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Two brands. The same agency. Same monthly retainer. Same market category.

One grew revenue 47% in eight months. The other fired the agency after six months of flat performance and blamed them publicly in an Amazon Seller Central forum.

The difference might not involve the agency’s effort or expertise. It often comes down to how the brand itself manages the partnership.

Your Amazon agency is only as effective as you allow it to be. That’s uncomfortable to hear if you’re writing five-figure monthly checks and expecting results to show up automatically. But it’s true, and understanding why will determine whether your agency investment compounds or burns.

In this post, you’ll learn:

• Why treating your agency like a vendor caps your results (and what to do instead)
• The communication habits that separate high-ROI partnerships from frustrating ones
• Realistic timelines for when different optimization strategies actually pay off

The Amazon Agency “Vendor” Trap

Most brands treat their Amazon agency like a contractor. Here’s the brief, here are the assets, call me when it’s done.

This works fine for a logo design or a product photoshoot. It fails completely for ongoing performance marketing.

Amazon advertising isn’t a deliverable. It’s a continuous optimization loop that responds to your pricing decisions, your inventory levels, your competitor moves, and a dozen other variables that change weekly. A full service Amazon agency working with partial information and slow feedback will always underperform one that’s integrated into your actual business.

What Integration Actually Looks Like

The brands that get the most from agency partnerships treat them as an extension of their team. Same Slack channels, same planning sessions, and access to the numbers that matter.

The agency knows when a cash crunch is coming, when inventory is tight, when a retail deal might complicate MAP pricing. That level of integration feels uncomfortable at first. You’re paying them to handle Amazon so you don’t have to think about it, right?

But the opposite is true. The less you share, the more generic their work becomes. And generic work produces generic results.

Define What Winning Actually Looks Like

“Grow revenue” is not a strategy. Neither is “improve ROAS” or “increase market share.”

Every successful agency engagement we’ve run started with specificity. Not just topline goals, but the constraints and tradeoffs that shape how those goals get pursued.

The Questions That Matter

That means answering questions most brands never think to address upfront:

What’s your acceptable TACoS range, and how does that change between growth phases and profit phases? What’s your inventory situation for the next 90 days, and how aggressive can advertising be given restock timelines? Are you optimizing for cash flow, margin percentage, or absolute profit dollars? How does Amazon fit into your broader channel strategy, and are there wholesale or DTC considerations that limit pricing flexibility?

If you’re working with the right agency, the brands that can answer these questions clearly get campaigns built around their actual constraints. If you’re not, you might get cookie-cutter playbooks that work for someone else’s situation.

When Context Changes Everything

We had a partner last year that hadn’t told us that their supplier lead times had stretched to 14 weeks and they were running at 60% inventory coverage.

We were protecting them from stockouts they hadn’t mentioned. Once we understood their full picture, we restructured the entire account around their actual inventory reality.

Specificity creates better campaigns and faster decisions. “We’re prioritizing margin over growth for Q2 because we’re building a cash reserve for a product launch in Q3” gives your full service Amazon agency everything they need to adjust strategy. “Just make the numbers better” gives them nothing.

Communication That Actually Works

Here’s what kills agency performance faster than bad strategy: slow approvals, vague feedback, and silence.

Campaigns can easily miss their window because the brand took two weeks to approve hero image creative for Prime Day. Listing optimizations stall for a month because “let me think about it” turns into a black hole. Every day of delay in a test cycle is a day of learning you didn’t capture.

The fix isn’t complicated, but it requires intentionality.

Designate a Decider

Not someone who has to “run it up the chain” for every creative approval or budget adjustment. Someone who can say yes or no within 48 hours on routine decisions.

Establish Response Norms

If your agency sends a strategic recommendation on Monday, when should they expect feedback? If the answer is “whenever I get to it,” you’re paying for urgency you’re not enabling.

Centralize Communication

Scattered communication across email, text, Slack, and project tools creates confusion and dropped balls. Pick a channel and use it.

Give Feedback That’s Actionable

“I don’t like this creative” tells your agency nothing. “The lifestyle shot feels too casual for our premium positioning. Can we try something that emphasizes the clinical efficacy angle?” tells them exactly how to improve.

The brands that communicate well get more from the same agency hours. It’s not about being demanding. It’s about being clear.

Share the Whole Picture

Your Amazon agency needs to understand your business, not just your Amazon account.

This feels obvious when stated directly, but most brands instinctively silo their channels. Amazon is over here. DTC is over there. Retail is somewhere else. Each gets its own strategy, its own information diet.

The problem is that decisions in one channel constantly affect the others.

Cross-Channel Blindspots

A flash sale on your Shopify store can tank your Amazon conversion rate if customers discover the price difference. A retail commitment to Costco can require MAP adjustments that affect your entire advertising strategy. A cash crunch in your DTC operation might mean you need Amazon to prioritize cash flow over growth for a quarter.

