Overview

Amazon agency professionals know that scaling a marketplace agency comes with unique challenges—from finding the right talent to tracking Amazon advertising profitability and ensuring all parts of the business work in sync. In an episode MerchantSpring webinar, Oscar Barbarin (Managing Director at Hawke Media and founder of Amazon agency ARMR) shared valuable insights on how his team achieved growth. This article distills those insights into actionable strategies for scaling an Amazon agency, including recruiting top talent (like former Amazon employees), shifting to Total Profit on Ad Spend (TPOAS) as a key metric, and integrating marketing, sales, and operations planning. Read on to learn these Amazon agency best practices and how to apply them to your own business.

Recruiting Top Talent: Why Hiring Ex-Amazon Employees Jumpstarts Your Agency

One of the first challenges in scaling an Amazon agency is hiring talent that truly understands the Amazon ecosystem. Oscar Barbarin’s initial strategy was to hire former Amazon employees (ex-Amazonians) exclusively for client-facing roles. The reasoning was simple: Amazon’s marketplace operates differently from traditional retail, and those who have worked at Amazon have “underst[ood] the nuances of e-commerce compared to traditional retail”(podcast.merchantspring.io). Former Amazonians have first-hand experience with Amazon’s systems and culture, which means they already speak the language of Seller Central, Vendor Central, and Amazon’s retail metrics. This drastically shortens the learning curve for new hires managing brand relationships on Amazon.

“People who can survive a year at Amazon are tough — they can get punched in the face and come back smiling the next day.” – Oscar Barbarin, on hiring ex-Amazon professionals for his team

Ex-Amazon employees brought instant credibility and capability to Oscar’s agency. They knew how to navigate Amazon’s fast-paced, data-driven environment and could handle the pressure that comes with managing large brand accounts. In practical terms, this meant these hires were adept at dealing with the quirks of Amazon’s marketplace – from understanding the impact of ACoS and TACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales and Total Advertising Cost of Sales) on a brand’s business, to communicating why a pricing strategy that works in brick-and-mortar retail might fail on Amazon. Their insider perspective helped the agency avoid common pitfalls and educate clients on Amazon best practices from day one.

Just as importantly, hiring ex-Amazon talent set a high bar for the agency’s culture and performance. Amazon’s own culture is known for being demanding and fast-moving. Those who thrived there tend to be resilient, analytical, and customer-obsessed – traits that are invaluable in an agency setting. By bringing these traits into his team, Oscar ensured a level of professionalism and problem-solving ability that clients noticed. As he noted, Amazon hires in the early 2010s often had strong retail backgrounds (pricing, couponing, supply chain timing) that translated well to managing marketplace operations(inbeat.coglobaloverview.com). This gave the agency a competitive advantage in helping brands transition from traditional retail thinking to Amazon-first strategies.

However, there are trade-offs to this hiring strategy. Former Amazon managers command higher salaries – making it an expensive way to build an organisation. Agency owners must plan for higher payroll costs and ensure the revenue supports it. Additionally, Amazonians are attractive hires for any e-commerce company, so poaching and turnover were real issues. “We had people getting recruited away, because they had a good, large company on their resume and then agency experience,” Oscar shared. He admitted it was tough emotionally to see his early team members leave for other opportunities, but he learned to expect turnover as part of growth. In fact, many employees boomeranged back after stints elsewhere (for example, some left for Amazon aggregator startups during the boom, then returned when that wave cooled off). The lesson? Accept that good people may leave – focus on building an agency culture that people want to come back to.

Building a Resilient Team Culture (With No Room for Egos or Lies)

Hiring talented people is only half the battle; retaining them and enabling them to thrive is equally important. Oscar emphasises building an agency culture with “no lying and no A-holes” allowed. In interviews and onboarding, he set the tone with two strict policies: integrity and teamwork. “We cannot tolerate a liar,” he said, “because it wastes our time. No matter how bad a situation is, we have to start from a place of truth to solve it.” Likewise, the “no A-hole policy” meant there’s no room for toxic egos or internal sabotage. The work at an Amazon agency is challenging enough due to external pressures; internal culture should be a supportive “positive energy” that keeps people motivated(salesduo.com).

Oscar’s team operated with an understanding that each person lives in four worlds – the client’s world, the agency’s world, their home life, and their own headspace. He encouraged his managers to be empathetic to all four. For instance, when an account manager jumped from a celebratory client call to another client who was unhappy and panicking, they had to adapt their approach and attitude instantly. By emphasising empathy and honesty, the agency created an environment where problems are confronted openly and solved collaboratively, rather than hidden or shifted blame. This kind of culture was especially welcoming for ex-Amazon folks who might have found Amazon’s internal competition intense – at Oscar’s firm, the mantra was that the agency should be a positive, supportive world for employees, not another source of stress.

