Businesses acquire their distinction through branding and more often than not invest a lot in it as it is the brand that helps the market recognize every business, its products, or services. Experts would say it is necessary that a brand is memorable and striking to enhance customer loyalty and facilitate more sales – something that proper branding is built for.
However, even the best branding strategy cannot make your brand impenetrable to threats from counterfeiters and unauthorized sellers on Amazon who intend to deceive gullible customers to attract sales even if the negative feedback can greatly taint your name. These people will always attempt to ride on your success and what you have established which is exactly why Amazon brand protection is necessary. Under this extensive program from Amazon, you can easily gain security knowing your intellectual property and the integrity of your business is being maintained and protected and the trust that you have earned from your customers is kept.
What is Amazon Brand Protection?
Amazon’s brand protection can be likened to being insured. The insurance keeps your business name safe and a difficult target for third parties and unauthorized sellers who are known as brand-reputation killers. One of the main goals of Amazon’s brand protection program is to monitor sellers non-stop and seeing to it that they are not reselling or milking money from brand owners’ product listings without their authorization or approval.
Moreover, Amazon also came up with its Amazon Brand Registry program to support Amazon Brand Protection and provide the market with an excellent shopping experience. Once you are enrolled in ABR and ABP, you will immediately gain access to various Amazon tools that will help protect your brand and listings against any possible infringement.
Specifically, here are what Amazon Brand Protection aims to deliver:
-
An assurance that accurate product information is displayed in listings.
Customers have the right to know what they will be paying for. So, for them to expect accurately from the brand and to come up with a guided decision, Amazon mandates sellers to display only correct product information in their listings. The good thing about Amazon Brand Registry is that sellers who are members of it are given more control over product listings that are blatantly using the name of their brand. This enables sellers to immediately report unauthorized listings that can potentially damage their brands’ credibility.
-
An assurance that potential infringement cases will be spotted easily.
The tools that the brand registry program of Amazon comes with are designed to assist business owners in easily spotting and immediately taking action against infringements or attempts to counterfeit. These tools include a facility where sellers can input their keywords or images and the program will check where these parameters are present. Moreover, the registry also comes with a bulk ASIN search facility. These facilities are designed to aid in brand owners who want to ensure that their images, trademarked terms, business names, and products or services are not being marketed nor used for money by other firms without proper authorization. If the feature returns a result, the seller can immediately opt to report the case to Amazon for investigation and appropriate action.
-
An assurance that bad product listings are immediately eradicated.
Once sellers sign up for the brand registry, they will also have to agree that they are going to be submitting a lot of information about their brand and business on Amazon. Although there is an issue of privacy in such cases, Amazon ensures that the information will be put only to good and appropriate use. Overall, this helps entrepreneurs push a more strengthened Amazon brand protection as Amazon will also be allowed to monitor against bad listings, especially those that illegally use trademarked properties, e.g. images, names, logos, titles. Moreover, your brand registry membership can also be utilized to track unauthorized sellers and duplicate product listings.
Amazon Brand Protection vs. Fraudulent 3P Sellers
Besides using inaccurate product listing content on the listing which can damage your brand, unauthorized 3P sellers can also inflict other damages if your brand does not have enough protection. The consequence of this includes getting unsolicited poor reviews and bad customer experiences. This can put all your branding efforts to waste. But the good news is, Amazon Brand Registry, IP/Copyright, and Ad Campaigns can help to effectively protect your brand name if you decide to join the Amazon marketplace.
Amazon Brand Registry
This platform of Amazon enables sellers and brand owners to access better control over product listings. Once you are enrolled in it, you get more sway over your product listings content, including its bullet points, titles, imagery, and descriptions. Theoretically speaking, once you become a brand registry member, your listings will no longer be altered or modified by sellers who want to put your business down. Also, any request to modify will be referred to you.
To be legible for the brand registry, the requirements are as follows:
- Trademark of your brand
- Papers authenticating your trademark and your business information
- Your contact details
Once the abovementioned requirements are submitted, Amazon will send a verification code to your verified contact details. To finalize the process, you will just have to get the verification code from the copyright holder and then forward it to Amazon. The final set-up of the application usually takes a few days to complete.
IP/Copyright
Trademarks are an essential component to achieve Amazon brand protection. They are considered as an assurance of a customer experience about your product or service. They also identify the product sources you are providing. Your trademark, which may be distinguished by the ® symbol requires renewal every 10 years but you can also renew it indefinitely. Amazon indicated its FAQ answers about trademarks on their IP & Copyright protection page.
Ads
Investing in ads is like acquiring a different kind of protection for your brand. On Amazon, you can do this through Sponsored Products or AMS for Vendors. This can help prove the market that your business is successful, thereby leading to more sales. Most importantly, though, your ads campaign will most likely stop 3P sellers and competitor brands from stealing your potential sales.
