The customer journey has shifted dramatically over the past 10 years and product research has become a much longer process. Shoppers will often visit multiple locations – digital and physical – before ultimately making a purchasing decision. Have you ever looked at a product on the Amazon app while shopping in Target? Maybe to price check or read reviews? This research is becoming increasingly multi-faceted and Amazon is taking center stage – becoming just as much a research platform as a purchasing platform.

According to CNBC, 9 out of 10 consumers price check a product on Amazon and 55% begin their online shopping searches there as well (source). This highlights the importance of having a carefully formulated and thought out strategy to approaching Amazon. Unless you are a household brand like Nike, Tide, or Old Spice, a customer will devalue you if you are not on the platform. So, what about the companies who care about their brand value, but decided Amazon is not a channel they want to sell on? They would employ what we call “passively selling” or passive brand management.

If you’ve got a half decent product, chances are pretty good that someone is flipping it on Amazon (likely for a ridiculous markup too). We will call this “flipper” Jane Doe. Does Jane have the marketing strategy, brand insights, or even just the financial means to truly represent your brand on Amazon? Likely, this is a resounding “no.” She just wants to make a quick buck and can cause big problems for your brand that you’ve worked on tirelessly to craft a compelling brand image and gain customer confidence. You have already decided the profit margins are too small to be able to sell directly on Amazon, but you know customers research your products there. Now you are building a “passive” management strategy.

“Passive” Management

As a “passive” seller, your biggest tool on Amazon will be Brand Registry (link to article). This program allows you to identify yourself as the IP owner for your brand and have increased importance for detail page changes (e.g. pictures, copy, etc.), as well as letting you report IP infringement claims. Enrolling in this program typically takes 24-48 hours, but doesn’t require you to actually sell directly on the platform. It simply gives you control over your brand(s).

Your primary focus in passive brand management is to ensure your content is kept up-to-date, MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) is being adhered to, and distributors/other 3^rd party sellers are selling in accordance to your brand guidelines. Product Detail Pages (PDP) frequently are left to suffer, in terms of image quality, by 3P sellers. Keeping PDPs updated can be as simple as adding a workflow item for your marketing team to update Amazon images once a quarter. There are also a variety of tools you can use to monitor who is selling your product and send you alerts if the offer price drops below a certain amount (i.e. MAP monitoring).

“Active” Management

“Active” management, on the other hand, is when a brand is fully committed to selling on Amazon and uses all the resources offered to grow their brand. This can come in many forms, including utilizing FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), running paid ads, customer experience management, Prime Day involvement, or a plethora of other programs. The idea in “active” management is to make Amazon a platform your company invests from a time, marketing, and financial perspective.

Whether your brand chooses to actively or passively manage the Amazon channel, it’s important the decision is made. Pitted Labs works with companies in both categories and can help your brand build a strategy that works best for you. Contact us today!

Amazon has quietly released the functionality to create Virtual Bundles to its brand registered Sellers in the US market – a welcome addition to brands already leveraging the FBA program. This new tool lets brand owners create ‘virtual’ bundles made up of two to five complementary ASINs which are purchased together from a single detail page. This allows brand owners to offer bundles without packaging items together or changing FBA inbound inventory. 

Prior to this program, any bundle offers had to be physically packaged together prior to being sent into an Amazon fulfillment center. For many of the larger brands we partner with, the virtual bundling program saves them thousands of dollars in 3PL prepping fees and prevents possible errors resulting from changes in case pack quantities on shipments to Amazon.

If you are not sure how to access the bundling dashboard, here is a link – just make sure you are logged into Seller Central first.

CREATING A VIRTUAL BUNDLE

The dashboard is quite simple to use and is pretty self-explanatory. Choose between 2 and 5 ASINs you want to be bundled, select a “Main Component,” add images, copy, and price, and that’s it! Not much more to it, at least for now…

Choosing component ASINs:

Adding copy, price, and SKU:

And finally, how it appears on the individual component detail pages:

LIMITATIONS & FEATURES OF VIRTUAL BUNDLES

What would any program on Amazon be without inherent limitations? Here are a few of the biggest limits (in our opinion):

• Must bundle brand registered ASINs you own via Brand Registry
• All products must have FBA inventory in ‘New’ condition
• Only currently available in the US
• Bundle pricing must be equal to or lower than the sum total for all individual products in the bundle
• ASINs in a bundle cannot be edited after creation
• Variations are not currently allowed
• Reviews are NOT inherited from any of the component ASINs; bundles have their own standalone reviews
• Bundle sales are not viewed within Seller Central reporting; weekly emails are sent containing a CSV of bundle sales