To maintain this culture and manage costs, Oscar implemented a blended team structure: former Amazonians filled client-facing and strategic roles, while a skilled offshore team handled heavy operational tasks like catalogue management, listing creation, purchase order processing, and demand planning. This offshore team (based in lower-cost regions such as Asia and later Latin America for advertising talent) allowed the agency to scale services without proportionally scaling expenses. While the ex-Amazon experts in the U.S. or Europe might be costly, pairing each with offshore support created efficiency. The offshore staff were often very experienced with Amazon tools (some had worked for Amazon sellers or vendor support teams), even if they weren’t Amazon employees themselves. They could execute the day-to-day tasks and feed data to the strategists, who in turn focused on higher-level client communication and strategy.

This hybrid approach struck a balance between quality and cost-effectiveness. It’s a model many Amazon agencies use to remain profitable: leverage onshore experts for client trust and strategy, and offshore specialists for 24/7 execution and monitoring. Furthermore, as Amazon’s own hiring shifted over the years (fewer retail category managers after 2015 and more program managers(bebolddigital.com)(designrush.com), the pool of ex-Amazonians with deep retail marketplace knowledge shrank. Oscar acknowledges that what worked in 2014 might not work as well today for hiring, because Amazon’s talent pipeline has changed. Thus, he broadened his recruitment to include paid search and digital marketing experts (not necessarily ex-Amazon) for roles like Amazon advertising management. In fact, he found excellent Amazon PPC talent in South and Central America, where professionals had strong digital marketing backgrounds and could be cost-effective hires compared to U.S. candidates(salesduo.com).

Key takeaway: As you scale your agency, invest in talent who deeply understand Amazon, even if they cost more, to set a strong foundation. But also build an internal culture of trust and collaboration so those A-players stay and grow with you. Use offshore or remote teams to extend your capabilities cost-effectively, and don’t be afraid to evolve your hiring criteria as the Amazon landscape changes. Finally, plan financially for hiring – Oscar suggests finding alternative revenue streams to fund new hires before your client revenue alone can support them. In his case, operating a product distribution business on the side provided extra cash flow to hire and train his team in the early years.

“If you can find some other trickle of cash, it can be so powerful in allowing you to get those first couple hires that then allow you to really delegate out,”

he advises. This foresight can make the difference in breaking through the growth plateau when you’re stuck doing everything yourself.

Beyond ROAS: Focusing on Total Profit on Ad Spend (TPOAS) to Drive Profitability

Scaling an Amazon agency isn’t just about growing headcount – it’s also about growing client performance and profitability. A common trap is focusing too narrowly on advertising metrics like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) or ACoS. While these metrics measure ad efficiency, they don’t tell the whole story of a brand’s success. Oscar Barbarin advocates shifting the focus to Total Profit on Ad Spend (TPOAS) – essentially, looking at actual profit generated for every dollar of ad spend, rather than just revenue or ACoS percentage. This echoes a broader industry trend where savvy Amazon sellers and agencies are moving from pure ROAS to POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) as a KPI(reddit.com)(airboxr.com).

The rationale is straightforward: an ad campaign isn’t truly successful unless it’s driving profitable growth. An impressive ROAS (say 5:1) might hide the fact that margins are razor-thin or even negative after Amazon fees, cost of goods, and other expenses. By calculating profit per unit and factoring that into ad strategy, agencies can optimise for what really matters – the bottom line. Oscar noted that brands who have mastered this unit economics approach can do things that seem almost magical to less sophisticated competitors. For example, a brand might run a 15% off promotion on Amazon, increase ad bids, and still come out ahead in profit because they modelled the entire scenario beforehand. They knew the unit profit at the discounted price, the ad spend needed, the expected conversion rate, and even the extra units they’d sell – all part of a plan to maximise total profit, not just sales volume.

“Just like we moved from ACoS to TACoS for a wider view, now we must shift from ROAS to focus on total profit on ad spend.” – Oscar Barbarin, on adopting TPOAS as a core metric

To implement TPOAS, start by building a unit economics model for each SKU in every marketplace and region you sell. This is essentially a mini P&L for one unit of a product, accounting for: item price (which may differ by marketplace), Amazon fees (referral fee, FBA fees or storage, etc.), cost of goods, shipping costs, duties for international markets, and an allocated marketing cost. Some values will be exact (COGS, Amazon fees), and some can be percentage placeholders (e.g. aim for no more than 10% of price spent on ads, or 5% set aside for promotions). The goal is to establish a target profit per unit for that SKU on that channel.

