Eight questions to ask an Amazon agency before you sign

By the third pitch they all sound identical. Everyone optimises. Everyone is data driven. Everyone has a case study with a number on it and no denominator underneath.

These are the eight questions I would ask if I were buying instead of selling. For each one I have written what a good answer sounds like and what should worry you, because a question without that is just a question.

Some of these are uncomfortable for us to publish. That is rather the point of publishing them.

1. "What is my break-even ACoS, and did you include returns?"

Ask it first. Everything else is downstream.

A good answer asks for your margin sheet and your return rate by ASIN before giving you a number, and mentions that Amazon reports advertising sales on orders placed rather than orders that stayed sold.

What should worry you: a target ACoS offered in the pitch, before anyone has seen your costs. That number was chosen because it sounded reasonable. Returns are the input most often left out, and leaving it out makes your break-even look roughly twice as forgiving as it is. The arithmetic is here if you want to check theirs.

2. "Is your fee a percentage of my ad spend?"

If it is, you are paying them a share of your costs.

Nobody has to be dishonest for that to go wrong. It simply makes the correct decision, which is sometimes to spend less, the expensive one for the person best placed to make it.

What should worry you: the model itself is common and not disqualifying, at 8 to 20 percent. What is disqualifying is an agency that cannot describe the conflict when you name it. The full breakdown of the three fee models is here.

3. "When did you last tell a client to spend less?"

The best question on this list, because it cannot be prepared for.

A good answer is a specific story with a client, a month and a reason. Usually a long tail of keywords eating budget while the top fifth carried everything.

What should worry you: "that has never really come up." In an account of any age, it has come up. Somebody just did not raise it.

4. "Who looks at my account, how often, and what is their name?"

Agencies sell you the person in the meeting and staff you with someone else. That is how agencies work and I would not call it a scandal, but you should know which one is which before you sign rather than in month three.

What should worry you: a title instead of a name. Also anyone unwilling to tell you the cadence, because the honest answer for a small retainer might be weekly, and weekly is fine if it is said out loud.

5. "Am I hiring you for the ads, or are you allowed to fix the listing?"

Most of the money we find missing on Amazon is not in the campaign. It is in a page that was never going to convert the traffic being sent to it.

Conversion rate and cost per click do the same thing to your ACoS, and only one of them is free. That argument in full is here.

What should worry you: an agency happy to take an ads-only brief without pushing back at all. Either they have not looked at your listing, or they have looked and decided not to mention it, and it is hard to say which is worse.

6. "What is my TACoS doing, not just my ACoS?"

ACoS tells you how efficient your advertising was. Total advertising cost of sale, measured against all your sales rather than just the attributed ones, tells you whether advertising is growing the business or harvesting demand you already had.

What should worry you: a blank look. A good ACoS on a flat total is a well run treadmill, and plenty of agencies will report the first number happily for years without ever showing you the second.

7. "What will you refuse to do?"

Every agency has a list of things they will not touch. Review manipulation, gated category workarounds, whatever tactic is currently circulating and currently working.

What should worry you: an empty list. You get one seller account. An agency with no refusals is not more committed to your growth, it is just less exposed to the consequences than you are.

8. "Show me one number in your report traced back to an order."

Marketplace reporting is unusually easy to flatter. Branded search campaigns, where people typed your name and were going to buy anyway, look magnificent and add almost nothing. Attribution windows can be stretched. Ordered value and delivered value are different numbers wearing similar clothes.

What should worry you: reluctance, or a long explanation of why the exercise would not tell you anything. It would. It takes about ten minutes.

Which Amazon PPC agency is the best in India?

Nobody can answer that, including the twenty listicles that will tell you they have.

Almost every "top 10 Amazon agencies in India" page is either written by an agency that put itself at number one, or is a directory selling the placement. The ranking is not a ranking. It is inventory.

The useful version of the question is narrower: which agency is best for a seller in my category, at my spend, with my margin structure. That has a real answer and it is different for a ₹5 lakh a month fashion seller with a 30 percent return rate than for an electronics brand doing ₹50 lakh with almost none.

So run the eight questions above on three agencies and compare the answers rather than the case studies. The one that asks for your margin sheet before quoting you a target is doing the job. The one that arrives with an ACoS number already in the deck chose it because it sounded reasonable.

What should disqualify us

Fair is fair.

We do not sell Amazon as a standalone slice. If you want only the marketplace ads managed and nothing else touched, we are the wrong shop, and we would rather say that in a blog post than three weeks into a proposal.

We will not give you an ACoS target before we have seen your margin sheet, which makes our pitch less satisfying than the one you will hear elsewhere.

We do not work on percentage of ad spend, so if your budget is large and you were hoping to pay a small percentage of it, another agency will be cheaper.

And we will occasionally tell you to fix your listing before we start, which delays our own invoice and is the correct order to do things in.

If none of that disqualifies us, tell us what you sell on the Amazon page and we will come back with a real number rather than a range. If you sell on both marketplaces, this one is worth reading first.

How do I choose an Amazon marketing agency in India?

Judge the questions they ask rather than the case studies they show. An agency that asks for your margin sheet and your return rates before quoting a target ACoS is working from your economics. One that offers a target in the pitch chose a number that sounded reasonable. Also establish who works on the account day to day, and whether they are permitted to fix the listing or only the campaigns.

What questions should I ask before hiring an Amazon agency?

What is my break-even ACoS with returns included, is your fee a percentage of my ad spend, when did you last tell a client to spend less, who works on my account and how often, are you allowed to fix the listing, what is my TACoS doing, what will you refuse to do, and can you trace one number in your report back to an actual order.

Should an Amazon agency charge a percentage of ad spend?

It is a common model at 8 to 20 percent, and it means the agency's income rises with your costs. That does not make it dishonest, but it does make budget reduction personally expensive for the person recommending it. A fixed retainer or a revenue share both avoid the conflict.

What is TACoS and why does it matter more than ACoS?

TACoS is total advertising cost of sale, measured against your entire revenue rather than only advertising attributed revenue. ACoS tells you whether the advertising was efficient. TACoS tells you whether it grew the business. A stable ACoS on flat total sales means advertising is harvesting demand that already existed.