Despite these limitations, there are still a few things that work as you’d normally expect:

• Deals, coupons, and A+ content are all still applicable for bundles
• Compatible with Sponsored Brands (but not Sponsored Products; an update to come down the road)
• A bundle inherits search keywords from its main component ASIN; can’t combine SEO/searchability of component ASINs
• Bundle returns are based on the individual components (ex. A customer can return 2 of the 3 ASINs in the bundle)

STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

If you are able to use the virtual bundling program, you also have access to Amazon’s Brand Analytics dashboard. Within this dashboard, the “Market Basket Analysis” tool helps identify bundling opportunities by gaining insight on products that are being purchased together by your customers.

We highly recommend using both the virtual bundling and market basket analysis tools to create new product offerings on Amazon and to increase the average basket price on Amazon. We are very excited to see the widespread release of this program and the ability it provides brands to test different product configurations. A full read on Amazon’s published help guid on virtual bundles can be found here.

If you are a brand interested in growing your Amazon sales and improving your channel strategy, contact us today for a free, no-commitment account audit and strategy call with our team.

We are experiencing unprecedented times right now, thanks to COVID-19, and hopefully your Amazon strategy has been nimble enough to react accordingly. Amazon has been making many changes to its US and international marketplaces, often without prior notice to sellers. One of these changes was pushing back guaranteed Prime shipping dates sometimes up to 30 days out – 28 days more than Prime subscribers are used to! Amazon’s fulfillment centers are experiencing unseasonal surges in order volume and have made the commendable decision to prioritize shipping essential goods (e.g. facemasks, hand sanitizers, toilet paper, etc.)

Conversion rates have decreased due to the new delivery windows and although Amazon’s reasoning behind this delay is understandable, it still doesn’t mean you need to twiddle your thumbs while your FBA business grinds to a screeching halt. We have been working with many brands to implement a self-fulfillment, or FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) strategy to offset the debilitating effects of 30+ day delivery windows. Before we go over how to create an additional offer, let’s quickly review how Amazon’s marketplace is structured between a product (ASIN) and an actual offer.

ASIN VS. OFFER

Every product on Amazon is assigned an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) and each ASIN can have virtually infinite “offers.” An offer is a specific price offering by a seller for one or more units of a particular ASIN. Amazon has structured their marketplace so that a single ASIN can have multiple offers – see our graphic below. Only one offer can have the buybox at a time though, and the offer with the buybox will typically receive 95%+ of all sales. For the sake of this blog, let’s say the two factors that influence buybox ownership are (1) price and (2) shipping speed.

Typically, an FBA offer with identical pricing to other FBM offers will win the buybox because it has guaranteed 2-day shipping (courtesy of Amazon). We have seen this changing recently with Amazon removing the 2-day shipping windows and have noticed a lot of FBM offers winning the buybox. Why would that happen? FBM shipping times, even if 1-2 weeks, are faster than Amazon’s guaranteed delivery!

THE SETUP PROCESS

Now that you understand how offers work and why we would even consider an FBM offer, let’s go over how to actually create one!

Step 1 – Grab the ASIN(s) you want to create self-fulfilled offers for. 

Step 2 – Navigate to the “Add a Product” window in Seller Central (link here) and paste your ASIN(s) into the search bar

Step 3 – After identifying your product, select your condition on the right and click “Sell this product”

Step 4 – Create new FBM-specific SKU, enter offer price, quantity, and select “I will ship this item myself.” We recommend using your original FBA SKU and adding “-FBM” to the end so it is easily identifiable in your catalog and other reports.

Step 5 – Save and finish! Wait a couple minutes and you should see your new FBM offer in your catalog.

CONFIGURING SHIPPING SETTINGS

Since every business is unique and has different handling and shipping times, you will want to make sure you update your shipping settings according to your capabilities. By default, all new FBM offers use what is called the “Migrated Template” for shipping. You can make changes to this shipping template by going into your shipping settings on Seller Central. Some settings you may want to change are:

• Available shipping times such as standard, expedited, two-day, or one-day
• Shipping costs you want to charge to the customer, if any
• Regions you can and cannot ship to (e.g. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.)
• Any international shipping options

You can also create multiple shipping templates if you have a wide range of product sizes in your catalog; shipping a TV will demand different shipping settings than shipping an iPhone case.