For example, you might determine that after all costs, a particular product should earn $5 profit per unit on Amazon US at a $25 price point, with 10% ($2.50) of that going to advertising. That same item in Europe might have higher fees and taxes, so the price is set higher, such that it also nets about $5 profit after perhaps $3 of advertising. By doing this across the board, your client can be “agnostic about where the unit is sold” – it won’t matter if the sale happened on Amazon US, Amazon UK, or their own D2C site, because each channel is calibrated to deliver a similar profit per unit. Reaching this state reduces channel conflict and tough allocation decisions; the brand can then simply chase growth wherever it’s most effective, confident that incremental sales are profitable sales.

Adopting a TPOAS mindset requires breaking down internal silos between marketing and finance. Agencies should educate their clients (and team members) on how ad spend, pricing, and profitability intersect. It might mean involving a fractional CFO or using tools to integrate Amazon Advertising data with cost of goods and fee data. The good news is that the capabilities to do this integration of data “from marketing all the way through demand planning and shipping” now exist more than ever. Amazon’s advertising reports can be combined with business reports, and with the help of analytics platforms (like MerchantSpring’s analytics platform or other BI tools), you can calculate Profit per SKU per campaign. By monitoring TPOAS, you’ll quickly see which campaigns or products are truly accretive to profit and which are burning money for vanity metrics.

Oscar points out that some sophisticated brands have already figured out TPOAS-centric optimisation – and when they have, they tend to outperform competitors who are still chasing pure sales or ROAS. Those brands can make better decisions faster, such as cutting an ad that’s generating sales but little profit, or doubling down on a campaign that has slightly lower ROAS but yields higher net profits due to bigger basket sizes or repeat purchases. This is where considering lifetime value (LTV) alongside TPOAS comes in. Oscar suggests looking at roughly a 12-month customer lifetime value for Amazon customers.

If you acquire a customer via ads today, how much profit will that customer generate over the next year? Folding that into your TPOAS calculation can give you a more strategic view of ad spend. For instance, you might accept a break-even or slight loss on the first purchase (negative immediate TPOAS) if you know that the customer’s repeat purchases in the year will bring in $50 more profit. In such a case, the total profit on ad spend for that customer over 12 months is very positive, even if the first-touch ROAS was poor. This kind of longer-term, profitability-focused thinking is what separates agencies that help clients truly scale versus those stuck optimising for the wrong metric.

In summary, Amazon agencies should elevate their KPIs: keep an eye on ACoS and ROAS, but prioritise POAS/TPOAS as the guiding star. Train your account managers and ad specialists to think like CFOs. When you pitch to clients, talk about profit and contribution margin, not just “we can get you a 4x ROAS”. This not only sets you apart as a strategic partner but also ensures your efforts tangibly improve the client’s bottom line. As margin pressures on Amazon increase (due to rising ad costs, fees, and competition), this approach will become not just advisable but necessary.

Aligning Marketing, Sales, and Operations: The MSOP Framework for Amazon Agencies

Another advanced strategy discussed in the webinar is improving cross-team alignment through what Oscar calls a marketing, sales, and operations planning process (you might think of it as integrated S&OP for e-commerce). In traditional businesses, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a process where the sales forecasts are aligned with supply chain and production plans. In the context of Amazon and e-commerce, your “sales team” is effectively your marketing team – they create the demand through advertising, promotions, and content. This means that marketing plans must be tightly integrated with operations and inventory from the get-go.

Oscar recommends a top-down planning approach for each client or brand: start by having leadership (or the client) commit to a marketing budget for a defined period (e.g. the next quarter or year). This annual or quarterly ad budget is the fuel in the engine. From there, work through a series of connected plans:

1. Traffic Plan: Using the budget and historical data, estimate how much traffic (sessions/clicks) that spend can drive. For instance, if last year $100,000 in ad spend yielded 1 million clicks, that gives a baseline. Factor in any changes in CPC or plans to improve click-through rate with better creatives. The goal is to translate dollars into eyeballs on your products.
   
   
2. Conversion Plan: Take the expected traffic and apply an expected conversion rate (which you can derive from past performance or industry benchmarks). This tells you roughly how many orders or unit sales you’ll get from that traffic. For example, 1 million clicks at a 10% conversion rate would be 100,000 orders.
   
   
3. Inventory/Operations Plan: Now bring in the operations team. 100,000 orders of what? Break down the forecast by product SKU (perhaps your ad budget is split across product lines). If each order contains an average of 2.5 units, that’s 250,000 units that need to be ready to ship. Work backwards to ensure production or procurement can supply that. If lead times are long, the operations team needs to know now what to produce in the coming months. Additionally, ensure your fulfillment centers (FBA or 3PL) are prepared to handle the volume, and that you won’t run into storage constraints or stockouts. This is classic S&OP, but now explicitly driven by the marketing plan.
   
