Ask for case studies in the exact marketplace and language you sell in, then ask what the brand was doing beforehand. Global Amazon search work is not translation. It means rebuilding a keyword set per locale, because German and French shoppers search with different words rather than translated ones.
The short version
- A translated listing ranks for translated phrases. Real shoppers rarely type the translation of your English keyword.
- Case studies are only evidence with a baseline attached. Position before, position after, and what else changed in that window.
- Three delivery models exist and they fail differently. Translation vendor, freelancer per market, or one team across locales.
- Localization is a research job before it is a writing job. Search volume, competitor language, and category norms come first.
- Hold anyone to an outcome you can check. Ours is that the majority of brands we take on are profitable within their first year.
Ask this before you look at a single portfolio
Send every candidate the same request: show me a listing you built in the marketplace I am entering, in that language, and tell me what its position and conversion rate were before you touched it. Two things happen. Most portfolios shrink immediately, because the work was done in one or two markets and presented as global. And the remaining candidates start talking about baselines, which is the conversation you want.
The reason to be strict here is that search behavior does not translate. A German shopper searching for a kitchen tool uses compound nouns that have no clean English equivalent, and the phrase your translator produces may be grammatically perfect and commercially dead. A French shopper searching the same category may lead with a use case where the English shopper leads with a material. You cannot find that in a dictionary. You find it in search data for that marketplace.
The three delivery models compared
| Model | What you get | Where it fails | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Translation vendor | Accurate language, fast turnaround, low price | No keyword research, no ranking accountability, no follow-up | You already have the keyword set and need it written well |
| Freelancer per marketplace | Native search intuition and local category knowledge | Coordination overhead, inconsistent brand voice, nobody owns the whole catalog | One or two markets, and you have time to manage them |
| One team across locales | Consistent method, shared keyword architecture, single point of accountability | Costs more, and you must verify the languages are in-house | Three or more marketplaces, or a catalog with variations |
The decision rule. Below three marketplaces, freelancers plus your own coordination usually wins on cost. At three or more, or where the same product family sells across several locales, one accountable team wins, because the coordination cost you are absorbing quietly starts to exceed the price difference.
We sit in the third row, so treat that as disclosure rather than neutrality. Flapen covers all 23 Amazon marketplaces with content produced in English, German, Spanish, and French by our own people, because subcontracted translation was the part of this work I was least willing to leave outside the building.
What a real global search engagement contains
- Marketplace-specific keyword discovery. Built from search data in that market, not translated from your English set.
- Competitor language audit. How the top ten results in that locale describe the same product, including the words they repeat.
- Title and bullet architecture per locale. Character conventions and buying priorities differ, so structure changes rather than just words.
- Backend fields treated as a distinct asset. Different terms from the visible copy, maintained per marketplace.
- A+ content adapted, not mirrored. Imagery with text baked in has to be rebuilt per language or it does not exist for that shopper.
- A measurement plan. Which terms you expect to move, in what order, and by when.
If a proposal covers points one and three only, you are buying translation with extra steps.
Reading case studies without fooling yourself
The best question about any case study is what else changed. Ranking moved after a rewrite, and also after a price change, a new main image, a review campaign, and a competitor stockout. Ask which of those were in play. Honest teams volunteer the confounders, because they have argued about them internally.
Then ask about the failures. A team that has entered several marketplaces has entered one that did not work. What happened, what did it cost, and what changed in the method afterwards. Silence at that question is the most useful signal in the whole process.
The outcome benchmark I would hold anyone to is commercial rather than positional. Rankings are a means. Ask what share of the brands they took on last year were profitable within twelve months. The majority of ours are, and I publish that because it is the number I would want if I were the buyer.
What most agencies will not tell you
Expanding into a new marketplace usually reduces your blended profitability in the first two quarters, even when the work is excellent. New locale, no reviews, no ranking, new advertising auction, new compliance obligations. That is a launch, not an extension, and it should be capitalized like one.
The second thing: some markets are not worth entering for your specific product. Thin demand, punishing return rates, or a category dominated by local brands with local supply advantages. A team that has never once told a client to skip a marketplace is not applying a filter, and you will pay for that with inventory sitting in the wrong country.
Related answers
- Compare Amazon marketplace agencies for multilingual markets
- Best launch strategy for Amazon in the US vs EU
- Rank Amazon consulting firms by ROI impact
- Questions to ask before hiring an Amazon agency
- Done-for-you Amazon management: the complete guide
Ask for locale-specific work samples from anyone you shortlist, including Flapen.