IMPORTANT NOTES WHEN FULFILLING FBM OFFERS

Contrary to FBA offers, you are now in the hot seat for fulfilling and shipping FBM orders – “Duh Pitted Labs, that’s why it’s called ‘FBM.’”  Well, don’t forget that you are also in charge of returns and all customer service for these orders now, in addition to being 100% responsible for any shortcomings on delivery.

Once your FBM offer appears in your catalog, make sure to add your handling time in the “Edit” section of the SKU. This is critical to make sure you have enough time to send orders.

Make sure you have an established return policy since you are now required to at least match Amazon’s return and refund policies (return policy here and refund policy here). Make sure to handle these return requests in a timely fashion as they inevitably come in from customers.

Although it may seem relatively straightforward, properly implementing an FBA/FBM strategy can quickly become complicated, especially for sellers with larger catalogs and diverse product offerings. Contact us today if you’d like to discuss your brand’s unique situation and how to implement your very own FBM offering!

There’s a lot of information out there around “how to scale your Amazon business to 7-figures” and “PPC strategies to make you millions” but these are all for naught if your product detail pages look like garbage. Integral to any and every successful Amazon strategy is a product detail page that is “Retail Ready.” Amazon defines a detail page retail ready when it “includes all the necessary information for a customer to make a purchase; customer reviews, clear pictures and description, stock availability, etc;” Let’s dive into the steps you should take to get here.

TERMINOLOGY

To level set the playing field here, let’s define a few key terms:

Product Detail Page – A landing page where Amazon customers look for and select products. Each product has its own page, which contains product information including images, a title, description, reviews, ratings, price, and other details that help customers make a purchase decision.

ASIN – An ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) is used as Amazon’s SKU to uniquely identify all products in the retail catalog. An ASIN is assigned for every product sold on Amazon, and each ASIN has a product detail page.

Featured Offer (“Buy Box”) – The Featured Offer is one of the most visible offers on the product detail page. Whenever a customer clicks on the ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’ buttons, they will be purchasing from the selling partner presenting the Featured Offer.

IMPORTANCE OF THE DETAIL PAGE

In a standard retail store (think Target or Whole Foods), you are able to reach onto the shelf and touch, feel, see, and smell (if you are that kind of shopper) the actual product before placing it into your cart. Whether you recognize it or not, you are making conscious and subconscious decisions as to whether you want to buy that product or not. 

When it comes to online shopping, your decision making senses are limited to sight (and sometimes hearing). This makes the quality of your detail page so much more crucial to the customer’s buying experience. This is also the brand’s online shelf space and chance to differentiate their product from competitors.

ANATOMY OF A DETAIL PAGE

1. Product Title – The product title should be clear and concise, so that customers know exactly what product is for sale. The product title can also provide key descriptive features such as size, color, and size packs. 
2. Customer Ratings and Reviews – A star rating is valuable to Amazon shoppers because it builds credibility and trust with the brand’s products. Customer reviews provide Amazon shoppers with confidence that a product is right for their needs based on feedback from other Amazon shoppers.
3. Product Images – Since customers are not able to physically touch and evaluate the product, product images are the best place for customers to see the product. This section can contain multiple items that feature additional views and angles, key features, ways to use the product, and even videos.
4. Inventory – The inventory section tells customers if the item is available for purchase. If inventory is low, it will also display the count of how many items are available.
5. Featured Offer (“Buybox”) – If more than one seller offers a product, they may compete for the Featured Offer (“Buy Box”): one of the most visible offers on the product detail page. 
6. Bullet Points – The bullet points provide key descriptive features such as size, color, and size packs.
7. A+ Content – A+ content is a customizable section that sellers can use to create positive customer experiences that empower shoppers with enough information to make an informed buying decision. This section can include extra features like images, charts, tables, and narrative comments in a contextual presentation to improve the customer shopping experience.

WHAT MAKES A PAGE RETAIL READY?

