What a brand needs before hiring an Amazon agency
We get on a lot of first calls with brands that want help on Amazon. Some of them show up with their margin, their access, and a clear idea of what they want fixed. Others show up with a login they're not sure still works and a general sense that ads should be doing better. The first group gets a real strategy conversation. The second group spends the call doing setup. Here's how to be the first group, whether you end up working with us or someone else.
Know your margin before you talk ACoS
Every agency will ask what ACoS you want. Most brand owners answer with a number they heard somewhere, not one they calculated. Your break-even ACoS is your profit margin after product cost, Amazon's fees, and shipping. If you keep 30% after those, a 30% ACoS means those ad sales made you nothing. We wrote more about where a high ACoS comes from if you want the full breakdown, but the short version is this: an agency can't set a real target for you until you hand them a real margin. Bring that number to the first call instead of asking them to guess it.
Gather your access before you book the call
More first meetings than you'd think turn into an IT ticket. Before you talk to any agency, round up admin access to Seller Central, Brand Registry, and your advertising account. If someone else set these up years ago and left the company, find that access now, not after you've signed a contract. Also pull your last 90 days of business reports and search term reports. An agency worth hiring will want to see actual account history before they promise anything, and having it ready shows them you run a tight operation.
Ask who owns the account when the relationship ends
This is the question people forget to ask, and it matters more than the pitch deck. Your campaigns, your search term history, and your reviews should live in your own Seller Central account, full stop. Ask directly: if we part ways in six months, do we keep everything exactly as it stands, or does the account reset to zero? Any agency that manages your business through a sub-account or an account they control instead of yours is a red flag. You built that sales history. It should stay with you no matter who runs the ads next.
Ask for the audit, not the pitch
A vague answer here tells you a lot. If an agency's onboarding plan is "we'll get to know your brand," push for specifics. A structured agency can walk you through what happens in week one, what changes in week two, and when you'll see the first real optimization go live. We start every new account with a listing review before we touch a single bid, because a client with a page that can't convert doesn't need faster ad spend, they need a better page. Ask any agency you're considering what they check first and in what order. If they can't answer specifically, that's your answer.
Decide what good reporting looks like to you
Ask to see a sample report before you sign anything. A report that's just a spreadsheet of numbers tells you what happened. A useful report tells you what changed, why it changed, what that did to performance, and what's next. If you can't picture reading it and knowing what to do differently next month, ask for a different format now, while you still have leverage to ask.
What this saves you
None of this is complicated, and none of it requires you to already be an Amazon expert. It means the first month of a new agency relationship is spent building instead of untangling old logins and guessing at your own numbers. Brands that show up with their margin, their access, and their questions ready get a strategy call. Brands that don't get an intake form.
We manage Amazon accounts for outdoor, surf, and consumer brands day to day, and we'd rather have this conversation with you before you sign anything than after. If you want a straight read on your account, tell us about your Amazon business and we'll tell you what we'd check first.