Amazon is the biggest and most prominent search and e-commerce platform in the world. A large platform is excellent, but it also means tough competition. With the continuous growth in the number of sellers signing up for Amazon, standing out is not an easy task. How can you possibly build your brand on Amazon?
Don’t give up yet! There’s no overnight success when it comes to business. What you need to do is focus on building a unique business brand. Build it and let your efforts take you to heights you never knew you could reach!
Why branding on Amazon?
Choosing the Amazon marketplace for branding growth is an excellent move. Amazon has become a brand-friendly platform to market and sell products online. They offer various services to build, grow, and protect your brand. From A+ content to Brand Analytics and Registry, Amazon has a lot to offer if you wish to grow as a brand and as a company.
People trust shopping and selling on Amazon
Amazon is the most prominent shopping platform in the U.S., with 150.6 million users; eighty-nine percent of customers trust Amazon more than other e-commerce sites. As a result, the number of Amazon seller accounts—it’s currently at 1.9 million—is growing fast!
The standard of search and buy platforms
Amazon is also the most preferred platform for product searches compared to other traditional search engines such as Google. It is now considered a leading brand-building channel to the point that there’s no other e-commerce site at the same level as them.
How to build your brand on Amazon
Ready to launch your brand on Amazon? Here are ten effective ways to guide you on the right track.
1. Understand your brand well
First things first: know what you’re trying to create. What are you going to sell? What are its product categories? Understand your target audience’s needs and seek the solutions your brand can offer. List down the goals you would like to achieve. Your branding strategy will depend on this specific information so ensure that you understand your brand well.
2. Make it legit with Amazon Brand Registry
Brand authority is essential when you’re building a brand on Amazon. Before you dream of getting the clicks that convert to sales, you need to get the trust of your customers first. Create and complete your Amazon seller account. Afterward, make sure to sign up for Brand Registry.
Your brand needs approval from Amazon before you can utilize it to market and sell your products. To obtain this permission, you have to register for Amazon Brand Registry. Once you’re approved, you will be entitled to more control and enhancement rights on your account.
To enroll for Brand Registry, you must comply with Amazon’s requirements and procedures.
3. Understand factors that affect Amazon rankings
To successfully build your brand on Amazon, you must understand how the platform works and what factors influence product ranking. Many of these factors lie in the platform’s algorithm.
The A10 is Amazon’s latest algorithm. The previous one, A9, was centered mainly on profits as the basis of product ranking. This time, the new algorithm focuses on customer experience. Amazon believes that a brand should have a good rank if it increases conversions and gives customers a fulfilling experience.
Some of the factors that can impact your ranking are brand authority, customer feedback, sales history, pricing, off-page sales, PPC, and more.
4. Create product listings that convert
Product pages are the core of the Amazon marketplace. You should optimize your product listings to get a high rank and secure customers. What makes a product listing optimized, then?
- Relevant keywords. A product listing should make proper use of relevant keywords.
- An optimized product title, description, front, and back-end content. An optimized listing must contain the right character count, proper incorporation of keywords, and catchy, informative content. Product titles with about 50-80 characters rank higher than those with a greater count. Keyword stuffing is discouraged.
- Listing boosted by Amazon ads. Maximize your marketing privilege with Amazon advertising, PPCs, and other related strategies. Working with an expert agency when it comes to this might be a good choice so you won’t feel like you are shouldering all tasks on your own.
- Visually accurate and appealing. Product photos are a must and help increase customer engagement on your listings. The photos should be clear and relevant to your product, with keywords incorporated in their names/tags. According to experts, listings with about five to eight product images rank better on Amazon than others.
5. Connect with Amazon A+ content
Amazon also features A+ content, which allows brands approved under Brand Registry to customize their listings further. You can integrate rich content on your descriptions, enhance your SEO, and improve brand awareness. A+ content gives you the most significant benefits of branding: increased traffic, conversion rates, and sales.
6. Make reasonable pricing adjustments
Start with a reasonable price partnered with excellent customer service when you’re just starting to build your brand. Various repricing strategies can work well on Amazon and even land you the Buy Box spot. You can lower your price (but not aim for the lowest), learn through competitor and trend analysis, reprice items that cost the most, or apply supply and demand principles.
7. Understand the game with brand analytics
Brand Analytics is Amazon’s tool that allows registered sellers to gain accurate data and insights. The tool provides information about top searches that convert into sales, product comparison, customer demographics, and more. This is the information you will need to build the right strategies for creating ads, enhancing listings, and understanding customers.
8. Use competition as a means to grow
Competition is tough, especially against well-established brands and massive platforms like Amazon. But you don’t have to constantly treat it as an obstacle to your brand’s success. Competition can be an inspiration to build a much better strategy. Try looking for ideas in the hot trends list and think of something unique for your brand.
9. Listen to what customers say
Customer reviews are an important conversion factor not only on Amazon but with businesses in general. It is also essential to customers who are trying to research a brand. You don’t have to get a review section that has zero negative feedback. There can be negative reviews, but there should be more four to five-star ratings to get more sales. Know your customers by listening to what they are saying. Feedback helps your brand improve and builds a trustworthy relationship with your customers.
10. Avoid activities that violate regulations
Registered brands on Amazon have to abide by specific rules to avoid an account suspension. When your account gets suspended, you will lose all rights as a seller on the platform. But what could lead to a suspension? You are likely to get suspended if:
- You have multiple accounts
- You have poor customer service and sales performance
- You are selling prohibited products
- You incorporate false information on your listings
- Someone reports you for copyright infringement
- Competitors try black hat tactics on you
Some of these factors are manageable, while others are out of your control. If you are unable to avoid a suspension, here’s a helpful guide on Amazon suspension appeal.
Conclusion
Good things take their time. Don’t rush. While Amazon is a challenging place for your brand, you can get by if you understand what works and create effective strategies based on that information. Trust in your efforts and see how far they can take you.
Jayce is the managing director of Seller Interactive, the number one Amazon advertising agency based in Canada that helps brands build their business on Amazon. His content marketing expertise has led him to work with brands such as Toyota and GoDaddy, producing content that has reached over 20M views in a month.
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