Brand Registry, that is, brand registration on Amazon

For those creating and working on brand development, it means a lot, very much. It is the signature of our products, our face in the market, our capital. It is natural that you want to develop it, communicate it, but also protect it. Amazon has responded to these expectations and created an ecosystem for product brands that allows for their safe development.

Brand Registration

Amazon respects brand registrations made with external offices and organizations involved in the protection of trademarks. These organizations operate at national, European (EUIPO), and global (WIPO) levels. For brand protection within Europe and for utilising the privileges of brand ownership in Europe, it is advisable to register with the European organization EUIPO. This way, you gain protection for your brand in the countries of the European Union, not just in the countries where Amazon operates.

EUIPO, or the European Union Intellectual Property Organisation, is an organization that operates as an authority of the European Union, which unites, regulates, and manages intellectual property rights within the European Community. Its headquarters are located in Alicante, Spain. To register your brand, you must fill out an application and pay a fee starting from EUR 900 (as of May 2019). Remember to specifically apply for the word mark registration, known as "word figurative", as your brand on Amazon will be displayed in this manner. After a period of about 6 months from the application registration, if there are no objections from other entities regarding this brand, you will receive the EUIPO Brand Registration Certificate.

Great, the first step is behind you.

Amazon Brand Registry

This is a program aimed at product brand owners, through which we can register our brand in a way that is respected by Amazon. By registering with the Brand Registry, you gain many tools that allow you to protect and promote your brand through the Amazon platform.

Do you already have a certificate? It’s time to activate Brand Registry.  This is a separate Amazon account linked to your Seller or Vendor Central account. After activating the Brand Registry account, you submit your registration certificate to Amazon and, upon acceptance, your Seller or Vendor account gains new functionalities dedicated to product brands. The most important of these new tools are the ability to create your own brand store, called Store Front, adding enriched A+ product content, and promotional tools.

Amazon Store Front

The Store Front concept is the idea of a Shop-in-Shop. By creating your own brand's Store Front, you are effectively building a store dedicated to your brand and your products within the Amazon domain. The Store Front has its own design, its own product category tree, and allows the inclusion of images, videos, advertising, and informational materials, not just about your products but also about your brand or the entire company. A user who visits the store should learn as much as possible about your brand, its advantages, products, have the opportunity to browse the entire product offering, and purchase products - all within your Store Front.

After creating the Store Front and its acceptance by Amazon, you have the option to track user traffic and basic sales data. What was the number of visits to a specific category subpage, what was the conversion, sales value, etc. These are not data as precise as, for example, in Google Analytics, but they provide information based on which the Store Front can be modified and optimized.

Technically, the Store Front is relatively easy to create. The entire layout of the Store Front can be modified based on predefined modules, and you can enrich it with tests and graphics. You need to have good graphic materials and the ability to edit and crop them. However, you definitely do not need any programming skills to build your Store Front.

Of course, the Store Front is a sales and marketing tool, but one of its most important tasks is to showcase your brand. Relatively few brands currently have their own Store Front, which is why a customer who lands in your Amazon store will receive a clear message - this is a brand that invests in its development, is professional, and cares about its products and about me as a customer.

Enhanced Content A+

A+ content is a place where you can say more about your products, much more. Sellers without Brand Registry have a limited amount of space to describe their product, usually limited to 2000 characters. In the traditional description, you can only use basic HTML editing for the supplied text.

A+ content allows for much more. With A+, you can create product pages dedicated to specific products, groups of products, or entire categories. Similar to the Store Front, building A+ content primarily requires graphic skills, not programming skills. You create the content of a given page based on modules, to which you can add additional product images, lifestyle photos, comparison graphics, technical data, or compare a given product with others.

Just like in the case of the Store Front, this is a place that builds a message to the customer that your brand is registered and you are using tools that have been transferred to you through this registration for merchandising product data in a professional, clear manner that distances it from competitive products.

OK, you now have a registered brand, a created Store Front, and A+ content. It’s time to build reach and show all of this to a wider audience. How to do that? Use the promotional tools available on Amazon. More about PPC campaigns has been written in this article, which is also useful for registered brands.

Promotional tools available for Product Brands.

Of course, the tools normally available on Amazon, which allow you to promote your products, such as PPC campaigns or vouchers, are still available, but additionally Amazon adds Sponsored Brands (Headline Search Ads) to this arsenal. These are campaigns dedicated to product brands. The campaigns are conducted in a PPC model. In search results, your brand's advertisements are displayed at the top of the page, directing traffic to your Store Front or product/group of products. This means that a query for a generic phrase related to your product will result in the user seeing your brand's logo at the very top of the search results, directing them to your brand's Store Front. The task of the Store Front is then to ensure that the user converts to a purchase from the level of the Store Front.

Brand registration is a fairly lengthy process and involves certain costs, but it should be treated as an investment that will yield returns over a longer period of time. By becoming the owner of a brand, you gain many rights and opportunities to build your brand's presence in the consciousness of recipients. If you additionally plan to sell your products in the offline channel, this reassures your contractors that the online channel, often perceived as competitive, is secured and works towards building brand awareness in the eyes of customers rather than being left to its own devices.

We share knowledge because we want more and more sellers, entrepreneurs, and brands to be present and succeed on Amazon. If you have any comments or notes about this article, share them in the comments - we would be happy to respond, and perhaps we can help others along the way.

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Happy Brand Management,

Go2Market Crew