Title and Bullet Points

• Accurately describe the product
• Include key descriptive features such as size and color
• Mention product compatibility where appropriate
• Best practices: Title should be greater than 150 characters (category dependent), utilize all 5 bullet points, and utilize a keyword research tool to make sure you are including all your important keywords

Product Images

• Product images match the product and are clear and professional
• Multiple images with key product features
• There is a “what’s in the box” image which show all accessories/extras that come with the product (e.g. charging cable)
• There is a product comparison chart for variations
• There is a clear and professional video that matches the product
• Best practices: All images should be 3000×3000 at 300dpi (or greater) and at least 6 images and one product video (supplementary images should include lifestyle and infographic photos)

Inventory

• The product is in stock, contributing to a positive customer experience and avoiding lost sales
• Best practices: utilize FBA for instant “Prime” badging, maintain sufficient inventory to allow 1-day Prime to shoppers (where available)

Rating and Reviews

• A star rating of 3.5 stars or more
• At least 15 customer reviews
• Best practices: DO NOT incentivize reviews, utilize programs such as Early Reviewer Program and Vine to grow review count, and respond to negative customer reviews (positive reviews too, if possible)

A+ Content

• Add images, videos, and rich text to the product description
• Highlights the value proposition and brand story
• Includes supplemental information
• Best practices: avoid white space by balancing text and images, use comparison tables (no competitor comparisons though), content in text fields is indexed for SEO, regularly update to avoid becoming outdated

WRAPPING IT ALL UP

We cannot stress enough the importance of properly built detail pages. Without following the guidelines we demonstrated above, you will find it extraordinarily difficult to get off the ground. These aren’t tricks or “guru tactics” of any kind — just simple fundamentals to build an operationally sound Amazon business. If you are struggling with any part of your listing buildout, or just want a professional agency to do it right for you, contact us via this link to schedule a phone call with one of our Account Managers. Pitted Labs has built hundreds of detail pages for brands and would love to help with your next project!

Most sellers are aware that Amazon provides two primary methods in which you can sell on the Amazon marketplace: Seller Central and Vendor Central. We often work with brands who have either considered or sold using both “centrals” and have helped them develop what is called a “hybrid selling model.” Although this post is focused on the strategy and analysis of both platforms, let’s begin by quickly outlining the difference between vendor and Seller Central.

VENDOR CENTRAL

Commonly referred to as “1P” or first-party, the primary differentiator with Vendor Central is who your ultimate customer is — in this case it is Amazon. Amazon will issue purchase orders (POs) to your brand with products being purchased at a predetermined fixed rate. You will then ship to one or many Amazon fulfillment centers and boom, the process is complete. Registration for Vendor Central is by invitation only.

SELLER CENTRAL

Think old-school eBay. You are a “3P” or third-party seller with products to sell and are simply leveraging Amazon’s various global marketplaces to sell your goods. In this scenario, your customer is the individual buying your products. Products can be either FBM (fulfilled by Merchant) or FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). Amazon collects a variety of fees for allowing you this privilege. As a 3P seller, you are completely responsible for all aspects of your Amazon channel: inventory management, advertising, listing management and SEO, proper tax setup, etc. Registration for Seller Central is open to all eligible businesses and individuals, no invitation is required.

THE HYBRID MODEL

Now that you understand at least the basics of Seller and Vendor Central, let’s take a look at how — and why — you would consider a hybrid selling approach for your brand. This analysis makes two big assumptions: (1) you have received an invite to Vendor Central and Amazon is actively purchasing inventory from you, and (2) you have a seller account in good standing. 

The name “hybrid” in Amazon’s case essentially means you are actively selling products through both your vendor and seller accounts. Certain products may be exclusive to one platform or you may have duplicate offers on each.

RETAIL PRICING

Many brands are worried about enforcing MAP (minimum advertised price) guidelines, and Amazon should be no different. Amazon is notoriously nonchalant about enforcing MAP policies, and this nonchalant-ness is typically mirrored on Vendor Central (VC). Remember, when you sell on Vendor Central, Amazon is your customer and they are able to (and typically do) set whatever retail price they want, as long as it provides them the margins their algorithm needs.

Seller Central (SC), on the other hand, allows you to set whatever retail price you want and can be changed in an instant. Sure, you may not get the sell-through you want with a higher price point, but hey, that is your call as a brand owner.

PROFIT MARGINS

In the VC model, brands negotiate wholesale or distributor pricing with Amazon for their products. In SC, you are left to your own devices to make sure you maintain the profit margin you need. Here is a side-by-side comparison on a widget with an MSRP of $20 and a wholesale price to Amazon of $14:

You can see in this very oversimplified example, the Vendor Central option would make sense for this particular product on a pure margin basis. As a 3P seller, you are charged a per unit FBA fee and a referral/commission for selling on Amazon — as a vendor you are not.

When working with brands that have the ability to adopt a hybrid model, we always begin by performing the 2 financial analyses above on a SKU-by-SKU basis. A smart business always knows their numbers.

