Amazon Brand Management Agency: What Real Management Looks Like (2026)

Most Amazon "brand management" agencies manage one thing: your PPC campaigns. They slap "full-service brand management" on their website, charge you a premium for it, and then do the same bid adjustments that a PPC-only shop does for half the price. I've onboarded dozens of brands that came from these agencies, and the story is always the same — they thought they had brand management, but nobody was actually managing their brand.

Here's what Amazon brand management actually involves, and how to tell if your agency is doing any of it.

What Does Amazon Brand Management Actually Include?

Real brand management on Amazon covers every touchpoint between your brand and the customer. It's not one function — it's an integrated system.

Catalog management — This is the foundation. Which ASINs are active? Are variations structured correctly? Are parent-child relationships clean? Are you cannibalizing your own traffic with overlapping listings? Most brands with 20+ SKUs have catalog issues they don't even know about — duplicate listings, orphaned children, variations that should be separate listings (or vice versa). Getting this wrong tanks your organic rank and fragments your review count. PPC management — Yes, this is part of it. But it's one piece, not the whole picture. PPC in a brand management context means campaigns are aligned with catalog strategy, launch sequencing, and margin targets — not just optimized in isolation. Listing optimization — Titles, bullets, images, A+ Content — all tested and updated based on performance data, not set once and forgotten. Listings decay over time as competitors improve and search behavior shifts. If your agency "optimized" your listings 8 months ago and hasn't touched them since, that's not management. Brand protection — This is where most agencies completely drop the ball. More on this below. Storefront design and maintenance — Your Amazon Storefront is your brand's home on the platform. It should be updated seasonally, reflect current promotions, and funnel traffic to your priority ASINs. A storefront built once and never updated is a missed opportunity — especially since Brand Referral Bonus rewards external traffic driven to your storefront. Review strategy — Not review manipulation — a legitimate strategy for maximizing review velocity through Vine, follow-up sequences, insert cards done correctly, and product quality feedback loops. Reviews are the lifeblood of Amazon conversion rates. Ignoring them isn't an option. Cross-channel brand consistency — Your Amazon presence should align with your DTC site, social media, and retail packaging. Brands that look like two different companies on Amazon versus everywhere else confuse customers and erode trust.

Why Is Brand Protection So Important on Amazon?

Brand protection is the most neglected part of Amazon brand management — and often the most expensive when ignored.

Hijacker monitoring: Third-party sellers jumping on your listing, undercutting your price with counterfeit or gray market inventory. If you're not monitoring for this daily, you're probably losing the Buy Box on your own listing and don't even know it. We've onboarded brands that had 3-4 unauthorized sellers on their top ASINs, siphoning sales and tanking their conversion rate. MAP enforcement: If you sell through wholesale or retail channels, resellers will undercut your Amazon price and destroy your margins. MAP monitoring and enforcement is a constant, active process — not a policy you write once and file away. Counterfeit takedowns: For brands with any scale, counterfeits are inevitable. Amazon's Brand Registry gives you tools (Project Zero, Transparency codes, Report a Violation), but someone needs to actually use them consistently. This is operational work that most agencies don't staff for because it's not glamorous and doesn't show up in PPC metrics. IP protection: Trademark monitoring, patent defense, preventing competitors from copying your listing copy and images. This requires proactive surveillance, not reactive complaints after the damage is done.

A real brand management agency treats protection as a core function, not an add-on. At GigaBrands, we monitor every listing in our portfolio for unauthorized sellers and suspicious activity because protecting revenue you already have is just as important as growing new revenue.

How Do You Know If Your Agency Is Actually Managing Your Brand?

Here's a quick diagnostic:

Ask them these questions:

• When was the last time you updated my A+ Content?

• How many unauthorized sellers are currently on my top 10 ASINs?

• What's my review velocity trend over the last 90 days?

• When did you last restructure my catalog variations?

• What does my storefront traffic look like?

If they can't answer these without "getting back to you," they're not managing your brand. They're managing your ad spend and calling it brand management.

Check the work yourself:

• Log into Brand Registry and look at your case history. Are protection cases being filed?

• Look at your storefronts. Does it reflect your current product line?

• Check your listing quality dashboard. Are there suppressed or incomplete listings?

• Review your A+ Content. Was it last updated in 2024?

The gap between what agencies say they do and what they actually do is enormous. And brand owners often don't discover it until they switch agencies and the new team runs an audit.

Why Do Most Agencies Only Do PPC and Call It Management?

Because PPC is the easiest service to systematize and the hardest for clients to evaluate. An agency can manage 200 accounts with a handful of account managers using automated rules and bid management software. The reports look professional. The metrics are clear. And the client doesn't know enough to ask "but what about everything else?"

Real brand management requires:

• Different skill sets — listing copywriters, graphic designers, brand protection specialists, catalog strategists. PPC managers can't do all of this.

• More time per account — You can't properly manage a brand in 3 hours per week. The economics don't work at the rates most agencies charge.

• Proactive work — PPC is largely reactive (adjust based on data). Brand management requires proactive initiatives — storefront redesigns, A+ Content refreshes, variation restructuring, launch planning.

The agencies that actually do full-service brand management charge more because it costs more to deliver. If an agency is offering "comprehensive brand management" for $1,500/month, they're either losing money or (more likely) they're not doing most of what they claim.

What Should You Expect from a Brand Management Agency?

At GigaBrands, here's what brand management looks like in practice for our portfolio:

• Weekly: Search term negation, bid adjustments, hijacker checks, performance monitoring

• Biweekly: Listing performance review, A/B test analysis, competitive intelligence review

• Monthly: Full account review, strategy alignment, reporting with actual insights (not just data dumps)

• Quarterly: A+ Content refresh evaluation, storefront updates, catalog restructuring review, brand health assessment

• Ongoing: Brand protection monitoring, review strategy execution, inventory coordination

That's what "management" means — a continuous operating system for your brand on Amazon, not a set of campaigns running on autopilot.

What To Do Next

If you're doing $50K+/month on Amazon and suspect your current agency isn't actually managing your brand, get a second opinion. We'll audit your account and tell you exactly what's being done and what's being ignored.

Book a free strategy call — We'll review your listings, brand protection status, catalog structure, and PPC setup. You'll walk away knowing exactly where the gaps are, whether you work with us or not.

Hunter Harris is the founder of GigaBrands, an AI-assisted Amazon growth agency managing 50+ brands with over $205M in total Amazon sales.