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High competition is one of your greatest challenges as an Amazon seller. Your competitors may not only sell cheaper products but also copy your listings and steal your buyers. Some may even sell knockoffs of your products, hurting your brand's image.
Amazon is aware of these potential issues. That’s why the ecommerce giant introduced the Amazon Brand Registry. This service protects brands and customers from fraud and abuse, ensuring that Amazon remains a platform that individuals and businesses can trust.
You must enroll your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry to experience its benefits. However, some of the perks come with costs. We’ll tackle the ins and outs of the Amazon Brand Registry in this article to help you decide whether to enroll in it or not.
Enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry offers exceptional benefits and access to advanced branding tools, such as:
Amazon Brand Registry offers Transparency, a product serialization service that helps identify individual products to prevent counterfeits. When you enroll your products in Transparency, Amazon will generate a unique Transparency code for each. You can use these codes to gain valuable insights into your items at the batch or lot level, allowing you to quickly identify supply chain hurdles or other issues, find their root cause, create solutions, and enhance your products with minimal interruption to your business.
Customers can scan Transparency codes via the Amazon Shopping app or Transparency app to confirm any products' authenticity, no matter where they're buying them from.
You can also protect your brand through Amazon Project Zero. This Brand Registry service monitors over 8 billion listings daily and removes suspected counterfeits from Amazon. This allows you to instantly eliminate knockoffs of your product without contacting Amazon.
You may also be eligible for the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit. This service conducts investigations and other legal actions to seize fake products and get justice for legitimate brands. Counterfeiters are identified in the supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, and financial processes. As a result, anyone attempting to sell fake products under your brand will be deterred immediately.
If your brand is enrolled in Amazon’s Intellectual Property (IP) Accelerator, you can avoid common trademark registration pitfalls with the help of Amazon's trusted network of IP law firms at competitive rates. Even if your trademark registration is still pending, you can quickly access the Brand Registry's protection and building features. You can also establish your brand and IP in other countries with the help of trusted experts.
You can search Amazon’s catalog to identify potential IP infringements and inaccurate listings. If you find a violation, you can use Amazon’s advanced tools to report it and boost your products’ automated protection.
As part of Amazon’s Brand Registry, you can use the following advanced brand-building tools and programs:
A+ Content lets you add enhanced text, images, HD videos, banners, and other features to your Product Details pages. As a result, you can increase sales by up to 20%.
You can also populate your Product Details pages with lifestyle photos, comparison charts, and other enhancements to better demonstrate the purpose and benefits of your products. Your product descriptions can showcase stunning branding designs that can help foster customer relationships and trust.
Moreover, your Product Details pages can have a dedicated Brand Story section. Separated from the product description, the Brand Story outlines the standout qualities of your brand and provides an extra space for cross-selling and your Amazon Storefront's link.
Sponsored Brands is an Amazon solution for driving brand discovery and awareness within Amazon’s shopping results. You can tap and attract new audiences with custom headlines, videos, or images. It also allows you to invest in cost-per-click (CPC) ads to boost your brand’s visibility. Customers are led to the Product Details page when they click on a product or category within the ad.
You can use any Sponsored Brands content along with other Amazon advertising solutions. Amazon’s research shows that combining a Sponsored Brand video, Store spotlight, and custom image ad formats can result in a 5.5% increase in ROAS, or return on ad spending. Meanwhile, combining a Sponsored Brands custom image with Store spotlight ad formats can lead to a 57.8% spike in conversion rate.
Lastly, using a Sponsored Brands video ad format can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 108.1%
Amazon Stores creates an immersive space for introducing your audience to your brand’s products, story, and mission. You can customize your storefront with predesigned templates and drag-and-drop sections to highlight your bestsellers. You can also track performance metrics, such as sales, visits, page views, and traffic sources, to analyze your strategies and improve them if necessary.
The greatest perks of Amazon Stores are a higher shopper dwell time, higher attributed sales per visitor, and more repeat visitors.
Amazon Vine is a tool for building awareness and trust by inviting trusted users to leave authentic reviews on your products. Each of your products can receive up to 30 legitimate reviews, helping boost sales by up to 30%.
