Brand Registry on Amazon: is it right for you?

Brand Registry on Amazon has become an essential tool for those who want to compete.

No longer can you just throw up a listing and watch the sales come in. It requires a deep understanding of the marketplace, how the backend and logistics work and the tools you have access to for marketing and advertising.

It’s with the Brand Registry program that you can really reach your potential on Amazon while simultaneously helping to protect you and your brand. 

What is Amazon Brand Registry?

The Amazon Brand Registry program is a special program offered by Amazon that gives your brand authority and special benefits over other non-registered brands. One of the original reasons Amazon started Brand Registry 2.0 back in 2017 was to better help protect against the growing number of counterfeiters on the platform. 

With Amazon Brand Registry you have complete control over your listing content, access to brand-building tools such as A+ Content and Amazon Stores, and a tool as well as an internal team to help monitor and report intellectual property violations and infringements. 

The two biggest ways to benefit from the program are to help in building your brand (and growing sales) and protecting it. 

What are the benefits of Amazon Brand Registry? 

Amazon Brand Registry is designed to make your life on the e-commerce platform easier. Once you’re given access to Brand Registry, a whole new world of tools opens up to you. They can be divided into two categories: 

• Brand building 
• Brand protecting 

The brand-building tools that Amazon Brand Registry offers can take your product listings and brand to the next level. Telling your story, growing authority and building trust with customers is much easier with tools like A+ Content, Stores and sponsored brand ads. The Amazon world is unlike traditional retail. These types of tools can make best sellers even out of small brands that wouldn’t normally have the opportunity. 

The brand-protecting tools, on the other hand, preserve the hard work you put into building up your brand and customer base. With Amazon Brand Registry, you can focus on what’s important and put yourself in offense mode and take advantage of the brand-building benefits instead of using energy to defend your brand and products. 

With Amazon Brand Registry, both the brand-building and brand-protecting benefits will make your life on the platform easier.  

…you will not be able to easily update your product listings every time you want to change something.”

Amazon is not just “set it and forget it”. It needs to be constantly monitored and listings need to be routinely updated with new images and copy as customer trends, seasons and the competitive landscape change. 

If you don’t have Brand Registry then this will be very difficult. It’s important to realize that without brand registry you will have less control. In fact, everyone else will have the same access to your listings as you do. Some might even have more control if they know how to work the system. 

Continuously bad PR about counterfeit issues, accusations of monopoly and reports of unsafe goods being sold on the platform have Amazon throwing up its defences. It’s best to just play ball and do things the way Amazon wants to see them if you don’t want any unforeseen surprises down the road.

Selling on Amazon is hard enough, no reason to make it harder.

Brand-building Benefits of Amazon Brand Registry 

Brand management on Amazon is more important than ever and with brand registry on Amazon you get access to advertising and promotional tools like:  

• A+ Content 
• Amazon Stores (formerly Storefronts) 
• Sponsored Brand Ads 
• Amazon Live 
• Amazon Posts 
• Advanced Brand Analytics  

These all give you an edge over the competition when building a brand on Amazon but in slightly different areas. Let’s take a look. 

A+ Content

A+ Content (formerly Enhanced Brand Content) is one of the biggest benefits of having Brand Registry in that it allows you to communicate both your brand’s and additional product information on your Amazon listing.  

It’s a chance to really show off your product and go beyond the basic main images each listing is allowed (read about every image you need for your product listing). On a regular product page that has no A+ Content, you’ll only see sponsored products and brands trying to steer a customer’s attention away from your product page. But with A+ Content, your product description becomes a place where you can expand on the benefits and features of your product in a visually appealing way and give customers that extra push they need to purchase your product. 

There’s also a new module called the Brand Story that sits above the A+ Content and works as a carousel that you can design to tell customers more about your brand. It lets viewers scroll through collections, images and details about your brand. This can help you share your mission and personality, and build trust with potential customers. An added bonus is that you can also link directly from the modules to your brand’s store to better guide your customers through the shopping experience.

It’s also front and center on mobile and works as an excellent branding tool. If you don’t believe me, you can check out my article on why you should be using A+ Content. 

