I feel like I know what types of brands Amazon wants on the platform nowadays. They want brands that churn through inventory, re-load, then sell through that batch while gearing up for the next shipment. They want to see upward trajectory and advanced planning for peak sales periods like Prime Day/ Week, and Cyber 5 in November. 

If you’re not scaling up, you’re slipping down.  Amazon is not worried about who works with what agency, as long as you sell more year over year.  They want enough revenue growth to warrant showcasing you at conferences like Accelerate, not to understand how you operate (or don’t) internally. They want to offer you bonus features that boost your sales higher while others in your category plummet like stones. Many successful brands that we hear from do work with agencies, of course. Whenever revenue jumps up, both sides are happy.  

Some come to us because their agencies don’t specialize in our type of appeals services, and other times the agency itself makes an attempt, then hires us on to finish the escalation process.  It works, and it’s a win. Escalations aren’t for everybody.  

After policy warnings are appealed or a listing or the entire account gets reinstated, brand owners often query us about the agency they’re using. It’s obvious from the get-go: they are wondering if they should switch.  We’re not in competition with agencies, and we’ve been around for over a decade, so it’s not a shock. They value our viewpoint. 

Common Friction Between Brands and Agencies

Most of the time, brands cite lower than expected sales, disagreements over strategies, and occasionally, their current agency overreaches with compliance guidelines in order to convert additional sales. As we all know, a short term gain get erased with any long term suspension. We advise accordingly depending on the listing policy guidance, shaky product review promotion or anything the brand may be wary of. I can understand why some mistakes happen: if you think you’re losing a client, you may be willing to try anything.

On the other hand, numerous brands receive great guidance from agencies and don’t apply it or listen long enough to make sales gains a reality. And others change their minds often enough to the point where no strategy requiring consistency will work.  Still others may try a hybrid approach, matching some of what they liked from past agency work with current agency ideas. Unless both strategies merge seamlessly and everything fires on all cylinders, it’s unlikely to produce the bump they’re looking for. 

In short, we examine all sides of the equation and try to determine what the answer to each brand riddle is. How each brand can fix how they operate to both grow sales and maintain compliance? Let’s ask an agency.

I know people adore case studies, so I spoke to an agency owner about one case they turned around, from weak sales into success stories. I asked Keith Hartnett of Better World Products, who I met four years ago at one of our Seller Velocity Conferences, what he encountered in his initial assessment on a recent brand. And how did his agency achieve the growth and success the client wanted all along? 

Interview with an Agency Who Turned a Brand Around 

Keith said he was referred to a new client by a current client of his. The newly signed brand had previously worked with a large agency to accelerate sales on Amazon, but to no avail. This particular brand in the Pet Supplies category  didn’t like their lack of progress and changed things around. 

What Went Wrong:

Where does any search for the truth begin? I asked Keith what his initial assessment involved and what he uncovered.  

By his description, the brand had invested thousands of dollars a month, without getting anywhere. Not only was their catalog a mess after working with the other agency for seven months, but that agency dedicated “over $4500 ad spend in a single month, only to see $5500 in total sales (not just ad sales).” Why would they do that?

It represented a desperate attempt to make something happen.

I understood it to be a possible need to prove themselves early on, in order to keep the client.  Agencies are looking to gain new clients, not shed current ones. 

But, as I asked Keith, how is a short term approach suitable for a long term problem? 

Keith replied, “As a small business, they could not afford to lose almost $5k/month in ad spend and agency fees, so they needed a financially sustainable model.” No one wants to spend $5k only to lose traction.

How does one solve a critical advertising issue without killing all sales in the interim? 

Keith described his process for assessing the financials and analyzing every step needed to make the brand profitable:

“We understood their cogs and profitability on a SKU level and, after combining that with the current ad performance, listing quality, conversion rates and their leftover margin after all fees, we determined what was a healthy ad spend level for them.

As they are a small company, we restructured our normal services and gave them a low base fee/high commission structure until they get to the size where they could afford our normal minimums.”

In this particular case, he brought ad spend down by over 75%. The other agency had been spending on several poorly optimized listings, possibly set-up hastily or without proper consideration. Then, the agency advertised way too aggressively. Keith and his team got them above B/E in a month while only losing around 40% of total sales. He continued, “The next month we kept that same sales level with a 10% margin.”

What happened on ad campaigns to make them so unprofitable or counter productive? I hear a lot about wasted ad spend and “messy”  campaigns from brand owners. In this case, it meant lacking precision where it’s needed most. 

Keith went on, “Effective, scalable Amazon Advertising management equals targeting a single SKU, using single keyword/target campaigns. This allows you to effectively scale performance and dial down what's not working. The prior campaigns had tons of SKUs and keywords and match types all shoved into the same ones, which is a lazy and unprofessional way of setting up campaigns. A setup like this makes it impossible to truly know what's going on or to be able to optimize budgets, placements, and audiences in the campaign effectively.”

In other words, he had to restructure the advertising system for better efficiency and control and do fresh keyword research. That upgraded look resulted in long-tail keyword options that could be profitably advertised on, tackling the short term concerns.

I assumed that after the most pressing or immediate problems were solved, his agency put together and implemented a long-term strategic plan, and I was right. This is where they focus:

“We came up with a new catalog strategy and Parent/Child setup to make it TOS compliant while maximizing conversion, cross-sell and discovery opportunities.”  Their listing optimization workflow had identified overuse of way too many keywords listings, a poor attention to detail, and an overall “slapped together” looking strategy.”

In his view and with most of the brands he takes on, the “story with ads is usually the same.”

In general, where do you look for problems, when you take over from another brand? 

- Poor campaign structure

- No actual ad strategy (spray and pray approach, usually)

- Not measuring profitability on a SKU level (just using basic KPIs like ACOS/ROAS)

- Inconsistent or non-existent optimization workflow 

If you’re a brand owner, how are you strategizing all of the above moves? Are you doing it in-house, or with an agency currently? Thinking of making a change? 

Let us know what questions you ask, because any serious attempt to change poor performance or bad choices usually begins with addressing those first.