Selling on Amazon is critical for most brands. But protecting a brand’s reputation on Amazon requires diligence. Shady resellers and arbitragers could sell a brand’s products without the brand’s knowledge. And inferior products and poor service can lead to negative product and seller reviews. All can damage a brand’s image.
In this post, I’ll address how to protect your brand’s reputation on Amazon.
…protecting a brand’s reputation on Amazon requires diligence.
4 Ways to Protect a Brand’s Reputation
Police counterfeits. A significant challenge Amazon faces is counterfeit products. Counterfeits can damage a brand and create a poor shopping experience.
Amazon has two programs to prevent counterfeit goods: Brand Registry and, more recently, Project Zero. But both programs are driven mainly by the brand owner. Thus not being on the platform puts a brand at a disadvantage.
Counterfeit goods can appear in a variety of ways. The most common is for a counterfeiter to create a listing that uses a brand’s product photos, representing it as genuine. Another common method is to create a listing that uses a brand’s intellectual property — trademarks, patents — and then selling the items at a price that can kill the brand’s revenue.
The first step to fighting counterfeits is to enroll in both programs. You can easily report trademark and patent violations.
The next step is to look for duplicate listings of your product on Amazon. Then report those listings to Amazon, who will merge them into your listings, thus consolidating all sellers.
Finally, if you suspect a seller is listing a counterfeit, purchase the item. Purchasing the product and showing Amazon that it is a fake is the quickest way to get counterfeits booted from the platform.
Monitor negative product reviews. Maintaining a good brand image on Amazon also requires monitoring customer reviews. Negative reviews can convince shoppers not to purchase a brand’s products. Counterfeit products can generate many negative reviews.
Amazon allows brand owners to respond to customer reviews, to follow up and apologize if necessary and offer to help. Responding to bad reviews also shows other shoppers that customer service is important to the brand and, therefore, could help to counteract the damage.
Negative reviews provide helpful feedback and identify how a product is not meeting consumers’ needs.
Maintain strong seller feedback ratings. Seller Feedback rates the performance of the seller, not the product. Maintaining a good Seller Feedback score can help you protect your brand’s reputation on Amazon.
Seller Feedback ratings are not as prominent as product reviews. However, maintaining a good Seller Feedback rating, among other factors, can help control the Buy Box, which also will make your content and branding show up on the listings.
Unlike negative product reviews, negative Seller Feedback can be removed if it meets specific criteria.
Managing Seller Feedback can protect your brands’ reputation.
Meet required account health metrics. The final step to managing a brand’s reputation on Amazon is to meet the required account health metrics. These are specific metrics that Amazon requires for sellers — or risk of having the account suspended. The metrics cover customer service, product compliance, and shipping performance.
Meeting the metrics will help a brand’s reputation. It will also help control the Buy Box.