For the people who create and develop the brand, it means a lot, a whole lot. It is the signature of our products, our face on the market, our capital. It is natural that you want to develop it, communicate it, but also protect it. Amazon has met these expectations and created an ecosystem for product brands that allows them to grow safely.
Amazon respects brand registrations made with third-party trademark authorities and organisations. These organisations are either at national, European (EUIPO) or global (WIPO) level. To protect your brand in Europe and enjoy the benefits of being a brand owner in Europe, it is best to register with the European organisation EUIPO. This protects your brand across the European Union, not just in countries where Amazon operates.
EUIPO, or the European Union Intellectual Property Organisation, is an organisation acting as an EU body that registers, regulates and manages intellectual property rights in the European Community. Its headquarters are located in Alicante, Spain. In order to submit your brand for registration, you must complete an application and pay a fee for such application starting from EUR 900 (as of May 2019). Remember to be sure to apply for a word figurative brand registration, or so-called “word figurative”, as your brand on Amazon will be displayed in this way. After a period of about 6 months from the registration of your application, if there are no objections from others to the brand, you will receive an EUIPO Brand Registration Certificate.
Great, the first step is behind you.
This is a programme aimed at product brand owners that allows to register your brand in a way that is respected by Amazon. By registering with Brand Registry, you gain many tools to protect and promote your brand through Amazon platforms.
Already certified? It’s time to start Brand Registry.ĂÂ This is a separate Amazon account associated with your Seller or Vendor Central account. Once your Brand Registry account is activated, you submit your registration certificate to Amazon through this account and, once approved, your Seller or Vendor account gains new functionality dedicated to product brands. The most important of these new tools is the ability to create your own brand shop, or Store Front, add A+ enhanced product content and promotional tools.
The Store Front concept is the idea of a Shop-in-Shop. By creating a Store Front of your own brand, you de facto build a dedicated shop for your brand and your products on the Amazon domain. Store Front has its own design, its own product category tree, it gives you the possibility to upload images, videos, advertising and information material, not only about your products but also about your brand or the whole company. The user who comes to your shop should learn as much as possible about your brand, benefits, products, be able to browse your entire product range and purchase products – all within your Store Front.
Once your Store Front is created and approved by Amazon, you have the ability to track user traffic and basic sales data. What was the number of visits to a particular category sub-page, what was the conversion, sales value, etc. This data is not as accurate as, for example, in Google Analytics, but it gives information on the basis of which you can modify and optimize Store Front.
Technically, Store Front is relatively easy to create. The entire layout of Store Front can be modified based on predefined modules and feeding it with tests and graphics. You need to have good graphical materials and be able to edit and cut them. But you definitely do not need any programming skills to build your Store Front.
Of course Store Front is a sales and marketing tool, but one of its most important tasks is to showcase your brand. There are still relatively few brands that have their own Store Front, so a customer who goes to your shop on Amazon will get 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.
A+ content is where you can say much more about your products. Vendors without a Brand Registry have limited space for their product description usually narrowed down to 2000 characters. In a traditional description, you only have the ability to use basic HTML editing for powered text.
A+ content allows for much more. With A+, you can build product cards dedicated to specific products, product groups or entire categories. As with Store Front, building A+ content requires you to have primarily graphic design skills, not programming skills. You build content for a given page based on modules to which you can add additional product photos, lifestyle photos, comparison graphics, add technical data or compare a given product with others.
As with Store Front, this is the place that builds the message to the customer that your brand is
registered and you are using the tools provided by that registration to merchandise product data in a professional, clear way that distances it from competing products.
OK, you have a registered brand, you have created a store front and A+ content. Now it’s time to build your reach and show it all off to a wider range of users.ĂÂ How to do it? Take advantage of the promotional tools available on Amazon. We write more about PPC campaigns in this article, which is also useful for registered brands.
Of course, the tools normally available on Amazon with which you can promote your products such as PPC campaigns and vouchers are still available, but in addition to this arsenal, Amazon has also added Sponsored Brands (Headline Search Ads). These are dedicated campaigns for product brands. The campaigns are run in the PPC model. Search results display your brand’s ads in the top bar of the page with traffic being directed to the Store Front or product / product group. This means that for a generic phrase related to your product, a user at the top of the search results will receive your brand logo and be redirected to your brand’s Store Front. The job of the Store Front is then to ensure that the user converts to a purchase from the Store Front level.
Registering a brand is quite a lengthy process and comes with some costs, but this should be seen as an investment that will give a return in the long run. By becoming a brand owner you acquire many rights and opportunities for your brand to build a presence in the minds of your audience. If, in addition, you plan to sell your products in the offline channel, this will reassure your customers that the online channel, which is often perceived as competitive, is secured and works to build brand awareness in the eyes of customers rather than being left alone.
We share our knowledge because we want more and more sellers, entrepreneurs and brands to be present and successful on Amazon. If you have any feedback on this article, please share it in the comments – we’d love to hear from you and maybe help others in the process.
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