Curious? We’ve rounded up some stellar examples of live A+ Content if you want to see more. We also have an article that goes over the differences between Premium A+ Content and basic A+ Content.

We’ve included a gallery of some impressive A+ content (both basic and premium) below.

Amazon Stores (formerly Amazon Storefronts)

What’s better than A+ Content? An Amazon Store that is all your brand’s own. When you’re accepted for Amazon Brand Registry, you’ll be able to create your own store. A place free from distractions from other brands or products interfering with your customer’s journey – and that’s golden.  

They allow you to display your full product line, seasonal promotions and show off your brand’s personality. An Amazon Store is essentially your own one-stop ecommerce shop for all of your brand’s items within Amazon’s platform. It allows you full license to design it as you wish. This is an incredible opportunity to build your brand as you’re creating a seamless and personal experience for the customer – all on Amazon! Want to see them in action?  Check out these 7 grocery brands that are crushing it with their branded stores. 

It’s also true that not all brands have stores, so having one gives you more credibility over other brands, therefore building trust and authority. 

For more information, you can take a look at Amazon’s Stores page or get in touch if you want help building your own.

Sponsored Brand Ads

Remember when we mentioned other brands that could take away attention from your product listings? Well, you could be that guy and turn the tables. 

Brand Registry unlocks the ability to run sponsored brand ads. It’s an excellent way to take your advertising efforts to the next level. Instead of a single sponsored product, you can attract attention by running branded ad campaigns with access to different ad real estate like in the example below.

You’re allowed to show your logo, a photo, a headline and up to 3 of your products.  

As you can see, this ad shows up right at the top of a customer search (prime real estate). The logo helps build brand recognition and there’s even a link to the store. If you bring a customer in through a sponsored brand ad and they click through to your store, there is an even higher chance for conversion as stores build authority and trust. 

Learn more from Amazon about Sponsored Brands.

Amazon Live

The popularity of videos and live streaming has grown a lot in the last years and Amazon has obviously taken note. Amazon Live is an app that joins live video with online shopping. The idea is to help brands and influencers showcase their products, interact with shoppers and answer any questions they may have – all live. You can see how this could be advantageous to a new or unknown brand. 

Amazon Live streams appear on a brand’s product details page and a recording is kept on the page once the stream is over. The more you livestream the more you “level up”, unlocking additional benefits.  

Just as videos provide examples, benefits and use-cases to a customer, live videos can build even more trust by answering customer questions directly. It shows that the brand actually cares about their customers. And we all like to feel looked after, right? Learn more about Amazon Live for brands here. Below is an example of Amazon promoting their live streams. 

Amazon Posts

Amazon Posts is yet another new tool currently still in beta offered to brand-registered sellers in the US marketplace. Similar to Instagram, posts allow you to create a feed of images to inspire and delight customers. You have the option to tag your products in these images to drive product discovery so that a view can click directly from the post to the product page. 

Customers browsing on Amazon can find your posts on your feed as well as category-based and related product feeds. Posts are a great way to make you discoverable and educate customers on your product, all while keeping a consistent brand presence. You’re even allowed to measure the performance of your posts so you can learn which ones are doing well and how to improve on them. 

Amazon Brand Analytics

Brand Analytics is one of the biggest data advantages brands can get and is only available when you have brand registry with Amazon. It provides real data to see how certain search terms and products are performing. These include: 

• Top search terms per category (and overall) 
• Top 3 ASINs for that search term 
• Each top ASIN’s share of clicks on that search term 
• Each top ASIN’s conversion rate for that search term 

You can identify repeat purchase behavior for your products and see data on: 

• % of repeat customers for a product 
• Comparison to previous period 
• Value of repeat purchases 
• And you can view by both products and brands 

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are areas like market basket analysis, item comparisons and alternative purchase behavior to look at as well. Suffice it to say that all of this information will help you understand your performance and the performance of your competitors much better and you only get access to it with Brand Registry.

