How to choose an eCom agency in Vietnam - without getting sold the wrong service

The problem with how most brands hire eCom agencies

Most VN eCom agencies — including ours, until recently — pitch the same way. A brand asks “can you help us grow on Shopee or TikTok Shop?” and the agency says yes. A proposal arrives with a retainer fee, a list of activities, and some logos at the bottom. The brand picks the cheapest credible option, or the one that came through a referral, and the engagement starts.

Six months later, one of three things has happened:

1. Revenue grew, the brand is happy, the agency is retained.
2. Revenue did not grow, the brand fires the agency, and the search starts again.
3. The brand and agency argue about scope — “I thought this was included” — and the relationship sours.

Outcomes 2 and 3 happen far more than they should. The reason is structural: most agencies pitch capability (“we do everything”) and most brands buy on price and trust. Neither side establishes whether the agency’s actual service shape fits the brand’s actual problem.

This article is a framework for fixing that — for buyers. It is the framework we use internally to qualify whether a prospect is a fit for our services. If you are evaluating any VN eCom agency, including LMC, you can use the same framework to evaluate them.

Step 1: Diagnose your problem before you shop for solutions

Before you write a brief or schedule discovery calls, answer one question: what kind of problem do you actually have?

eCom problems fall into a small number of distinct categories. Each category requires a different service. Mixing them up is how brands end up paying for the wrong thing.

Here is the rough mental model we use, which we call the diagnostic ladder:

Each rung is a different service shape, with different deliverables, different team composition, and different cost structures. A brand that needs Brand Protection cannot solve its problem by hiring a Marketplace Operations agency, no matter how good that agency is. The agency is competent; the agency is on the wrong rung.

The first thing you should do, before talking to any agency, is identify which rung your problem is on. If you are not sure, that is itself useful information — your first conversation should be diagnostic, not sales.

Step 2: Reject capability pitches; ask scope questions

Most agency proposals open with capability — what the agency can do. Capability is not the question you need answered. The question is: what specifically will you do for me, what will I receive, and what is explicitly not included?

Three scope questions cut through every capability pitch:

“Can you show me the deliverables for the first 90 days, line by line?”

A serious agency answers this in writing. They will tell you exactly what reports you will receive, what platform actions they will take, what cadence they will operate at. If the answer is vague — “we will optimize your store and run growth campaigns” — the agency does not have a defined service. They will figure it out as they go, which means you are paying them to figure it out.

”What is explicitly not in scope?”

This is the most underrated question in agency selection. Every service has a fence — things it does not include. If an agency cannot articulate the fence, the engagement will produce scope disputes by month three.

For example, our Marketplace Enablement service does not include creative production, brand protection enforcement, or fulfillment operations. Those are separate services with separate prices. We say so on day one. If the prospect needs creative production, we tell them so before the contract is signed. The brand then knows what they are buying — and what they are not.

”What happens when this engagement is not the right fit?”

If you ask an agency this question and they cannot answer, the answer is: nothing happens. They will keep delivering and keep invoicing, regardless of whether the engagement is working. Good agencies have a referral path for problems they cannot solve, and a clear exit clause for engagements that are not producing results.

Step 3: Look for honest “no” answers

This is the contrarian point of this article, and the one most agencies will dislike: the highest signal of agency quality is willingness to say no.

When you describe your situation, a good agency will sometimes say:

• “Your problem is on a different rung than what we deliver — we recommend you look elsewhere.”
• “Our research indicates this market is not viable for your product mix — we recommend you do not enter.”
• “You have not yet built the foundation that makes our service worth paying for — come back in 6 months.”

Agencies that say these things are choosing your long-term outcome over their short-term revenue. They will be in business in five years. The agencies that say yes to everything will not.

This is also why we structure our Market Research service with a 100% credit-back mechanic: if our research convinces you to go to market with us, the research pays for itself; if our research says do not go to market, you keep the report and we do not get the engagement. Either outcome is honest. The dishonest version is the one where the research recommendation is shaped to maximize the chance of follow-on work — which is, unfortunately, common.

