Amazon Brand Registry: Explanation, Benefits, and Implementation

Anyone who wants to get started on Amazon with a registered trademark cannot avoid the Brand Registry on the online marketplace of the e-commerce giant. It is not uncommon for well-known brand manufacturers to become victims of product counterfeiting and parts of the successful work are destroyed by misuse. In addition to obvious breaches of trademark rights on Amazon, weakening one's own brand through faulty content and media content is a major problem on almost all online sales portals. 

The following article offers you an overview of the requirements and a step-by-step guide to register your own brands on Amazon. It will also show you the benefits of a successful brand registration, which can help you increase your Amazon sales and strengthen your brand experience.

Source: Amazon

What is meant by Amazon Brand Registry?

Amazon Brand Registry is Amazon's brand registration service, which can be used by all owners of a registered trademark, regardless of their business activity on Amazon. It can be accessed at brandservices.amazon.de.

Amazon offers you a comprehensive and well-developed solution with the Brand Registry to fix problems with the misuse of your own brand. What makes the Amazon Brand Registry particularly interesting for all traders: For use, brand owners do not need to have an existing trading relationship with Amazon. Thus, even brands that do not want to sell on Amazon can register their Amazon brand and protect it without any problems.

The service not only ensures that brand owners can better enforce their rights. Those who have a seller or vendor relationship with Amazon receive additional benefits in day-to-day business on Amazon through successful brand registration. These include advanced content functions and a selection of additional advertising formats in Amazon PPC. In short: If you have your own brand, you should definitely complete the Amazon brand registration - otherwise, potentially fatal consequences may occur on the world's most significant B2C marketplace.

What does the Amazon Brand Registry cost?

Registration in the Amazon Brand Registry is free. So if you want to register an Amazon brand, there are no fees. Sellers or vendors who have a trading relationship with Amazon pay the usual fees for using the Amazon marketplace. However, those who want to register their brand in the Amazon Brand Registry must first register the brand with the relevant trademark office. Fees are charged at the DPMA (German Patent and Trademark Office) in Germany for the registration of a trademark. These vary depending on the number of classes listed at the DPMA, which exist for different types of brands. After successful registration of a brand, it is listed in the DPMA register.

Do you have to use the Amazon Brand Registry to sell on Amazon?

If you are not a brand owner, but want to sell on Amazon, you do not have to go through the Amazon Brand Registry process. Nevertheless, you as a trader can sell products on Amazon. You can also sell the products of registered brands. You can use all the functions of normal sellers, but you do not have access to the benefits of registered brands. You should bear in mind that you have fewer writing rights than brand owners and therefore your content changes are not always implemented. Also, you cannot use the full range of advertising formats and cannot, for example, run retargeting campaigns. Creating an Amazon brand shop is also not possible for you.

What benefits does the Amazon Brand Registry offer to businesses?

The Amazon Brand Registry is important to support your brand presentation on Amazon. With it, intellectual property can be protected, the presentation of the brand can be guaranteed in a correct manner, and customer confidence in products and the brand can be increased.

On Amazon, your own products are often sold by third parties, such as retailers. These can also make changes to the product pages of the products they sell. This is because Amazon has only one product detail page for each product, so when a product is sold by several retailers, only one page is used by all. All sellers have the opportunity to change the product page. Amazon then automatically decides which product information is most useful for potential buyers. 

With the Brand Registry, the automation can be bypassed, as Amazon recognises changes made by registered brand manufacturers and weights their product information more heavily. These are then also displayed to customers in the front-end area of the product detail page. 

Thus, Amazon increases the writing rights of brand owners. With a successful linking of a brand, control over product pages is increased. This affects not only simple product data but also the content and images on the product pages. Ultimately, this improves the quality of the product pages and enables a consistent brand presence. For optimal branding on the Amazon marketplace, a uniform and brand-representing presentation of the product pages, consisting of a uniform title, same structure of bullet points and product details is essential. In addition, the Brand Registry is also a great advantage for a unique Amazon-wide branding.

Amazon Brand Registry as proactive brand protection

Another important part of the Brand Registry is proactive brand protection. For this, additional information about the brand is provided by retailers during brand registration. For example, during the registration process, it is asked in which countries the products are sold or in which categories the brand products are sold. Amazon uses this information to act more quickly in case of product counterfeiting. 

Brand owners also have access to other Amazon Brand Registry programs such as the Amazon Transparency program and Project Zero. The Transparency program involves the unique identification of products. For this, special Transparency codes are created for Amazon trademark protection, which can incur costs unlike the Amazon Brand Registry. These tools go beyond the normal Brand Registry, but can also be found at brandservices.amazon.de.

The brand registration support in the Brand Registry takes care of concerns that directly affect the brands. In doing so, competent contact persons from the brand registration support will be personally available to the traders and will quickly and user-friendly solve the concerns in the support cases.

But in addition to brand protection, Amazon also offers you as active brand owners a wealth of features that can greatly improve not only your brand appearance on Amazon, but also your sales: 

1. With the A+ content, the brand story and the Brand Store, you can professionalise your content area and increase your Conversion rate on Amazon.
2. Amazon Brand Analytics provides valuable insights that can help you with your content and in your Amazon PPC Strategy.
3. With the advertising formats Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, you can advance your Brand growth through Amazon Advertising.