Other Special Advertising & Promotional Tools

In addition to the bigger tools for registered brands on Amazon, there are a few others we won’t go into much detail about. They include:

Amazon Attribution (beta): Track your ad performance across multiple channels, not just on Amazon. Learn more

Brand Dashboard: Get deeper insights into your products’ performance. Read more

Vine Program: Get more reviews from Amazon’s trusted network of reviewers. Learn how

Brand Protecting Benefits of Amazon Brand Registry

Along with the powerful tools to help grow your brand and sales along, Amazon Brand Registry helps protect your hard work too. With Brand Registry you’ll have complete control over your listings, be able to report violations and proactively protect your brand. As we mentioned earlier, the whole idea behind Brand Registry was initially to protect brands and their customers. 

Product Listing Control

Amazon no longer makes it easy to update your listings without having a direct association with the listing through Brand Registry. So unless you are the brand owner or a registered agent then you will not be able to easily update your product listings every time you want to change something. 

“…you will not be able to easily update your product listings every time you want to change something.” 

Even if other sellers are selling your products, they won’t be able to change the listing – this helps protect your brand’s integrity and prevents any suspicious activity from happening. 

Enhanced Customer Support 

We all know how difficult it can be to communicate with Amazon when there is a problem. With Amazon Brand Registry, there is an internal team dedicated to helping brand owners when they need to report infringements on intellectual property and other violations. 

Brand Protection and Reporting

Amazon uses the information you’ve submitted to perform predictive protections to try to find and remove listings that infringe on your trademark and intellectual property. To learn more about what Amazon is doing to protect small businesses and brands, check out their Brand Protection Report.

If you want to look manually Amazon Brand Registry also gives you several tools to help find and report counterfeit and copyright violations. 

• Global search 
• Image search 
• Bulk ASIN Search 

Here is what Amazon lists on their Brand Registry Benefits page.

What are the Amazon Brand Registry Requirements?

With all the advantages of brand registry it would be easy to assume that it’s a lot of work to set up but in reality, it’s simple and straightforward.

To become brand-registered on Amazon, you’ll need:

• An active registered trademark 
• The trademark registration number 
• Specific information such as your country of origin 
• The product categories on Amazon your products belong in 

Finally, it is important to get in contact with your lawyer or whoever’s name is on the trademark application as they will receive the verification code from Amazon.

Brand Registry Frequently Asked Questions

Which trademarks are accepted for Amazon brand registry?

Amazon only accepts trademark registrations from certain countries which you can find in section 1 of the review eligibility requirements page. There are also country-specific requirements you’ll be able to see from the

Can you get brand registry with a pending trademark?

Requiring a trademark has been a question of concern as registering a trademark can take up to 12 months in the United States even if all goes well. 

 In response, late last year Amazon made an update to their wording and under the US-specific drop-down menu, it states that a live application is a valid status when applying to the Brand Registry program. 

This means that all you should need now is the number for your pending trademark application when applying for Brand Registry. 

Again, it all depends on your country. You’ll have to check your country’s requirements and which trademark status they will accept.

How much does Amazon Brand Registry cost?

Amazon Brand Registry is free. There may be costs involved if you need to register your trademark or to pay for your lawyer’s time, but Amazon does not charge you to register your brand. 

How long does Amazon Brand Registry take?

If all goes well and you submit all the documentation and fulfill the requirements, it takes about a week or two with some back-and-forth communication.

Does my Brand Registry transfer over to other countries?

Unfortunately, Brand Registry does not transfer from one Amazon marketplace to the other. You’ll have to register your brand separately for each marketplace you plan to sell on.

Giving access to Brand Registry

There are different roles you can assign to authorized accounts so that they are allowed to make changes. These roles are: 

• Administrator 
• Rights Owner 
• Registered Agent 

To give a seller authority, you’ll have to go into the Brand Registry platform, click on Support, Update your brand profile, and then select “update role” or “add new user to account”.

Your Agency Partner Needs Brand Registry

Remember what we said about how brand registry reduces headaches and makes everything easier? This is true for your agency partner as well.

Your Amazon Agencies work is dependent on being able to quickly and easily implement the tools and strategies needed to grow sales and protect your brand on Amazon. Without proper access to these tools, a lot of the work professionals may do to help you sell on Amazon will either be difficult to implement or have short-lived benefits.

Need Help?

If you’re still not sure or simply don’t have the time, feel free to contact us and we’ll see if we can help.

You can use the links below to either send an email or just send me a direct message on LinkedIn. It would be my pleasure to help!