The reviewers are called Vine Voices. They’re real customers who’ve been trusted for their insightful reviews. Vine Voices request products for free in exchange for their honest, unbiased opinion.
Vine reviews are credible sources of social proof, helping buyers understand a product and whether it’s worth buying. They also help your brand become more discoverable and your slow-moving items gain traction.
The Manage Your Customer Engagement Tool lets you send targeted emails to form customer relationships, increase retention, and drive engagement. You can market directly to customers who follow your brand to win their loyalty and boost the visibility of your new products. You can also view and track key metrics, including open rates, email delivery rates, and conversion rates.
With videos, you can demonstrate your products to customers in an entertaining way. They can also amplify your brand story, help increase sales and conversion, and build customer loyalty.
Amazon Live lets you post real-time videos to demonstrate and promote your products. Customers can ask questions by commenting on a sidebar, driving engagement. Your videos are saved when you're done streaming, allowing customers who missed them to watch them conveniently.
Subscribe and Save drives repeat purchases by helping customers shop quickly from hundreds of thousands of products. Customers subscribed to eligible products can schedule deliveries and earn savings. They can also unlock extra savings when they receive at least five products in one auto-delivery to the same address.
The Amazon Virtual Bundles program allows you to offer item bundles with multiple ASINs. You can combine up to five complementary ASINs and sell them from one product detail page.
For example, if you want to bundle a notebook and a pen with two different ASINs, you can sell them under one ASIN. When a customer buys that bundle, Amazon will ship it to them without you having to pack bundles together.
Virtual Bundles offer cross-selling opportunities, helping diversify your catalog without adding new products. They can also attract customers looking for products that give them a bang for their buck.
Growing your brand through Brand Registry can give you access to advanced analytics and bonuses, such as:
Brand Analytics provides reports and metrics to help you make data-driven decisions. The Brand Analytics dashboard generates detailed reports: the Search Terms Report, Demographics Report, Item Comparison Report, Alternate Purchase Report, Market Basket Report, and Repeat Purchase Behavior Report.
You can also access the Search Catalog Performance Dashboard, which shows how consumers with your offerings to help you determine the best items to sell.
Amazon Attribution is an advertising and analytics measurement tool that provides insights into your marketing channels outside Amazon. It measures the impact of your cross-channel marketing efforts, improves efficiency, and identifies which strategies generate the highest return on investment (ROI).
You can earn a brand referral bonus when you sign up for Amazon Ads and use Amazon Attribution to create campaigns and add attribution tags to your listing URLs. The average bonus is 10% of the price on sales drawn from your off-Amazon marketing efforts.
Amazon pays the bonus as a referral fee credit, reducing your referral fees. The amount is credited to your account and deducted from your referral fee after two months.
A/B testing your listings is possible thanks to Amazon’s Manage Your Experiments tool. It’s a content optimization program that lets you determine how customers interact with various versions of your content. You can discover if switching up listing elements results in more views, click-throughs, and purchases.
The content types you can experiment with include product titles, images, descriptions, bullet points, and A+ Content. You must be subscribed to the Professional selling plan to access A/B testing tools.
Amazon Brand Registry provides an Impact Dashboard, which lets you monitor how Amazon proactively protects your brand. You can access critical data points, such as:
In addition, the Impact Dashboard shows trends and lets you filter data to give you a clearer picture of Amazon’s measures for protecting your IP and listings.
Brand Registry features an enhanced homepage, which contains an overview of key information, including:
However, your Brand Registry homepage experience may vary depending on your user role.
Enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry is free. You can also enjoy its perks for free, except for a few tools and services.
Premium A+ Content, an expanded edition of A+ Content for eligible sellers, is currently free. But Amazon might charge for it in the future, so tune in to your A+ Content tool to be alerted of any announcements.
If you use Sponsored Brands, you should pay the maximum amount you’re willing to bid for your CPC ads. The higher your bid, the more likely your ad will be displayed.
If you want to enroll your products in Amazon Vine, it costs $200 per parent ASIN. You pay this amount after the first Vine review is published. You also cover the referral and FBA fees for your Vine products. You’ll only be charged if you receive a review.
And, of course, you're subject to your selling plan's fee, which is $0.99 per item sold for an Individual plan or $39.99 a month for a Professional plan.