A+ Content: The A+ content is an extended product description. In addition to clearly designed texts, pictures can also be inserted. For particularly strong brands that have a professional Amazon presence, even better performing A+ content can be created with the Premium A+ Content, into which videos, for example, can be inserted.

Brand Story: Similarly, to the A+ Content you can add the brand story as additional content to the product page. The brand story is displayed above the A+ content and serves primarily to present the brand. Here insights into the product world of the brand can be given. Also interesting: The brand story can be linked to the brand shop.

Brand Store: The brand store, also known as a brand store, serves for the complete presentation of the brand. Here, you can show the entire product portfolio of the brand to the customers as you wish. In addition, additional information, operating aids or the shopping cart complementing products can be provided using images and videos.

Sponsored Brands Ads: Sponsored Brands Ads are a powerful tool in the Amazon advertising console and are at the top of the search results. Unlike the Sponsored Products Ads, they can promote several products at once. In addition, there is the possibility to directly link to the Brand Store and a larger part of the product portfolio, thus bringing about higher shopping cart values. Sponsored Brands Ads are ideal for active brand protection and branding in addition to the strong performance results of the campaign type. By adding a slogan and media assets such as brand logo or branding images, the brand can strongly move into the foreground of the advertising measures.

Source: Amazon

Sponsored Display Campaigns: Sponsored Display campaigns are probably the most wide-reaching advertising format in Amazon's Advertising Console. By targeting specific audiences or retargeting campaigns, the relationship with the existing customer base can be strengthened and many new buyers can be won. Even with Sponsored Display campaigns, you can use a slogan and media assets.

Brand Analytics: For the analysis and monitoring of your own Amazon presence, the brand analysis with Brand Analytics is very helpful. The analysis tool offers you very comprehensive data and provides relevant information for registered brands. Brand Analytics highlights the entire market in some analysis areas. In addition to analysing the shopping cart behaviour and alternative purchasing behaviour of customers, you can also analyse individual search terms. Together with other Amazon PPC Tools, Brand Analytics is an excellent basis for a successful Amazon presence.

What are the requirements for the Amazon Brand Registry?

The prerequisites for registration with the Amazon Brand Registry is the official registration of the brand in every country for which the Amazon brand registration should take place. In Germany, for example, this can be done via the DPMA. Here, after successful registration for your own brand, you will receive a corresponding registration number. There are text- or image-based brands. The brand name registered during brand registration must exactly (also in terms of capitalisation) match the brand name you gave to the relevant patent office.

The Amazon brand registration can be done as a Seller or Vendor. However, it can also be completed without an Amazon account in order to better protect your own brand on the Amazon marketplace. Important here: The brand registration must be submitted by the brand owners.

Since the brand registration is usually processed through a legal representation, this should be informed, as it then receives a notification from Amazon. Authorised third parties can then be added very simply, so that they can also benefit from the Amazon sales advantages.

Source: Amazon

This is how Amazon's brand registration works - step by step

The following section provides you with an ideal Amazon Brand Registry guide for the Amazon Brand Registry Germany, in order to be able to register your brand with Amazon.

Step 1: If you have a Seller or Vendor account, log in to Amazon's Brand Service with your Amazon login details. If you use multiple accounts, ideally choose your main account here. The logins of Seller or Vendor Central and the Brand Registry are automatically linked. If you do not have a seller access on Amazon, you can also create a new account for the Brand Registry at the same place.

Step 2: The correct registration for the Brand Registry is then done. There you have to provide various information. These include standard information such as the brand name to be registered, brand registration number and trademark office. The query as to whether it is a word mark or a word-picture mark is also relevant.

Step 3: In the last section, Amazon asks for further information about the category of the products, other sales channels and general seller and supplier account information. It is also asked if other retailers or licensees sell on Amazon. In the last step as a seller, you must also indicate where the products are manufactured. This information serves mainly the purpose that Amazon can practice proactive brand protection.

Step 4: Afterwards, the brand is checked by Amazon and a verification code is sent to you (or the person registering the brand). The brand registrants must then provide this to the Brand Registry team via the support case created by Amazon. Then the Amazon brand registration is complete.

Source: Amazon

Explanation of the Dashboard - Orientation in the Amazon Brand Registry

As soon as the registration in the Brand Registry was successful, several functions are available to you in the dashboard. With these, you can manage and protect your brands and monitor your open brand protection cases. The separate brand registration support is also available to you.

Manage: Here you can manage all the brands that you have already registered. You can thus extend your brand to additional countries if you have registered them with additional trademark offices. You can also register additional brands here.

Protect: In the 'Protect' section of the Amazon Brand Registry Dashboard, you can switch to Project Zero and report violations. Amazon Project Zero is only possible and useful if your brand has a large problem with product counterfeiting. The Project Zero program is usable regardless of your sales relationships with Amazon.

Monitor: There you can monitor all opened cases that you opened during the review of violations.

Support: All further inquiries to the Amazon brand registration support can be viewed under 'Support'. There you can open new cases if there are problems related to your brand.

Conclusion

For active Amazon merchants, the Amazon Brand Registry is useful for boosting sales and brand experience. After a successful brand registration on Amazon, brand owners have access to many additional features such as advanced advertising formats to optimize their own Amazon PPC campaigns, analytics tools, Brand Store and A+ content. Only with these functions can brands offer their customers a complete brand experience. At least as important is the brand protection function, which allows registered brands to actively protect their brand on Amazon and take action against counterfeit products and incorrect content on Amazon.