In short: Ask who will actually work on your account, how they set ad budgets, what they look at beyond ads, and what it takes to leave. Walk away from guaranteed rankings, prices quoted before anyone has seen your account, and agencies that never ask about margin.
Handing your Amazon business to an agency means handing over your largest channel, your ad budget and a lot of your brand's reputation. Most brands spend more time comparing fees than comparing how the work will actually be done. The fee matters, and we've written about how to compare agency pricing, but the questions below tell you more about how the next twelve months will go.
Ten questions to ask, and what good answers sound like
1. Who will actually work on my account?
Ask for names and roles, and whether the people on the sales call will be on your account. At larger agencies a senior team often sells the work and a junior team delivers it. That isn't automatically bad, but you should know before you sign.
A good answer names one accountable lead, explains who supports them, and tells you how many other accounts that lead manages.
2. How do you decide how much I should spend on ads?
The answer should start from your margins, not from a target ACoS someone uses for every client. The maximum you can afford to pay for a sale depends on your landed cost, your Amazon fees and your price.
A good answer asks for your cost data before giving a number. If an agency proposes a budget without asking about margins, it's guessing.
3. What will you look at besides advertising?
Advertising is one line on your P&L. Listing quality, image sets, fee accuracy, stranded inventory and reimbursements often move profit more than bid changes do. On one account we found FBA fees being charged incorrectly across several SKUs, worth about $60,000 a year, without touching the ads.
A good answer covers listings, account health and profitability as well as PPC.
4. Can I see results, with context?
Most agencies can't name clients, and that's reasonable. But every result should come with a starting point and a definition. "Grew revenue 300%" from a brand doing $2,000 a month means something different from the same figure on a $2 million brand.
A good answer tells you the starting point, the metric, and what the agency actually did.
5. How do you get paid, and what does that reward?
A percentage of ad spend rewards spend. A percentage of revenue rewards sales, not profit. A flat fee rewards efficiency. None of these is wrong, but you should understand the pull of each and how the agency guards against it.
6. What does it take to leave?
Look for the notice period, early-exit penalties and auto-renewal terms. Some agencies lock clients into 12-month terms with renewal notices of 60 to 90 days. Others use shorter terms. Ours is a three-month commitment.
7. Who owns the accounts, the data and the creative?
Your Seller Central account, advertising data, listings and the creative you've paid for should be yours, and should stay usable if the relationship ends. Ask how access works and what happens to campaign structures and creative files when you leave.
8. What will you need from me?
An agency that asks for nothing is planning to work without context. Expect to be asked for product assets, product information, brand guidelines, landed costs and margin targets, and to respond to requests within a few days.
9. What does reporting look like?
Ask to see a sample report. You want revenue against last year, PPC efficiency including TACoS, account health, and plain-language notes on what changed and why. A dashboard with no interpretation is a data dump.
10. Would you tell me if we weren't a fit?
This one is mostly about tone. An agency that takes every account will eventually give some of them less attention than they need.
Red flags that should end the conversation
- Guaranteed rankings or sales. Nobody controls Amazon's algorithm or your competitors. Confident forecasts after seeing your data are fine. Guarantees before seeing it are a sales tactic.
- A price before they've seen your account. Two brands at the same revenue can need very different amounts of work.
- No questions about margin. If profitability doesn't come up on the first call, it won't come up later.
- Reporting that only shows ACoS or ROAS. Those measure ad efficiency, not whether the business is healthier.
- Long lock-ins with auto-renewal. Good agencies keep clients by doing good work.
- Vague scope. "Full-service management" with no list of deliverables leaves you nothing to hold them to.
A simple scorecard
After each call, score the agency from 1 to 5 on each line. The totals are less important than where the low scores land.
| Area | What a 5 looks like |
|---|---|
| People | Named lead, senior, and on the sales call |
| Profit focus | Asked for your costs and talked about margin before spend |
| Scope | Written list of deliverables with quantities |
| Proof | Results with starting points and definitions |
| Terms | Clear, short commitment and no silent auto-renewal |
| Reporting | Regular, includes TACoS and plain-language commentary |
| Fit | Asked as many questions as you did |
How we'd answer these
Since it's fair to ask: at West M Products the team you meet runs your account, with one named lead who owns it end to end. We start from your unit economics, work across listings, ads, account health and fees, report every two weeks, and ask for a three-month commitment. Our results page shows each result with its starting point, and how we work covers the rest.