Video Transcript:

Hey, it’s James Schwyn, Director of Business Development with Amify, here to cover my first of 3 considerations for when choosing an Amazon agency. This week I’ll be covering credibility.

So, how do you measure an Amazon agency’s credibility? Where I like to look is the background and experience of the ongoing delivery team and the onboarding process. How many years of experience do they have? Is it their first gig out of school? Do they have 5-10 years of working with different brands and accounts and troubleshooting, have they amassed that scar tissue, so you don’t have to be, you know, the painful use case in that instance.We like to also look at, do they just have ex agency people, which I think is great. They know the most innovative tools and kind of emerging practices. Do they have that coupled with brand management experience? You know, the side that’s had to drive P&L and look at eTail and retail in the entire digital ecosystem as well.One thing to look out for here is that there a few agencies that like to tout having ex Amazonians. I think that is a fantastic badge. However, just kind of prod that a little bit further. If they were working only on, you know, Alexa products probably not as relevant, but if they were a vendor manager, dealt with the advertising and DSP, there’s probably a lot of upside and value there.Layer 2 of this is the client mix, so not just from a category standpoint, but size of brand. A lot of agencies are kind of carved out niches, which is fantastic. Some agencies are really skewed towards emerging brands and launches, which is a very, you know, complex process and can be a little bit capital intensive, so you want to make sure they know how to do that.The other end of that is you’re dealing with the CPG conglomerates. They’re doing 10, 20, 50 million plus a year on that channel and that’s a very different management style. That’s a very different strategic approach.

One caveat here is while we all would love to partner with an agency that works with brands within our space, most Amazon agencies have been around for fewer than 7 years, so they might not have that breadth of you know category that you’d want, but I think the way you can circumvent this is tapping into: What is in the past agency environments of the team members? What brands do they support there? So, that might be a little bit of a workaround, just something that if you really like an agency, and your one hang up is that they haven’t supported a brand specific to your category, they can probably work around.

The last piece that I’ll close on is, what’s their proof? Not just generic case studies that every agency seems to have, but really understanding, what is it that you want to solve for and have they helped other brands in similar situations achieve that? That could be a complete creative overhaul from brand story, A+ content, the you know, digging into the product detail pages.

It could be the need to overhaul the strategic advertising approach to drive ROAS, or whatever KPIs that are really pertinent to you. It could be mitigating, you know, the rogue seller and authorized seller landscape, you know, that is creepy on Amazon. So, I think just understand what is it that you want to fix and solve for, and what have they done with brands to accomplish that?

So, I know we covered a lot. So, within credibility again, background and experience of the onboarding and delivery team, the client mix of their portfolio and size, and then lastly their proof. The case studies are pertinent to what you’re trying to solve and accomplish. Thanks again. This is a lot of fun and hope to connect again here soon.