In a study of nearly 5,000 Amazon sellers , 95% said they plan to expand their business this year. However, many have expressed concerns about their business risks, including:

48% are concerned about Chinese suppliers selling their/similar products at lower cost

48% are concerned about hijackers/copycats on their list

39% of sellers worry about being squeezed out as a "middleman" between suppliers (mostly in China) and consumers

The best way sellers can protect themselves from these concerns? Register their brand trademark with Amazon's Brand Registry.

This article delves into the features and benefits of Amazon Brand Registry, how to get started, and how trademarks and other strategies can help you protect your Amazon business .

What is Amazon's Brand Registry?

Amazon Brand Registry is an exclusive program offered by Amazon to legalize your brand. It also gives you an advantage over non-registered brands.

Amazon Statement:

"For brand owners, registering for the Brand Registry provides access to powerful tools to help protect your trademark, including proprietary text and image searches and predictive automation."

Note: If you're still in the initial stages of setting up your seller account, you may want to read our comprehensive guide to Amazon Seller Central before diving in .

Update: On March 25, 2021, Amazon announced the brand self-service identification process in Seller Central. This allows Brand Registry sellers to identify themselves as brand owners of brands registered in the Brand Registry program.

With that comes exclusive offers that only brand owners can enjoy .

What Amazon Brand Registry can (and can't) do?

Amazon's Brand Registry will:

Give brand owners more control over your listing content.

Provide a separate, more efficient internal team to help fix and upgrade incorrect listing contributions and changes.

Provide a dedicated in-house team to file and escalate IP infringement claims.

Provides a tool to monitor your brand on Amazon.

Grants you access to Amazon A+ content to improve the display of content on product listings.

Increase awareness through alternative advertising routes and interactive media.

Amazon's Brand Registry does not:

Shut down your brand or restrict other sellers from selling it.

Allows you to whitelist/blacklist other sellers from selling your brand.

Allow someone other than you (the brand owner) to file infringement claims with other sellers.

Grants you access to the Amazon store where you can promote your brand with your own multi-page store.

Increase awareness with advanced advertising strategies like Sponsored Brands and Display Advertising.

Allows you to live stream and interact with potential customers via Amazon Live.

Do you need an Amazon Brand Registry trademark?

The Brand Registry program requires you to have a registered trademark for your product in order to apply. In the United States, this means that you need to register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO ).

How long does it take to register a trademark?

Generally, you can expect to wait at least a year for a response from the USPTO.

Fortunately, you don't have to wait a year to get your brand approved by Amazon.

Amazon offers a service called IP Accelerator that connects Amazon business owners with intellectual property (IP) attorneys who will help you with the trademark process.

If you work with Amazon's carefully selected intellectual property experts, Amazon will approve your product for brand registration before your trademark application is accepted.

How long does Amazon Brand Registry approval take?

Assuming you already own a trademark, or you have submitted an application through the IP Accelerator program, the entire approval process will take approximately two weeks. Just make sure you submit everything Amazon needs for your brand the first time around.

Also, be sure to review all eligibility requirements and note that your brand must have a valid registered trademark in each country you wish to register.

6 Benefits of Joining Amazon Brand Registry

Many registry privileges and features exist in your Amazon Seller Central dashboard.

After you sign up for Brand Registry, you can go to the Branding tab on the main navigation bar in Seller Central and access different views such as:

Brand Analysis

Manage experiments

Brand Dashboard

customer reviews

customer engagement

virtual bundle

Brand Referral Bonus

In the brand dashboard, you can view your brand health and brand strength.

If you go to the new Brand Advantage section, you should see the information in the screenshot above.

1. Protect your brand

If you've taken the time to apply and pay to register your trademark , the last thing you want is someone to interfere with your brand. Thankfully, Brand Registry can help . This is your best option to protect your product.

You'll be able to protect your intellectual property and content on Amazon, and we have a dedicated in-house team standing by to help you:

1. Report any market violations, including product review manipulation and customer complaints of "not as described."

2. Report any issues with your listings, including incorrect product details and product variant information, and blocked listings.

3. Submit or withdraw a claim of intellectual property infringement.

4. Report any technical issues related to product listing page loading or the operation of the Seller Central home page.

5. Upgrade a previously submitted claim.

You will be able to monitor all ongoing cases related to any of the above and escalate if necessary.

Want more protection?

