Six Steps to Build a Stronger Amazon Brand Identity

Having a strong Amazon brand identity can lead to a better business reputation and more sales. In this guest article, Lesley Hensell, co-founder and co-owner of Riverbend Consulting, shares six great tips for how to strengthen yours.

Building a brand identity on Amazon presents a unique set of challenges, even for the savviest private-label professional. But brand identity matters more than ever before. Once a seller has paid to acquire a customer via advertising, coupons, superior product development, or promotions, the last thing they want is to lose a higher-margin repeat sale.

Keep reading to learn six solid steps that will move your Amazon brand identity from so-so to stellar.

6 Ways to Build a Stronger Amazon Brand Identity

Here are six great ways to build a stronger Amazon brand identity for your business.

1) Start with these Brand-Building Basics

New private-label sellers on Amazon often are tempted to launch generic products just to try and make a buck.

This is a bad idea. Instead, it’s important to create a brand that will enhance your products. That means you need to:

Trademark your brand with the US Patent and Trademark Office. This is absolutely critical to protect a brand both on and off of Amazon.
Join the Amazon Brand Registry. Using your new official trademark (or a provisional trademark), you should enroll your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry. This gives you the ability to create and manage product detail pages with A+ content, develop a storefront (more on this later), and file complaints against competitors who infringe on your products.
Design a unique logo. This logo ensures that Amazon, its buyers, and competing sellers understand that the product is not generic. It also makes it more difficult for competitors to list counterfeit offers on your listing detail page. Ideally, the logo should appear on both the product itself and the product packaging.
Develop a brand guide. The brand guide includes the brand’s preferred fonts, colors, logo treatments, graphics styles, and more. Setting this up from day one will ensure a unified look that buyers will begin to recognize and seek out.

2) Optimize Your Amazon Listings

An attractive, optimized listing detail page creates more clicks and better conversion rates. It’s that simple.

This means spending the time and effort to ensure the page has:

Relevant and targeted keywords in the title, bullet points, and description. This will all help you rank higher in relevant customer searches.
High-quality product photos, which fill all seven available image slots for the page. These should include lifestyle images and infographics that educate customers to the point that they are comfortable clicking “Buy Now.”
Bullets and a description that clearly speaks to the benefits and features of the product.
A+ content (also known as Enhanced Brand Content) to create a more visually appealing and detailed product listing that also supports the overall brand.

3) Don’t “Phone it in” on Product Packaging

Many Amazon sellers focus solely on their listing detail pages. They spend their time adding beautiful photos and writing optimized copy yet their actual products look completely generic when received by the buyer.

Why? A lack of properly branded packaging. While this may seem like just an extra expense for no added value, nothing could be further from the truth. Generic-looking items with no unique packaging or plain brown box packaging are much less likely to inspire repeat buyers.

What’s more, sellers shouldn’t overlook future opportunities to take their Amazon-only brands to brick-and-mortar stores. That simply isn’t possible unless your packaging is both complete and attractive.

Spend a little extra time and money to design affordable, attractive Amazon packaging that reinforces the brand’s image and matches the product detail page. Make your packaging stand out to attract potential repeat and referral buyers.

4) Design a Beautiful Storefront that Shows Off Your Branding

Amazon allows sellers to create a heavily branded “storefront” that makes it easy for customers to view their entire product catalog. This page features top products and allows ASINs to be sorted by category. It also enables brand owners to strongly showcase their brand imagery, logos, and other emblems that reinforce their unique branding for buyers.

It's highly recommended that you take full advantage of the storefront feature. Be careful to follow your brand book built out in step one of the brand-building process. This shows buyers that products are not just being sold by a random reseller; instead, they are being carefully curated and offered by a brand that truly cares about its image.

5) Get Moving with Beautiful Brand Videos

Amazon’s search algorithm favors ASINs that feature high-quality videos in their listing detail pages.

Too often, sellers throw together ineffective videos that simply don’t get the job done. These might show a product simply rotating on the screen or placed inside of a room. Do videos of that style create clicks and conversions? No.

Make sure you're consulting your brand book during the video creation process. Include the brand’s tagline, colors, logo, and other messaging. Showcase your product in use and help buyers envision how they would properly use or enjoy it.

6) Invest in Advanced Amazon Promotions and Advertising

Amazon offers some great programs that are pricey but they do solve many problems for new brands just getting their feet wet.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. PPC ads are critical during product and brand launches. Establish a generous budget and continually test keywords to ensure they are both on target and affordable.
Amazon Vine. Don’t have product reviews? Get honest reviews with the Amazon Vine program. You can also try tools like FeedbackFive by eComEngine to automate your Amazon reviews in bulk.
Editorial Recommendations. Purchased via third-party agencies and publishers, Editorial Recommendations offer an additional opportunity for your product to appear on the first page of a product search. Best of all, the seller pays per purchase, not per click.

Start Creating a Stronger Amazon Brand Identity Today

Like most things in life, building your Amazon brand identity takes forethought, a bit of planning, and a commitment to invest upfront.

A stronger brand presence has many benefits for your business, including a larger competitive advantage, greater market and category leadership, and more long-term repeat customers and sales. Whether you’re starting from scratch or just need help to freshen up and re-invigorate your brand, contact us. Our team is ready to help!