CATALOG MANAGEMENT

After a profitability analysis has been performed on each of your SKUs, we can start deciding which products should be sold on which platform. Let’s take a look at 5 different SKUs, lovingly titled product “A” through “E,” where we have performed a profitability analysis:

In order for the hybrid selling model to work, we look to see which platform provides the highest net margin for each SKU. We see that products D and E make the best financial sense on VC, products A and B do the best on SC, and product C is platform agnostic. If this were a client of ours, we would setup hybrid offers on products C, D, and E. Why? Inventory management and advertising.

INVENTORY FORECASTING AND MANAGEMENT

Despite all of Amazon’s intelligence, marketplace data, and high-tech infrastructure, they will never know your business as well as you do. This includes the ability to forecast inventory needs. Remember when you are selling via Vendor Central, Amazon is solely responsible for issuing POs and maintaining sufficient inventory of your products. Unless you can negotiate larger POs with a buyer/vendor manager, there may be instances of sales surges that can wipe out Amazon’s inventory. Nothing is worse than running out of stock. 

In the hybrid model you will have an offer for products C, D, and E, but price them in such a way so as not to steal the buybox from Amazon. The trick here is to make sure your SC offer is second in line for the buybox (usually based on pricing). This allows you to continue selling at a more profitable level through VC, while ensuring you have a secondary/backup offer from SC.

ADVERTISING CONSIDERATIONS

Sponsored Products, as you may know, require you have the buybox in order for the ads to be eligible to run. When you have a hybrid setup for multiple SKUs, it is imperative that you duplicate your Sponsored Product campaigns in the event of a buybox “swap.” You’ve worked hard to setup duplicate offers, sent inventory to FBA, but don’t want to stagnate total sales by forgetting the advertising component. 

While it requires you to duplicate your advertising efforts, it is well worth the peace of mind knowing that your brand will continue to thrive despite changes in buybox or shortcomings in Amazon’s PO system (remember the PO scare from 2019?).

FINAL THOUGHTS

For the sake of simplicity we chose to focus on the few variables above we feel are critical to the hybrid model. However, every brand is different and considerations should be made depending on your unique business position. We have seen, through experience, this model can provide both financial strength and insurance knowing your brand will continue to grow. 

Jeff Bezos stated in the 2018 Amazon Letter to Shareholders, “To put it bluntly: Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly.” (2018 Letter to Shareholders) As an agency, we advocate strongly for brands to utilize Seller Central as much as possible, but also recognize the advantages of Vendor Central. We believe a brand will always care and invest more in its own success than anyone else. Do not let the growth potential of your brand be completely in the hands of another.

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Pitted Labs has expertise in developing successful hybrid selling strategies for brands, both small and large. Whether it be an onsite executive strategy session or over-the-phone planning call, we’d be happy to discuss your specific needs and determine how to best position your brand for success. Click this link to contact us and schedule a free initial call with a member of our Account Management team!

It is the middle of the week, right after lunch time. Instead of watching the most recent season of Ozark on Netflix or the new Upload series on Amazon Prime, I am writing this blog. Why? Because it is my job and I take pride on being reliable. Many people are new to working from home. Not me. I’ve had my own home office for the last few years, enjoying my privacy, staying on task, working at my pace, always plugging away, and looking for new ways to grow. I truly believe hard-work and consistency is the key to success in many fields. I’ve always selected companies to work with that have similar values. I am happy to share, our team at Pitted Labs has the same core values!

Pitted Labs is an Amazon consulting agency. We are a dedicated team of experts that help brands optimize their Seller Central advertising strategies, manage their amazon presence on behalf of brands, and help increase sales on Amazon. Like myself, the rest of our team is still working hard every day. Why is this relevant to brands reselling on Amazon? Because as a business, you want to partner with the most dependable agencies available that know what they are doing.

Our team has all the right skills and traits to help companies achieve their sales goals on Amazon. We have a dedicated team that is trustworthy and knowledgeable on everything Amazon related. With access to Amazon DSP advertising (If your brand does not advertise through Amazon DSP, you’re missing a big opportunity), we can help reach a larger audience, improve conversions, find ways to scale your business, and implement that strategy to generate new customers.

Yesterday, I spoke to a successful multi-million-dollar business owner about managing their brand’s Amazon business. They asked me, “How are you better than other agencies and why should I let you manage my brand?”. My answer was simple: ”There are many agencies with talented people on their team. The key difference is not that WE KNOW MORE than other agencies. The reason you partner with us is because WE WORK HARDER, analyze the data appropriately, optimize campaigns at a fast pace, and have actually helped multiple brands increase their sales on Amazon”. Take a look at some of our case studies.