Step 4: Understand the cost trap of “all-in-one” agencies

Many agencies pitch comprehensive coverage: “we do research, store build, growth, fulfillment, and protection — one team, one contract, one price.” This sounds efficient. Sometimes it is. Most of the time, it is not.

The trap works like this. The all-in-one agency charges a single retainer that bundles everything. Inside the retainer, the agency allocates effort according to where they make the most margin — typically high-margin advisory and consulting work, not low-margin operational execution. The brand believes they are paying for full-stack service. The agency is delivering the parts that pay best.

If you genuinely need a full-stack relationship — meaning your brand has the scale, complexity, and strategic intent to embed an external partner as your eCom department for two years or more — an all-in-one engagement can work, but it must be priced as a single integrated service, not as a discount-bundled set of separate services that the agency will silently re-allocate.

If you do not need full-stack, do not buy full-stack. Buy the rung you actually need, at clear pricing, with explicit scope. You will get better service and pay less for it.

For most VN eCom brands, the right starting point is one rung — Market Research, or Marketplace Operations, or Brand Protection — depending on which problem is most acute. Bundles are appropriate when you are launching from zero (research + store + early growth, in sequence) or when you are at the scale and horizon where embedding an agency makes sense.

Step 5: Verify the team will operate, not delegate

In Vietnam, the agency staffing model varies widely. Some agencies have senior teams that handle accounts personally. Most do not — accounts are routed to junior operators with periodic senior oversight. Both models can work; neither is inherently better. The problem is when the proposal pitch is delivered by senior operators and the actual work is done by juniors with no senior involvement.

Three questions surface this:

• “Who specifically will be working on my account, by name?”
• “How often will senior team members review the work?”
• “What is the escalation path when something is going wrong?”

A serious agency will name names, define a review cadence, and document escalation. A weak agency will say “our team” and hope the question moves on.

A simple test before you sign

Before you sign any agency contract, write down three things on paper:

1. The specific problem you are hiring the agency to solve. One sentence.
2. The first measurable outcome you expect within 90 days. Be specific — “first sale on TikTok Shop within 30 days,” or “monthly NMV of 500M VND by month 3,” or “all counterfeit listings on Shopee taken down within 14 days of detection.”
3. What you will do if that outcome is not achieved. Have a plan written down. The plan can be “extend by 30 days,” or “renegotiate scope,” or “exit and re-procure.” But it must exist.

If you cannot complete this exercise — if your problem is unclear, your outcome is unmeasurable, or your contingency plan does not exist — you are not ready to hire an agency. Hire one when you can complete the exercise. Until then, an agency will not solve the underlying clarity problem, and you will end up in outcome 2 or outcome 3 from the top of this article.

How LMC fits this framework

We are an eCom agency in Vietnam, so this is the part of the article where we make our pitch. We will keep it short.

We organize our six services along the diagnostic ladder framework above — Market Research, Store Build, Marketplace Enablement, Fulfillment & Ops, Brand Protection, and Advisory. Each service has a defined scope, a defined fence, and a defined price. We tell prospects on the first call which rung their problem is on, and we route them accordingly — including to other agencies when their problem is not what we deliver.

If you are evaluating an eCom partnership and want a diagnostic conversation rather than a capability pitch, we offer 30-minute scoping calls — free, with no obligation to engage further. The output of the call is a recommendation: which rung you are on, what the realistic next steps are, and whether LMC is or is not the right partner for that rung.

Book a 30-minute scoping call →

Closing

The single biggest mistake brands make in agency selection is treating it as a capability question — “who is good?” — when it is really a fit question — “who is right for this specific problem at this specific stage?” Capability is necessary but not sufficient. Fit is the variable that determines outcomes.

Diagnose your problem before you shop. Ask scope questions, not capability questions. Reward the agencies that say no when no is honest. Buy the rung you need, not the bundle that sounds comprehensive. Verify who will actually do the work. Write down your expected outcome and your contingency plan before you sign.

If you do these five things, you will hire better agencies, pay less for the wrong things, and stop ending up in outcome 2 or 3.