Branding on marketplaces: What are the options?

Branding strategy: How can branding work in marketplaces?

The question, then, is what a branding strategy that works can look like. Some of the ways are presented below.

Brand protection with the Amazon Brand Registry

For a brand to be purposefully built, it must be protected. The Amazon Brand Registry gives merchants the opportunity to do just that.

The prerequisite for use is a trademark number from the Intellectual Property Office (in Europe, the EUIPO is responsible for this). Once registration has taken place, Amazon’s automated protection mechanisms can ensure that corresponding content is removed in the event of trademark infringement. In addition, you can take action yourself and report suspected violations.

Sponsored Brands and Amazon Stores

In addition to brand protection, the Amazon Brand Registry unlocks a number of branding options. For example, you can create multi-page free Amazon Stores for your brand and use Sponsored Brands. The latter are ads with your logo, your own headline and up to three products.

Brand protection on eBay with the VeRI program

eBay also has a mechanism, the VeRI program, that allows you to report trademark infringement. The abbreviation VeRI stands for Verified Rights Owner, which sort of implies that you have to register your trademark with the EUIPO, similar to the Amazon counterpart, before you can use the program.

Unlike the Amazon Brand Registry, VeRI is “only” for brand protection, you do not unlock branding opportunities with it.

SEO

The term SEO still evokes little enthusiasm among marketplace traders, who have specifically chosen the already established marketplace in order not to be completely on their own when it comes to building (organic) traffic. In fact, SEO is also an effective tool in the implementation of your branding strategy, as it will help you appear more often in the search results of the marketplaces and thus increase their visibility.

For both eBay and Amazon SEO, a few simple ground rules apply:

• Use appropriate categories and item features so that customers can quickly find their way around
• Sprinkle in suitable terms (keywords) for which you would like to be found
• Use appealing images that show your products in as much detail as possible
• Avoid superlatives in your product texts and give credible product features, this creates trust.

Reading tip: eBay and Amazon SEO are closely linked to product copywriting. Learn how to write appealing product texts in our blog.

Storytelling

Branding on marketplaces does not mean that it only has to take place on marketplaces. On the contrary, for many brands, new customer acquisition takes place outside of Amazon & Co. This applies in particular to storytelling, which is becoming increasingly important, because as already mentioned, Amazon & Co. leave little room for telling a credible brand story.

For this reason, you are almost forced to switch to other channels for this branding measure. The typical social media platforms in particular are predestined for building your brand. Which channel is the right one depends very much on your target group: While Facebook and Instagram are best suited to address B2C customers directly, LinkedIn is most likely the best choice in the B2B sector. In addition, YouTube and Pinterest are becoming more and more interesting for companies.

Corporate Identity

While product detail pages on eBay and Amazon can only be designed to a certain extent, your products can still carry a corporate identity to the outside world, which has a decisive influence on the perception of your brand. For this reason, you should definitely not disregard corporate identity if you decide to sell on marketplaces. This part of branding is mainly about the things we have already mentioned elsewhere: Logo, colors, fonts, tonality, etc. Over time, parts of the corporate identity can change; Coca Cola, for example, has modernized its logo several times over the decades. However, the Group has also existed for a correspondingly long time. Since a subsequent change in corporate identity can be profound, it’s best to be clear about your brand’s appearance from the start.

SEA

SEA, Search Engine Advertising, is another way you can increase your visibility and it almost always works on the same principle regardless of the channel. You place an ad for your products and pay X amount when it is clicked. The amount can vary greatly depending on the category, product or the search term matching the ad.

You may be listed on Google Shopping Ads, probably still the most popular channel in terms of SEA for store owners, at Amazon’s expense. However, this stroke of luck has now become a rarity as Amazon has drastically cut back its budget for Google Ads (source: fool.com (English)). Unfortunately, it is not possible to promote your Amazon products yourself directly via Google Shopping Ads, for that you need your own online store if you want to implement a branding strategy with SEA.

Amazon itself offers Amazon PPC Ads (PPC = paid per click), a separate option for SEA on its marketplace. The same is true for eBay, where the platform breaks the mold when it comes to paying for ads: you choose a rate for your ad that corresponds to a percentage of the sale price that you set. The good thing about this system is that the costs for the ad are only incurred if a purchase is made within 30 days of clicking on the ad.

Your own online store

In addition to selling on marketplaces, it can be worthwhile to create your own online store, especially for branding purposes. With this one, you are completely free in the design and have more options for customer engagement. For example, you could mail Amazon or eBay customers a coupon that is only redeemable in your store. You can use the magazine for the storytelling already mentioned and keep customers up to date.