The enrollment process typically takes two weeks to complete, but it can take longer, depending on some cases.
For example, if you don't have a registered trademark, you must apply for one. Applying for a trademark can take up to a year in some cases. But Amazon came up with a solution through IP Accelerator, a service that speeds up the registration of pending trademarks. You can use this service for free.
Another possible con is changing your packaging if they don't show your brand's name. Sourcing and printing new packaging can cost a lot, though you can recover them quickly, thanks to Brand Registry's benefits.
Amazon’s advanced branding tool can also present some disadvantages, especially if you’re a multichannel online seller. Since you can't integrate other marketplaces with Amazon Brand Registry, third-party ecommerce management is handy.
You can use Threecolts, a comprehensive marketplace platform for managing stores on Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. It offers an incredible software suite for inventory management, customer service, profit recovery, feedback automation, and more. It allows you to automate and unify various ecommerce operations, increasing efficiency and profitability.
Jungle Scout, another popular Amazon seller software, offers a set of tools for product research, inventory tracking, listings, analytics, and more. However, Jungle Scout’s data is specific to Amazon, so it doesn’t unify your marketplaces, unlike Threecolts.
Below are the requirements to qualify your brand for the Amazon Brand Registry.
If your brand has an active registered trademark, it must be visible on your products or packaging. Brands with pending trademark applications in select trademark offices are also welcome to enroll. For example, if you're from the US, your trademark should be registered or pending registration in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
You must provide your brand's associated government-registered trademark number. If your trademark registration is still pending, you may provide the application number from the Intellectual Property Office.
Note that Amazon only accepts trademarks registered with government offices in the following locations:
If your brand’s trademark is registered with the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), provide the corresponding trademark number issued by the national trademark office instead of the WIPO. You can also enroll a brand registered with the European Union Trademark Office (EUIPO) by selecting EUIPO as your trademark registrar in your application.
You must also submit a complete and accurate list of your product categories (e.g., Apparel, Electronics, Toys and Games).
Now that we’ve covered the requirements for enrollment as well as the pros and cons, here's the step-by-step process of enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry.
Step 1: Check your products and packaging to ensure that they clearly show your brand.
Step 2: Go to Brand Registry and sign in with your Seller Central account.
Step 3: Under “Brand Information,” enter your brand details, the trademark office, and your trademark’s registration or serial number.
Step 4: Wait for your trademark to be verified, then upload your brand’s logo if you’re using a design mark.
Step 5: Under “Product Information,” upload at least one photo of your product or packaging displaying your brand name clearly.
Step 6: Confirm if you’re a seller, vendor, or both.
Step 7: Select the product categories.
Step 8: Enter the manufacturing and distribution details.
Step 9: Submit your application.
After completing these steps, you’ll receive a verification code to send to Amazon to complete your enrollment.
It’s possible for Amazon to reject a brand registration. It can happen for different reasons. Suppose your trademark became active on September 1, 2023, and you enrolled in the Brand Registry after a day or two. In that scenario, the trademark office and Amazon’s systems might not have been updated yet, so Amazon is unable to see your filing.
You can prevent rejection by waiting around 15 days after the trademark office provides the serial number before enrolling. That way, Amazon can locate your filing and process your enrollment.
It’s also crucial to submit “real world images” of your products or packaging to the Amazon Brand Registry, meaning photos taken in your hand or on a surface using a smartphone. The images should clearly depict the brand logo and GS1 UPC codes. Avoid submitting photos from your manufacturer’s website or an existing Amazon listing since those are not accepted.
Furthermore, your product’s label and/or packaging must meet US labeling laws. The label must be permanently affixed to the product or packaging. Removable types are not accepted except for a few categories.
Lastly, ensure that the brand's spelling on your application, documentation, and images exactly match. All submitted requirements must have matching upper and lowercase letters, special characters, and spacing. Minor differences can result in a rejection.
Enrolling your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry is a brilliant way to gain higher exposure, engagement, and sales. The requirements may be stringent, but they only ensure that every brand enrolled is authentic. Fortunately, it doesn’t cost anything to enroll your brand, and the perks you can enjoy once you’re registered also cost virtually nothing.
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