Selling on marketplaces is a great way to drive more sales and reach more customers, but you may encounter black-hat resellers and competitor brands who want to steal your business. Read on for tips about how to protect your brand, retain your customers, and ward off unauthorized resellers.
Why do you need to protect your brand on marketplaces?
Price Erosion
If an unauthorized reseller can get a few of your top sellers in stock, they may reduce the sale price, leaving your in-stock product warming the bench in the warehouse. This can unleash a vicious cycle where any authorized resellers feel the need to react, reducing their sale price to stay competitive.
As you may have guessed, large-scale price reductions will eat into your brand’s profit margins and introduce unneeded complexity to your relationship with some authorized resellers.
Inaccurate Product Information
Not only can unauthorized sellers change the price of your products, but they may also upload low-quality assets or change descriptions in ways that do not align with your brand’s messaging. Consistent branding is unnegotiable when trying to build trust with customers.
Competitor Ads
Competitors with a robust ad strategy can easily run ads on your product listings, in hope of getting consumers to navigate away from your product onto their own. On Amazon, this takes the form of Sponsored Display, Sponsor Brands, or Sponsored Products.
Walmart and eBay also offer in-listing ad placement that competitors could use in the same fashion.
How do you protect your brand against unauthorized resellers and competitors?
Enroll in Marketplaces’ Brand Protection Programs
Amazon’s Brand Registry uses the information you enter to remove content that infringes on your brand or is simply inaccurate. It also lets you report suspected violations for review. Amazon offers additional services that help further protect your brand on their marketplace.
Similarly, Walmart offers the Brand Portal where you can register your brand, submit intellectual property claims, and manage authorized brand representatives.
Some marketplaces or channels have stricter requirements to sell on their site, and in those cases, brands have to fight off unauthorized sellers far less often.
Buy Ads for Products Related to Your Own
Costly, yes, but often worth it. If you are not actively advertising on marketplaces, competitors have the opportunity to run ads for their brand or products on your listings.
If your brand has an expansive product catalog, it is advantageous to keep an always-on ad strategy across all key ad formats. This strategy works on the assumption that you sell products that are similar to each other. With this strategy, if a customer clicks an ad on your brand’s product listing, you increase the chance that they will be taken to another one of your products, giving you a greater opportunity to win the sale.
Amazon, Walmart, and eBay all support sponsored ads. Brand protection is a wonderful, secondary benefit of a good ad strategy (following the ROI, of course).
Focus on Partnering with Quality Sellers, like Spreetail 😉
Spreetail works with your brand to plan inventory levels, forecasting demand across channels. Unauthorized sellers will have far less opportunity to win the buy box if your products stay in stock. We will also help you customize a retail erosion and prevention plan to clean up your listings, if necessary.
Further, Spreetail knows the ins and outs of each marketplace. We will keep your listings optimized and build out enhanced content that communicates your brand’s tone and message accurately, with a focus on conversion.
Spreetail is an ecommerce growth partner focused on accelerating brands and channels to compete for tomorrow’s ecommerce customer. Our ecommerce experts purchase products from world-class manufacturers, list these top brands on marketplace giants such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, and eBay, and fulfill orders with next-day speed. Our completely home-grown software helps us provide unmatched value to our brand partners, channel partners, and the millions of customers we delight in the US and beyond. Get it touch.
Growth Marketing Manager