Transparency is an Amazon program that provides your brand (and customers) with extra security from counterfeiters .

These are the steps involved when using transparency:

1. First, register your product with Transparency. Next, apply the transparency code to your product.

2. Amazon then scans your product to ensure only genuine items are shipped to customers.

3. Finally, customers can use your Transparency code to verify the authenticity of your product no matter where they are.

Project Zero is a feature in the Brand Registry that helps reduce counterfeiting to zero.

It stops the publication of counterfeit goods by implementing automatic protection. Amazon uses the information you provide about your brand, products, and intellectual property, and uses advanced machine learning to enforce protection.

Brands can also remove counterfeit items immediately without contacting Amazon.

2. Access to A+ Content

One of the best features of Amazon Brand Registry is its " A+ Content Manager " (formerly known as Enhanced Brand Content). You can access the A+ Content Manager by going to the Ads Navigation tab in Seller Central.

Enhancing your branded content allows you to add more text, images, infographics and unique modules to your product listings on top of standard plain text product descriptions.

Ultimately, it makes your listing look more professional.

How to use A+ content

You can easily create your enhanced listing as long as you have selected the ASIN for which you plan to use A+ content. Amazon's simple template settings allow you to choose between different module layouts and media to upload.

Just make sure you focus on the quality of the content rather than the quantity. less is more!

Finally, you must submit all enhancements for review before you can go live

Once submitted, you can easily check the status of your A+ content submissions on your brand dashboard, keeping you on top of any requested revisions.

3. Attract customers with your brand

Registering a brand also means getting the features that make you unique.

A storefront will instantly add value to your brand and legitimize your business; a store will resemble a regular e-commerce website, usually consisting of one or more pages, each consisting of a header and footer, and Surrounded by many content blocks.

One of the great things about an Amazon store is that it won't be disrupted by competitors' products. When you choose to create a store, the step-by-step process is simple. You don't need any special skills to do it!

Amazon makes it easy to create content like a storefront. You can just choose one of the provided templates or start from scratch!

If you choose to use a template, simply fill out the appropriate information and media to start building your store.

Remember to preview desktop and mobile views as you build to make sure everything lines up for the best customer viewing. Don't hesitate to move the tiles around. Add, edit and delete until you are satisfied.

Finally, similar to the A+ Content Manager process, you'll submit your store for publication. So make sure to double-check your spelling, punctuation, images, video, and mobile views before submitting, and be prepared to wait a few days for approval (or their revision request).

4. Sponsored Brand Advertising

Sponsored Brands , another way to engage with customers, are headline ads that appear at the top of Amazon’s search results pages.

You can use these ads to help drive discovery for your brand, using custom messages to help shoppers see your brand the way you want. Customers are already searching for your products, so what better way to draw attention to your brand!

When they click on your brand name or logo, they are immediately taken to your storefront. Or, if they click on your product, they will be taken directly to your product page.

Like regular ads, you pay for every click that Amazon shoppers make on your ad.

5. Amazon Live Creators

If you've ever wanted to engage directly with your customers, you can now use Amazon Live to add interactive live video to your branding strategy.

This feature of Amazon Brand Registry allows sellers to share their brand stories. This helps them attract more shoppers.

You can use live video to demonstrate how your product works, or you can use it to live chat with potential customers to answer any questions.

How to Set Up Amazon Live Creator

First, download the Amazon Live Creator iOS mobile app .

Then, select the products you'd like to feature on the stream.

When you're ready, start streaming. You can use the iPhone camera or connect to an external camera via a video encoder.

If you want to know what's there, you can visit rir_h=qnhi /live to learn about other sellers' live streams.

Shoppers can also Air_h=qnhi Discover your livestreams in the Amazon app—from your product listings to your Amazon store to the various placements shoppers browse.

6. Know your customers

In order to effectively reach your customers with all the benefits of brand registry, you need to know who you are dealing with.

Knowing the metrics of your customer base will ultimately guide your decision whether and how to use every tool and service available to you .

Brand Analysis

Brand Analytics aggregates customer search and buying behavior data to help you improve business operations.

You can find this feature by going back to Brand Strengths on the Brand Dashboard. Alternatively, you can find it under branding in the main navigation bar.

There is a lot of information here, including:

Search query performance

SQP provides visibility into branded search term performance based on customer search behavior. You'll be able to view metrics like search query volume, brand share, click-through rate, cart addition rate, and purchase rate.