency does: Product development, pricing strategy ownership (they'll advise, but you decide), or full supply chain ownership. If an agency says they'll "handle everything," ask specifically what that means.
This is the question everyone has and nobody answers clearly. Here's what you need to know.
Flat monthly retainer: You pay a fixed fee for a defined scope of work. Budget is predictable. Scope is clear. Most mid-market agencies work this way. The risk is that as your business scales, the retainer may not scale proportionally, so you renegotiate annually.
Percentage of ad spend: The agency takes 10–20% of whatever you spend on Amazon ads. This aligns their incentive with your scale (more spend = more revenue for them), but it can feel expensive as your ad budget grows. If you're spending $50K/month on ads and paying 15%, that's $7,500/month just for management.
Hybrid model (retainer + percentage): A base fee covers core management, and a smaller percentage of ad spend covers variable work. This is becoming more common. Example: $3,000 base + 8% of ad spend.
Performance-based pricing: Rare, and usually a red flag. Agencies that offer "we only get paid if you hit goals" are either taking on high risk (which they'll price in upfront) or they'll gamble with your budget to chase short-term metrics that look good on paper but don't build sustainable growth.
SupplyKick uses custom pricing that's not tied to a percentage of your ad spend. The reason is simple: a brand spending $100K/month on ads shouldn't automatically pay us 10x more than a brand spending $10K/month if the work is only 3x more complex. We price based on scope, not spend.
If an agency quotes you significantly below these ranges, ask what they're not doing. If they quote significantly above, ask what makes them worth it.
Most brands ask surface-level questions and get surface-level answers. These questions force specificity.
Not "our team." A name. A title. How many years they've been doing Amazon PPC. How many other accounts they manage concurrently. If the person selling you is not the person doing the work, that's fine, but you should talk to the person who will be doing the work before you sign.
Red flag: "We have a team approach, so multiple people touch your account." That usually means junior staff and no clear owner.
An agency that's great at supplements might be terrible at electronics. Restock cycles are different. Competitive intensity is different. Seasonality patterns are different. Content strategies that work for consumables don't work for durable goods.
Ask for category-specific case studies. If they don't have them, ask why they think they can succeed in your vertical anyway. Sometimes there's a good answer ("we've managed adjacent categories" or "we've hired someone with deep experience in your space"). Often there's not.
Request a sample report. If they won't share one (even with client names redacted), that's a red flag. Look for:
Reporting frequency: weekly updates are nice, but monthly deep dives are what matter. If an agency promises daily reports, they're spending time on reports that should be spent optimizing your campaigns.
Amazon changes policies constantly. Listings get suppressed. Accounts get flagged. A good agency has a defined process for handling this. A mediocre agency tells you to contact Seller Support yourself.
Ask: "What happens if my listing gets suppressed for a terms-of-service violation?" The answer should include specific steps, timeframes, and whether they have direct contacts at Amazon (verified partners often do).
Agencies managing campaigns manually in 2026 are behind. Ask what tools they use for bid management, keyword research, and analytics.
Good answers: Pacvue, Intentwise, Skai, Perpetua, Teikametrics, or proprietary tools they've built. They should also have Amazon Marketing Cloud access if they're managing at scale.
Bad answers: "We use Amazon's native tools" (that's not enough), or vague references to "AI-powered optimization" without specifics.
If you're doing more than $500K/year on Amazon, you should be using DSP for programmatic display and video. Sponsored TV is newer but growing fast for brands with video assets. Not all agencies offer this. If you need it, ask upfront.
Standard agency contracts run 6–12 months. That's reasonable because it takes 90 days to see real results, and agencies need to recoup onboarding costs. But the exit terms matter more than the length.
Look for:
Red flags:
This question separates agencies that have a real onboarding process from those that wing it. A good agency should outline:
Month 1: Audit your current campaigns, listings, and account health. Identify quick wins and structural issues. Set up tracking and reporting infrastructure.
Month 2: Implement the quick wins (campaign restructures, keyword expansion, bid optimizations). Begin testing new creative or listing updates if needed.
Month 3: Measure results from Month 2 changes. Build out longer-term tests (new campaign types, seasonal strategies, brand building). Establish a rhythm for ongoing optimization.
If they can't describe this, they don't have a system. They'll be figuring it out on your dime.
Guaranteed rankings or sales promises. No one can guarantee a #1 organic rank or a specific sales number. Amazon's algorithm changes constantly, and competition shifts. Any agency making guarantees is either lying or planning to break Amazon's terms of service to hit the number.
No direct access to your ad account. You should own the Amazon Advertising account. The agency should be a user with appropriate permissions, but you're the admin. If they insist on creating the account under their name or refuse to give you admin access, walk away. You'll have no visibility into what they're doing, and you can't take your campaign history with you when you leave.
Junior-only teams managing your strategy. Entry-level account managers running campaigns is fine if there's senior oversight. Entry-level account managers building your strategy is not fine. Ask about the team structure. If the person you talk to in the sales process disappears after you sign, that's a problem.
Opaque reporting or vanity metrics. If the agency's reports focus on impressions, clicks, and CTR without connecting to revenue and profit, they're hiding behind activity metrics. Good reporting ties directly to business outcomes: sales, margin, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value.