   
4. Financial Plan: Finally, loop back to the financials (which connects to the TPOAS model). Validate that the projected sales, at the planned discounts or ad spend levels, still meet profit targets. If not, iterate on the plan – maybe the ad budget needs adjusting or the promotion calendar needs tweaking to avoid unprofitable sales. The beauty of this integrated approach is it forces trade-off decisions to be made before they become problems. For example, if the plan shows that a certain product will be unprofitable with a planned 20% discount, you can change that plan now rather than finding out after the money is spent.
   
   

In practice, implementing such an MSOP (Marketing, Sales & Operations Planning) process in an agency setting requires tight communication. Oscar revealed that at his agency, a lot of the integration happened in the person of the Account Manager. The account manager acted as the hub between different specialist teams: the advertising/PPC team, the inventory/demand planning team, the content/listing team, etc. They used internal ticketing systems and regular check-ins between team leads to keep everyone on the same page(salesduo.com).

For instance, if the marketing team plans a big Mother’s Day campaign, the account manager coordinates with the operations lead to ensure inventory is positioned, and with the content lead to ensure the product detail pages have the right banners or badges. While some larger agencies or brands might formalise this into cross-department meetings (akin to S&OP meetings), smaller agencies can start with the account manager playing general manager for the account. This requires an agile, communicative culture (tying back to the earlier point about no silos and no egos). Everyone needs to understand the overarching plan and their role in executing it.

“The last thing you want is to start driving awareness or discussions about something that you can’t make or that’s unprofitable.” – Oscar Barbarin, on the importance of aligning marketing with operational reality

In essence, marketing-sales-ops alignment is about speaking with one voice to the consumer and delivering on that promise. If your ads are pushing a “20% off, limited-time offer” but the operations team didn’t make enough stock, you’ll stock out and kill your organic ranking momentum. If the ops team produced a surplus of units expecting a big Q4 push, but marketing didn’t spend enough on ads, you’ll be left with excess inventory and high storage fees. Alignment prevents these scenarios. It also creates a feedback loop: sales data informs marketing if conversion assumptions were off (maybe you need to improve content to hit the 10% conversion goal), and operations data (like rising fulfillment costs) inform marketing to possibly adjust free shipping thresholds or pricing.

For Amazon agencies, adopting an MSOP framework can differentiate your service. It elevates you from being just “ad managers” or “listing optimisers” to being strategic partners in the client’s business planning. You can run quarterly business reviews not just on advertising performance, but on holistic business performance: “Here was the plan, here’s how sales and in-stock rates tracked to it, here’s what we’ll adjust next quarter.” Brands value this level of insight. It also naturally leads to upselling your services – if you’re already deep in inventory planning conversations, it’s easy to justify additional fees for that work, or to introduce tools and solutions (for example, inventory management software or analytics dashboards) as part of your offering.

To start implementing this, you don’t need a fancy system right away. A shared spreadsheet or cloud planning tool can capture the marketing budget and resulting ops plan. Schedule a recurring monthly meeting between your account managers, advertising lead, and any ops or supply chain contacts on the client side. Over time, you can develop templates and standard operating procedures for this integrated planning. The result will be fewer surprises and emergencies, smoother campaigns, and ultimately happier clients because everyone is marching in the same direction with clear expectations.

Conclusion: Putting It All Together for Sustainable Agency Growth

Scaling an Amazon agency requires a deliberate blend of people, process, and metrics. By hiring smart (and sometimes paying more for) experienced Amazon talent and reinforcing a culture of trust and collaboration, you build a team capable of delivering top-tier service. By shifting your focus from surface-level metrics like ROAS to profit-centric metrics (TPOAS) and mastering each client’s unit economics, you ensure that your efforts drive meaningful growth for your clients’ bottom line. And by aligning marketing plans with operational execution through integrated planning, you eliminate the left-hand/right-hand disconnect that derails so many e-commerce initiatives. These strategies are what differentiate an ordinary agency from a marketplace leader.

As you implement these best practices, remember that growth is a journey. Adaptation is key: the Amazon marketplace will continue to evolve with new challenges (from algorithm changes to supply chain disruptions). But with an expert yet agile team, a focus on profitability, and tightly run operations, your agency will be well-equipped to navigate whatever comes next in the world of Amazon. As Oscar Barbarin wisely noted, don’t fear team turnover or new investments – if you create an environment where people grow and you plan intelligently, good people may leave, but even better ones will join, and some will return with even more experience.

Ready to take your Amazon agency to the next level? MerchantSpring can help you get there. As a leading marketplace analytics and reporting platform for agencies, MerchantSpring provides the visibility and automation you need to monitor profitability and performance across all your clients. Book a demo to see how MerchantSpring’s tools can streamline your reporting and highlight the metrics that matter, from sales and traffic to profitability per SKU. And if you found these insights useful, subscribe to our newsletter for more expert Amazon agency content and watch the full webinar replay for a deeper dive into these topics. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to transform your agency with data-driven strategies – schedule your MerchantSpring demo today and set your business on the path to scalable growth.