Budget six to eight weeks. Two weeks of overlap, two weeks for the new team to audit and plan, and two to four weeks before performance stabilizes. The three real risks are a stockout during handover, lost campaign learning, and both agencies changing things at once.
The short version
- Six to eight weeks from notice to stable, not the 30-day notice period.
- Overlap the agencies by two weeks. Worth paying twice for.
- Biggest risk is a stockout, because it costs ranking that took months to build.
- Second risk is lost campaign learning. Export before you give notice.
- Freeze major changes for two weeks so the new team has a baseline.
The timeline
I run Flapen with 50 operators managing about 70 brands, and our onboarding assumes an incoming account rather than a blank one.
| Week | What happens | Risk to watch |
|---|---|---|
| −2 to 0 | Collect assets, then give notice | Asking after notice, not before |
| 1 | Both agencies active. Knowledge transfer | Nobody owning decisions |
| 2 | New team audits. Old team documents | Inventory decisions falling through |
| 3 | Old access revoked. Priority plan approved | Changing everything at once |
| 4 | Execution starts on top blockers | Judging results too early |
| 5 to 6 | Ad learning recovers, rankings stabilize | Panic at a temporary dip |
| 7 to 8 | New baseline established | None. Now you can judge |
Weeks 1 and 2: the overlap
Pay both for two weeks. It is the cheapest insurance in the process.
The value is not documentation, it is the questions. A new team reading the account generates questions nobody thought to write down: why this keyword is negated, why that variation is priced differently, why a campaign was paused in March. Those answers exist only in the outgoing team's heads and only while they are still engaged.
Weeks 3 and 4: the freeze
Resist letting the new agency restructure immediately. Early activity feels like progress and destroys the baseline against which their work would be judged.
The right sequence is audit, then a prioritized plan you approve, then execution. Our onboarding runs a full audit in week one across listing quality, primary image click-through rate, conversion rate, ad performance, traffic channel activation, pricing, and return rate, and nothing changes until the plan is signed off.
Weeks 5 to 8: recovery
Expect a dip. Ad algorithms respond to structural change, some learning restarts, and organic ranking lags. Most accounts show measurable ACoS improvement within the first 30 days of new management, but the total picture takes longer.
Do not judge the switch inside six weeks. Judge it at day 90 against the baseline you recorded before notice.
The three risks that actually bite
Stockout during handover. The most damaging and the most preventable. Inventory decisions fall between two teams, each assuming the other is watching. A stockout costs ranking that took months and real money to build, and recovering it costs more than the inventory would have.
Assign inventory to one named person for the entire transition, in writing, and confirm reorder dates before notice is given.
Lost campaign learning. Campaign history is months of accumulated knowledge about which keywords convert at which bid, bought with your ad budget. If campaigns were built inside the outgoing agency's tooling, the history may not transfer cleanly even with full cooperation. Export structure, bids, and negative keyword lists before you give notice.
Both teams changing things. In week one, with two agencies active, it is unclear who can pause a campaign or adjust a price. Write down who owns which decision for each of the two overlap weeks. One owner per decision, no exceptions.
What to record before you start
- Current organic rankings for your top keywords.
- Buy Box percentage by product.
- Cost of customer acquisition and organic share of revenue.
- Conversion rate and return rate per product.
- Inventory cover in weeks and pending shipment dates.
Without this baseline you will not be able to answer, in three months, whether switching helped. Most sellers skip it and then argue with themselves about it later.
What most agencies will not tell you
The incoming agency has an incentive to find the previous work terrible, because it lowers the bar and makes early improvements look larger. Some of that critique is real and some is positioning. The way to tell is whether the criticism comes with a specific number from your account or a general statement about best practice.
The outgoing agency, meanwhile, has no incentive left at all. That is why the collection phase belongs before notice rather than after.
The last thing: a transition is a bad time to also launch a product, change suppliers, or reprice a catalog. Sellers often bundle changes to make the disruption feel worthwhile, which guarantees nobody can attribute the outcome to anything.
Related answers
- Checklist for changing Amazon agency smoothly
- How to migrate campaigns between Amazon agencies
- How to handle Brand Registry and catalog during switch
- Onboarding timeline with an Amazon agency
- Hiring an Amazon agency: the complete guide
We audit before we change anything, incoming accounts included. Details at Flapen.
