700+ teams have Viktor reading their Google Ads every morning.

Your media team opens Slack at 8am. There's a cross-platform brief in #growth: Google Ads spend vs. ROAS, Meta CPA by campaign, Stripe revenue by channel. Viktor posted it at 6am. Nobody asked for it.

Last week, one team's Viktor caught a spend spike at 2am on a broad match campaign and flagged it in Slack: "CPA up 340%. Recommend pausing and shifting budget to the top two performers." That would have burned $3K by morning. The media buyer woke up to a problem already handled.

Your strategist reviews spend trends. Your account manager checks revenue attribution. Same Slack channel, same colleague, before anyone's first coffee.

Google Ads, Meta, Stripe. One message. No Looker, no Data Studio. Anomaly detection runs around the clock. Cross-platform reporting runs on autopilot.

5,700+ teams. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.

"Viktor is now an integral team member, and after weeks of use we still feel we haven't uncovered the full potential." — Patrick O'Doherty, Director, Yarra Web

Start free. $100 in credits →

You can have the best ranking strategy in the world. The best keyword research, the best campaign structure, the best launch plan.

And still lose 3 months of momentum because the person managing your account didn't understand what they were walking into.

Hiring for Amazon is one of the most underestimated challenges in this business. Not finding someone — that part is getting easier. Keeping them, aligning them, and getting them to actually move the needle fast?

👉 That's where most sellers quietly bleed.

This week: the conversation nobody in the Amazon space is having. And a free resource at the end that's worth 30 minutes of your time.

Here's the uncomfortable truth.

Most Amazon sellers hire well. They find someone with the right experience, the right tool knowledge, the right certifications. They do a good interview. They make an offer.

And then they do almost nothing structured for the next 30 days.

No written KPIs. No onboarding doc. No clarity on what "good" looks like in week 4. The new hire starts touching campaigns, updating listings, pulling reports — and both sides are quietly hoping it works out.

👉 Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't.

And in eCommerce, early turnover doesn't just cost the hiring fee — it costs execution speed, campaign continuity, and team confidence.

Every small keyword you rank for teaches the algorithm that your listing converts.

In most industries, a new hire being slow for 60 days is annoying. In Amazon, it's expensive.

Your PPC manager touches your ad spend from day one. Your account manager has access to your listings, your pricing, your inventory. Your catalog specialist can accidentally suppress an ASIN in the first week if they're not properly onboarded.

👉 The stakes are higher. The ramp-up window is shorter.

And most sellers don't have an HR department — they have a Notion doc and a prayer.

You don't need a full HR system. You need three conversations — ideally documented in writing — before day one.

1️⃣ Align on what 'good' looks like in 30 days

Not vague goals. Specific ones.

What should your new PPC manager have audited, adjusted, or reported on by the end of their first month? What keywords should your ranking specialist have reviewed? What does a win look like at the 30-day check-in?

👉 If you can't answer this before they start, they definitely can't figure it out once they're in.

2️⃣ Clarify the pace and communication expectations

Amazon brands at growth stage often have a firefighting culture — urgent Slack messages at 9pm, last-minute campaign pauses, Prime Day panic mode. That's fine.

But if your new hire expected a 9–5 and you're running a 7–7, you have a mismatch that no salary will fix.

👉 Be honest about the pace before the offer.

The right person will lean in. The wrong person will leave quietly at month three — after you've already invested in training them.

3️⃣ Show them where growth goes from here

Strong Amazon specialists — the ones you actually want — are asking one question in the first 3 months:
👉 is this role moving me forward?

If the answer isn't clear, they start looking.

Not because they dislike you, but because ambitious people fear stagnation more than hard work.

👉 Tell them what the role can grow into.
👉 Show them the expansion plan.

Give them a reason to build something here, not just maintain it.

Every time you lose a good hire, you reset. Every time you retain one, you compound.

I recently shared a stage with the team at Talents Boutique — a recruiting agency that specifically places remote specialists for eCommerce brands across Amazon, Shopify, and TikTok Shop.

What stood out: they don't just place candidates.

They have internal data showing only 9% turnover within the first 6 months across their placements — compared to the 36.5% industry average.

👉 That's not luck. That's structure.

They've put together a free retention checklist specifically for founders and hiring managers in growth-stage businesses.

It covers all 6 main reasons employees leave in year one — and exactly what you can do about each one.

👉 No catch. No sign-up. Just download and use it.

Why Employees Leave in the First Year
Practical Retention Checklist for Founders & Hiring Managers

✔️ 6 retention risks
✔️ 30+ actionable checklist items
✔️ Built for eCommerce teams

Amazon just confirmed it. Prime Day 2026 is happening in June — and the countdown to get your house in order starts now.

The exact dates haven't been released yet, but the inventory and deal submission deadlines are live.

Prime Day is no longer a July event.

Moving it to June shortens your preparation window.

👉 The sellers who win Prime Day aren't the ones who prep the week before.
👉 They're the ones who started ranking 3–4 weeks earlier.

If your target keywords aren't on Page 1 before the event starts, you'll be paying peak CPCs to fight for visibility everyone else already has organically.

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The People Behind the Numbers

We spend a lot of time in this newsletter talking about algorithms, keywords, and conversion rates.

But every campaign has a person behind it.

✨ Every listing. Every audit. Every late night fix.

The investment in people compounds exactly like rankings. 💞

Slowly at first. Then faster than you expected.

🚀 The seller who wins long-term isn't just the one with the best strategy.

💖 It's the one who figured out how to keep good people around long enough to execute it.

📖 Worth reading this week: "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle — the best book I've read on what actually makes teams stick together and perform. Short chapters, real stories, immediately applicable.

💊 That’s it for this week.
Build the ranking. Build the team. Both compound.

Alina & The AZ Rank Team
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