Execution is cheap. Outcomes aren’t. A few years ago, “full-service Amazon manag
By Simon Ellicott · May 12, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Execution is cheap. Outcomes aren’t.
A few years ago, “full-service Amazon management” meant something.
You could talk about:
Campaign optimisation
Bid management
Reporting cadence
And that was enough to justify a retainer. Today, it isn’t.
Not because those things don’t matter, but because they’ve been commoditised.
Automation handles bids.
Platforms optimise continuously.
Dashboards surface performance instantly.
Execution still exists. It just no longer differentiates.
Where this becomes obvious is in client conversations.
Two agencies can do the same work… and get very different reactions.
Example 1:
“We’ll optimise your ads, manage your campaigns, and improve performance.”
Example 2:
“We’ve identified £120k in wasted spend across non-contributing SKUs.
We’ll reallocate that into high-margin products and improve contribution by 6–8% over the next quarter.”
Same account.
Same underlying activity.
Completely different value perception.
Or take a more strategic scenario.
A brand comes in with flat growth but rising spend.
An execution-led agency will:
Tweak bids
Expand keywords
Push more budget
A strategy-led agency will step back and ask:
Which SKUs actually drive profit?
Where is margin being eroded?
Are we scaling the right products at all?
The outcome might be:
Reducing spend on 40% of the catalogue
Focusing investment on the top 20% of SKUs
Improving TACoS while increasing profitability
And importantly, in a 1P context:
Ensuring sales are contributing positively to Amazon’s Net PPM
Driving the right sales mix to make the next round of AVNs easier, not harder
Again, less activity… but significantly more impact.
This is where the shift is happening.
Average agencies are still selling:
Activity
Hours
Output
Leading agencies are selling:
Commercial outcomes
Financial impact
Strategic direction
They’re not judged on how much they do ....
but on what changes as a result of what they do.
The uncomfortable truth is that most clients don’t struggle to find someone who can “run their Amazon account”.
They struggle to find someone who can:
Improve contribution margin
Fix structural inefficiencies
Make the right trade-offs across the business
So the question for any agency is simple:
If execution became free tomorrow…
what would still justify your fee?
Because that answer is no longer “we’ll do the work”.
It’s what happens because you did it.
#AmazonAgencyStrategy #Amazon #AmazonAgency
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