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Relevant Information and Actionable Takeaways
If you want to maximize traffic and conversions on the (highly competitive) Amazon sales channel, your Amazon listings need to be top notch, with compelling images and copy.
Unfortunately, Amazon product listings operate like a wiki – in other words, anyone and everyone who sells your products on Amazon can submit suggested edits to your listings at any time.
There is a solution to this problem. Amazon’s Brand Registry enables the brand owner themselves to control the content of the listing, regardless of who the seller is. Without Brand Registry, the likelihood of your product getting traction and stealing market share from the competition is far lower.
If you want to know how to create really great content and then make sure no one else can change it after the fact, read on and we’ll walk you through it, step by step.
Note: The current version of Amazon’s Brand Registry is 2.0. If you were in Brand Registry prior to Registry 2.0. your brand is likely no longer covered.
Product Content
To create a highly effective Amazon product listing, the following areas must be addressed:
- Product Title
- Images
- Bullet Points
- Description
Product Title
When it comes to SEO on Amazon, there is no content element with a greater impact on SEO than the product title.
In our experience, simply optimizing the product title alone can have a profound impact on how a product will rank in the Amazon Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) – which in turn contributes to increased sales velocity – which in turn helps the product rank even higher in the SERPs.
This flywheel effect is huge, and the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the product title can help to unleash it.
So how does one optimize the product title?
The first step is to take a look at existing marketing materials, read existing customer reviews, analyze features and benefits, and take a look at competing products.
The goal of this first step is to gain a broader perspective of the problems that this particular product solves, as well as the ways in which consumers describe these problems.
Armed with this perspective, you are now ready to dive into Keyword research.
In a nutshell, the goal of keyword research is to find the most relevant words and phrases that consumers would use to find this product, and then make use of these words and phrases in the product title.
Here’s an example of a highly optimized product title. Notice the placement of the brand name, as well as how they made full use of the maximum number of words allowed.
Product Images
The next most important aspect of a highly optimized Amazon product listing is the use of product images. Using the product above as an example, you’ll note the following things:
- They have used 9 images
- The first image complies with Amazon TOS in that it is a shot of ONLY the product on a white background
- All the other images are either lifestyle images or infographics
The reason that images are so vital is that a significant portion of consumers are shopping from their mobile phone and as a result, they are far more inclined to use the information in product images (vs the bullet points and description) to help them to decide to buy or not.
Knowing this, smart brands make use of these images to feature reviews, product benefits, and so much more.
Bullet Points
Next in line after images are the bullet points. As you can see in the image below, Amazon allows brands to use up to 5 bullet points to describe key features and benefits of the product.
While not nearly as effective for conversions as optimized images, these bullets points do play a role in SEO, and as such, they should be carefully crafted to include relevant keywords as well as features and benefits.
Product Description
And finally, we have the product description. Using the same product as an example, you can see that in the product description Amazon now allows brands to make use of what is called Enhanced Brand Content (EBC).
Here’s a screenshot of just a portion of this product’s EBC.
The product description is an ideal place for a brand to tell their story to prospective buyers.
In addition to making use of EBC, we recommend the following guidelines for creating an optimized product description:
- Match the brand voice
- Elaborate on the title/bullets
- Repeat only the most powerful benefits from your bullet points
- If your product is particularly technical, use the description to lay out in plain English what the benefit is “With an ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 12800), you can shoot in low-light situations, reducing the need for a tripod or flash.”
- Use logical & powerful language:Include common terms used by consumers
- Emphasize your differentiators – what makes your product better/different than others on Amazon? (part of a bundle, better quality, more colors, etc)
- Overcome objections:Help shoppers imagine the experience of using your product…Evoke emotion where possible
“Savor the luxuriously deep and velvety dark chocolate combined with tangy cherry pieces and roasted almonds for a delightful crunch.”
Brand Registry
Now that you understand how to create a highly optimized Amazon product listing, we need to talk about how to keep it that way.
Enter Amazon’s Brand Registry service.
According to Amazon, over 60,000 brands are now registered, and on average, they are finding and reporting 99% fewer suspect infringements than before the service was launched.
Brand Registry provides a variety of benefits according to Amazon’s website, including those listed below:
1. Accurate brand representation
Brand Registry gives you more control over Amazon product pages that use your brand name, so customers are more likely to see the correct information associated with your brand.
2. Powerful search and report tools
Amazon simplifies the process of finding cases of potential infringement with custom features designed specifically for brands:
- Global search: search for content in different Amazon stores from the same screen without ever having to navigate away
- Image search: find product listings on Amazon that match your product(s) or logo(s) using images
- Bulk ASIN search: search for a list of ASINs or product URLs in bulk to explore and report potentially infringing content fast (plus enlarge image thumbnails in this tool for easier identification of infringers)
- Sort view of average customer ratings of ASINs to gauge popularity
3. Additional proactive brand protections
In addition to Amazon’s standard proactive measures to protect customers, Brand Registry uses information that you provide about your brand to implement additional predictive protections that attempt to identify and remove potentially bad listings.
The more you tell Amazon’s Brand Registry team about your brand and its intellectual property, the more Amazon can help you protect your brand, for example:
- Product listings that aren’t for your brand and incorrectly use your trademarked terms in their titles
- Images that contain your logo, but are for products that don’t carry your brand name
- Sellers shipping products from countries in which you do not manufacture or distribute your brand
- Product listings being created with your brand name when you have already listed your full product catalog on Amazon
To see if you meet the eligibility requirements to enroll your brand(s) in Amazon Brand Registry, visit brandservices.amazon.com/eligibility.
How Do Your Products Compare?
So now that you understand how to create great content for your products, as well as how to keep others from changing it, the only question that remains is this: how does your current content compare to your competitors and is it good enough to allow you to gain the upper hand?