They won't let you talk to current clients. References should be standard. If an agency refuses to connect you with even one current client, assume they don't have happy clients. Ask for two references in your industry or adjacent verticals. Call them. Ask what the agency does well and where they're weak.
The contract is full of jargon and vague deliverables. "Strategic oversight," "ongoing optimization," and "proactive management" are not specific deliverables. Good contracts define what you're buying: X hours of campaign management per week, monthly performance reports delivered by the 5th of each month, quarterly strategy reviews, etc.
You hired an agency. Now what? Most brands go dark for 60 days, check in, don't see miraculous results, and get frustrated. Here's what good onboarding actually looks like.
The agency should spend most of this month learning your business. That includes:
You should see some quick wins in this phase (pausing wasteful keywords, adjusting bids on underperforming campaigns), but don't expect revenue miracles yet.
This is when the agency implements their plan. Expect:
You should start seeing directional improvement. ACoS may go up temporarily if they're testing aggressively. That's normal as long as they're communicating why.
By now, the agency has enough data to know what's working. They should:
This is when you should see measurable improvement in your core KPIs: ACoS stabilizing or improving, TACoS trending down, organic ranks improving, overall revenue growing without proportional ad spend increases.
Escalate if: You're not getting reports on time, the account manager is unresponsive for more than 48 hours, or you see campaign changes you didn't approve and can't explain. Good agencies fix process breakdowns fast.
Walk away if: You're three months in and there's been no strategic conversation beyond "we're optimizing," the agency can't explain their decisions in plain language, or results are materially worse and they have no hypothesis for why.
Your agency is three months in. Six months in. A year in. How do you know if they're good or just coasting?
ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale): Total ad spend divided by total ad-attributed sales. This tells you how efficient your advertising is. Good ACoS depends on your category and margin, but for most brands, 20–35% is the target range. Lower is better, but only if volume is also growing.
TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale): Total ad spend divided by total sales (both ad-attributed and organic). This is the more important metric because it shows whether your ads are growing your total business or just cannibalizing organic sales. If ACoS is improving but TACoS is flat, your organic sales are probably declining. That's a red flag.
Organic rank growth: Track your core products' organic ranks for target keywords. If ads are working, organic ranks should improve over time because Amazon's algorithm rewards sales velocity. If ranks are stagnant or declining, your ads aren't feeding the flywheel.
New-to-brand customer percentage: Amazon shows this in Brand Analytics. If 60%+ of your sales are repeat customers, you're not growing fast enough. Good agencies drive new customer acquisition, not just reorders.
Inventory turnover rate: If your agency is full-service, they should help prevent stockouts (which kill momentum) and overstock (which kills margin). Ask for inventory health metrics quarterly.
6 months in: TACoS should be trending down or flat while revenue grows. Organic ranks should be up for core keywords. You should have a rhythm with the agency (reporting, communication, strategy updates).
12 months in: You should see measurable year-over-year growth. The agency should be proactively bringing new ideas (new ad formats, creative tests, expansion into new keywords or categories). You should feel like they know your business, not just your account.
24+ months in: The agency should be thinking ahead of you. Flagging risks before they become problems. Bringing competitive intelligence. Testing at the edges (new ad formats, international expansion, retail media beyond Amazon). If they're just running the same playbook they ran in Year 1, it's time to renegotiate or leave.
PPC-only agencies typically charge $1,500–$5,000/month. Full-service agencies managing ads, content, and account health range from $5,000–$15,000/month for mid-market brands. Enterprise-level partnerships start at $15,000/month and scale based on complexity. Pricing models include flat retainers, percentage of ad spend (usually 10–20%), or hybrid structures. Be wary of hidden fees like setup charges or ad spend minimums.
PPC agencies manage your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns. Full-service agencies add listing optimization, A+ Content, storefront design, brand protection, account health management, and inventory coordination. If you need someone to own your entire Amazon presence, go full-service. If you have strong internal operations and just need ad management, a PPC specialist works.
Expect 30–90 days for PPC efficiency improvements (better ACoS, reduced wasted spend). Organic rank growth and sustainable sales increases take 3–6 months because Amazon's algorithm needs time to register improved sales velocity and conversion rates. If an agency promises results in two weeks, they're overselling.
Category relevance (have they worked in your vertical?), specific metrics (not just "increased sales" but by how much and over what timeframe), and realistic results. Be skeptical of case studies showing 300%+ growth unless they explain the starting conditions (often those are new launches or previously neglected accounts where any competent work drives big early gains).
Yes, if you're doing less than $30K/month in revenue or have an internal team member with Amazon PPC experience. Use Amazon's self-service tools and free resources to learn the basics. Hire an agency when ad spend exceeds $10K/month, when you're scaling fast and don't have time to stay current on platform changes, or when you've hit a ceiling managing it yourself.
Guaranteed rankings or sales, no direct access to your ad accounts, junior-only teams with no senior oversight, opaque reporting focused on vanity metrics, refusal to provide client references, and vague contracts without specific deliverables. Any of these should end the conversation.