What Your Agency Should Know

Tell your agency about your DTC pricing and promotional calendar. Retail and wholesale commitments that affect pricing or inventory allocation. Cash flow situations that change how aggressively you can spend. Product issues, including bad reviews, quality problems, or supply delays. Leadership changes or strategic shifts that might affect priorities.

This transparency feels vulnerable. You’re admitting constraints and problems you might prefer to hide. But the alternative is an agency making recommendations based on assumptions, then getting blamed when reality doesn’t match.

Embrace the Long Game

Most brands evaluate their agency over weeks when they should be evaluating over quarters.

Amazon optimization compounds. The listing improvements you make today affect conversion rates for months. The ranking you build through strategic advertising creates organic visibility that reduces your ad dependency over time. The customer reviews you accumulate become a competitive moat.

None of this happens in 30 days.

The DSP Patience Problem

Agency clients threatening to leave after two months because they didn’t see immediate ROI on DSP campaigns? Those same partners – after sticking with it – saw 40% improvements in new-to-brand customer acquisition over six months.

Upper-funnel advertising doesn’t convert on day one. It builds awareness that converts over weeks and months.

Realistic Timelines

Listing overhauls and conversion rate optimization: Initial data in 2-4 weeks, meaningful conclusions in 6-8 weeks.

Ranking and organic visibility gains: 3-6 months of sustained effort before compounding kicks in.

Review building and social proof: Ongoing, with meaningful accumulation over 6-12 months.

DSP and upper-funnel impact: 4-6 months minimum to measure incrementality properly.

This doesn’t mean you should stick with an underperforming agency forever. But it does mean you should set expectations appropriately upfront and evaluate based on leading indicators before lagging ones catch up.

Be the Client You’d Want to Have

The best-performing brands in our portfolio share a few characteristics:

Brands have clear goals with specific constraints articulated. They communicate quickly and give feedback that’s actionable. Information is shared proactively, including the uncomfortable stuff. They make decisions without endless committees and approval chains. They treat testing as investment, not risk, and evaluate performance over quarters, not days.

Healthy Friction Is Good

None of this requires being easy to work with in the sense of accepting mediocre work. Push back when strategies don’t make sense. Challenge assumptions. Demand explanations for recommendations. The best agency relationships have healthy friction.

But recognize that you’re not just buying services. You’re entering a partnership where your behavior directly affects outcomes.

The Hard Question

The agency that seems brilliant for one brand and incompetent for another might be exactly the same agency, receiving exactly the same effort, producing exactly the same strategies. The difference is in how the brand enabled or constrained their work.

If you’re not getting results from your current agency, ask yourself honestly: Have you given them the clarity, access, and responsiveness they need to succeed? Have you treated them like a strategic partner or like a vendor you’re trying to extract maximum value from at minimum engagement?

Sometimes the answer really is that you have a bad agency. But often the answer is that you have a capable agency operating under constraints you created.

If this resonates, let’s talk. 

We’ll audit your current Amazon setup, identify where the partnership might be breaking down, and tell you plainly whether we can fix it, or whether the problem is somewhere else entirely. 

Canopy Management delivers end-to-end eCommerce growth, leading the industry in Amazon marketplace strategy while powering expansion through Shopify, Meta, and Google. Our full-funnel approach — from marketplace optimization to customer acquisition — has generated over $3.3 billion in partner revenue and made us the trusted growth engine for brands worldwide.

Schedule a strategy session with our team to discover exactly how our proven frameworks can accelerate your growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time should I expect to spend managing my Amazon agency?

Plan for 2-4 hours weekly during the first 60-90 days as you establish rhythms, align on strategy, and build shared context. After that initial period, most brands settle into 1-2 hours weekly for approvals, feedback, and strategic discussions. The time investment decreases as mutual understanding increases.

What’s the most common mistake brands make with agency relationships?

Withholding information. Brands often share only what they think the agency “needs to know.” But decisions about inventory constraints, cash flow pressures, or cross-channel pricing directly affect advertising strategy. The more context your agency has, the better their recommendations become.

How long should I give an agency before evaluating results?

90 days minimum for meaningful evaluation, with the caveat that you should see directional progress and clear communication throughout. Major optimization initiatives like DSP campaigns or organic ranking strategies often need 6 months before ROI becomes clear. Set expectations for leading indicators (traffic, conversion rate, impression share) before expecting lagging indicators (profit, revenue growth) to move.

What should agency reporting actually include?

Beyond standard metrics (revenue, ACoS, TACoS), effective reporting explains why numbers moved and what actions drove changes. Look for reports that connect advertising decisions to outcomes, identify what’s working versus what needs adjustment, and propose next steps. If your reports are just dashboards without interpretation, you’re not getting strategic value.

When is it actually time to switch agencies?

Persistent communication problems that don’t improve after direct feedback. Strategic recommendations that consistently misunderstand your business after you’ve provided context. Lack of proactive ideas or optimization initiatives. If you’ve been a good partner and results still aren’t there after 6 months, it’s reasonable to explore alternatives.