Agency VS In-House: Why Hire an Amazon Marketing Agency Partner?

Amazon presents both powerful opportunities and complex challenges for brands seeking online growth. Today’s sellers face a number of marketplace threats, including:

• Inflation squeezing profit margins
• Price elasticity
• Cheaper alternative products gaining visibility
• Increased marketing investment by competitors
• Rise of “unbranded” competitive products utilizing black-hat tactics
• Amazon’s growing fees
• Rapid platform changes requiring constant adoption
• Reseller management challenges affecting product control
• Consistency of brand presentation across all listings

In this ever-changing marketplace landscape, brands looking to not just maintain sales but grow significantly demand dedicated marketplace expertise, resources, and agility in their strategic approach to the platform. As a result, many brands are turning to agency partners to manage their Amazon presence. Agency partners offer valuable resources for both emerging and established brands looking to level-up their Amazon strategy. The right agency partnership can significantly increase a brand’s market share, brand visibility, improve storytelling and product education, optimize product page content and reviews, and ultimately drive substantial sales growth. For brands ready to transform their Amazon marketing performance, the question becomes not if they need specialized expertise, but where that expertise should come from.

Why Brands Hesitate to Hire an Agency Partner

Despite the obvious advantages to hiring an Amazon agency, many brands hesitate when considering whether to invest in an external agency partnership. First, the financial investment to hiring an agency is substantial, and requires both trust on behalf of the brand and capital commitment. Second, the agency marketplace is saturated with tons of options—from full-service partners like Brandwoven to smaller, niche agencies to independent contractors—making the selection process overwhelming, especially for brands with small teams or budgets. These complexities to the agency hiring process can lead brand decision-makers to halt investment; perhaps their brand was doing “just fine” on Amazon and the challenges surrounding the act of hiring feel daunting.

This hesitation is understandable. Transitioning from in-house marketing to an agency partnership represents a significant shift in resource allocation and marketplace management strategy. It’s a decision that demands thoughtful consideration of current Amazon performance, growth goals, and available resources. The right choice for your brand requires an honest assessment of your specific needs and goals.

Why Hire an Amazon Marketing Agency?

Operational Efficiency

Working with an Amazon agency will make your marketplace operations more efficient. Clearly communicated expectations between both parties create a foundation of reliability—you’ll always have someone to answer questions and address concerns promptly. A single point of contact creates accountability, allowing your in-house team to focus on other business responsibilities. This partnership investment translates directly to improved ROI and marketplace profitability.

Dedicated Amazon Training and Support

Amazon agency partners provide valuable knowledge transfer through ongoing training and support, sharing marketplace best practices and keeping you informed of platform changes and competitor strategies. At Brandwoven, our 1:1 client to staff ratio ensures we comprehensively understand your product, process, and people—creating truly customized strategies rather than generic checklist approaches.

Reliable Amazon Problem-Solving

Marketplaces like Amazon are constantly changing, making it easy for issues to arise if not kept a close eye on. The value of partnering with an Amazon agency becomes more apparent as these issues emerge. Agency partners offer realistic solutions to common challenges that would otherwise consume in-house marketing resources. This proactive approach prevents minor issues from becoming major ones, maintaining marketplace momentum. By entrusting these responsibilities to Amazon specialists at an external marketing agency, your in-house team can shift focus from tactical execution to high-level decision-making.

When To Hire an Amazon Agency Partner

Assess Current Amazon Performance

Determining the optimal time to transition from in-house marketing to agency partnership requires an honest assessment of your current Amazon presence.

1. Evaluate your listing structure—is it optimized for both visibility and conversion?
2. Examine your visual assets—do your graphics, branding, and product images present a cohesive, professional appearance that resonates with today’s consumers? Does it match your brand messaging and presentation on other channels?
3. Analyze your market position—are your sales growing or have they plateaued, or even reduced? Do you consistently win the buy box, or are competitors, unauthorized resellers, and direct imports eroding your market share?
4. Review your advertising strategy—is your budget appropriately allocated to high-performing keywords that drive ready-to-convert traffic to your product listings?

These questions will reveal whether your current approach is working or if specialized Amazon expertise will propel your brand forward.

Expectations for the Agency Transition

The transition to agency management represents an investment that extends beyond financial considerations—it requires dedicated time and effort from both parties. Success depends on reliably accurate knowledge transfer, clear communication of priorities, and ongoing relationship management to support the partnership. Brands that recognize this upfront will be positioned to reap the greatest benefits whereas brands that approach the agency partnership transition process as a simple handoff of responsibilities will have misaligned expectations.

Address In-House Needs with an Agency Partner

Not all agencies offer the same services or specialize in the same marketplace platforms. For example, when Brandwoven was formerly Run AMZ, we mainly offered Amazon management services but now also assist brands on Walmart, Target, Instacart, and other platforms.

Identify gaps in your in-house marketing team’s capabilities – these are the skills your Amazon agency partner should fill. If you lack in-house graphic design resources, for example, partner with an agency that offers digital merchandising capabilities. Similarly, if your current advertising strategy is underperforming, an agency with marketing expertise would be a good partnership investment.

Full-service agencies focus on all aspects of your Amazon performance to ensure they work in tandem (for example, your promotional & deal strategy should align with your inventory capabilities). Brandwoven offers all of these marketplace services for brands across all product industries and utilizes a custom approach for each client; if you only need advertising services, that’s what we’ll partner with you on, but if you need advertising and digital merchandising capabilities we can adjust our approach to provide your brand with exactly the services it needs to succeed on marketplace.

Partner with Brandwoven for Amazon Management

Dedicated Agency Team

In partnering with Brandwoven for Amazon management, we’ll provide your brand a dedicated team committed fully to your growth. We have specialized expertise in every area that impacts Amazon performance. We focus relentlessly on optimizing your product assortment to achieve category dominance, ensure product availability through accurate forecasting models, and implement strategic pricing, coupon, and advertising strategies tailored to your target audience. Our holistic approach to marketplace management is a cohesive force that drives measurable growth for our brand partners.

Analytics that Tell a Story

We recognize that numbers alone tell an incomplete story. We know that data is meaningless without understanding what it means, why it matters, and what actions it prompts. We recognize the interconnected relationship of various Amazon metrics—how lost buy box impacts purchase orders, which influences organic search placement. This understanding drives our ASIN-specific analyses and improvement.

We transform data into action by evaluating all available sources to determine the comprehensive story it tells about your Amazon performance. We then identify the root causes behind the patterns we observe. Finally, we identify specific corrective actions, assigning clear next steps and recommendations for when they should be implemented. Our structured approach ensures that every data point and takeaway drives improvements for your Amazon brand.

In-Housing Services

We recognize that building a stable in-house Amazon marketing team can be extremely challenging for most brands as it requires years of know-how and certain systems and technology to maintain. Our agency model provides immediate access to a depth and breadth of specialized talent that would otherwise require years and significant investment in to develop internally. For brands seeking to build in-house capabilities, we offer transition services that combine performance improvement with knowledge transfer and team development. Our flexible approach ensures you receive maximum value whether you envision a long-term agency partnership or a path toward enhanced internal capabilities.