If you’re reading this and are in charge of Amazon sales for your brand, we offer free audits of your business where we show you what can be improved with your current strategy. Curious about learning more? Schedule a time with us. If you are just starting to sell on Amazon, here is another cool blog: 6 Common Mistakes Brands Make When Starting On Amazon.

Stay Healthy,

Adrian Sherrod

Head of Sales & Business Development

adrian@pittedlabs.com

1. BRAND ANALYTICS

Amazon Search Terms – Discover what search terms are winning the most clicks and conversions on strategic search terms. Assess the impact of your marketing campaigns by monitoring trends.

Market Basket Analysis – Identify cross-selling a bundling opportunities by gaining insights on products that are being purchased together by your customers.

Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior – Improve your competitive intelligence by gaining insight on products most frequently viewed together with yours in addition to customers’ final choice after viewing your product.

Demographics – Every good marketer understands their customer demographic. Brand Analytics gives you insight into the age, household income, education level, gender, and marital status of your customers. This allows you to make insightful decisions on crafting future marketing campaigns and messaging.

2. AMAZON ATTRIBUTION

Prior to the attribution program, there was no way for a brand to measure the effect of non-Amazon-based marketing campaigns when driving traffic directly to a product detail page (PDP). The Attribution beta is essentially a glorified UTM link creator/dashboard. This program is the epitome of “simple, yet effective.” Brands can now get access to a variety of metrics such as add-to-carts, detail page views, purchases, and units sold on marketing campaigns driving traffic straight to an Amazon PDP.

3. SPONSORED BRANDS & SPONSORED DISPLAY

Sponsored brands is one of the most basic advertising campaign types on Amazon, but you can only access this through Brand Registry. Sponsored Brand ads incorporate up to 50 characters of headline text copy and appear prominently at the top, side, or bottom of search results (among other placements). 

Sponsored Display, on the other hand, is technically still in beta as of the time of writing this article. This ad type allows you to re-engage shoppers off Amazon (important to note the targeting here) who viewed your products or similar products, and drive them back to your detail page. The audience function is currently not editable, hence the “beta” tag of this ad type. Veteran sellers may recognize this as the watered-down version of Amazon DSP, a highly strategic ad platform comparable to Google AdWords (see our article on Amazon DSP here).

4. A+ CONTENT

Formerly known as Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) in the 3P world, A+ Content enables brand owners to change the product descriptions of branded ASINs. Using this tool, you can describe your product features in a different way by including a unique brand story, enhanced images, and text placements. Adding A+ to your product detail pages can result in higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and increased sales when used effectively.

5. IP PROTECTION

With the ever-growing onslaught on foreign knock-offs and black hat tactics running ramping on Amazon, rule abiding brands (such as you, I’m sure) are left frustrated and shaking their fists at Amazon. While not perfect by any means, the IP protections offered through Brand Registry are certainly better than none at all. 

Through the Brand Registry portal, brands are able to police:

• Product listings that are incorrectly using your trademarked terms in their title
• Images that may contain your logo, but are for unrelated products
• Sellers shipping products from countries in which you do not manufacture or distribute your brand
• Product listings being created with your brand name

Keep in mind, all the benefits listed above still flow through Amazon’s less-than-amazing support teams and may require several rounds of follow-up and documentation to get them to take action. Your mileage may vary on this one.

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At the end of the day, Amazon Brand Registry is a no-brainer for brands who have a registered trademark. If you don’t have a finalized trademark, we recommend you check out Amazon’s IP Accelerator program to expedite this process.

Pitted Labs works with brands to grow and optimize their global presence on Amazon. If you have any questions about the Brand Registry program or would like help enrolling, click here to contact us today!

We’ve all been there… months of product research, market validation, finding supplies to source your product, obsessing over listing details and trying to rank organically in the search results. Now, after all this preparation, you’re finally ready to list your product.

But all of your hard work could go to waste if you don’t focus on arguably the most important feature of an Amazon listing: product photography. The competition for Amazon sellers has never been more fierce, so in order to stand apart from the rest, you’ll need to learn a few new tricks.

USING IMAGES IN YOUR LISTINGS TO GENERATE CONSUMER INTEREST

When a customer searches for your product on Amazon, they’re presented with two key product attributes. The main product image, and the title. These are the only 2 fields (other than price) that are presented to customers to make an informed decision on which item they want to click on. It’s imperative that you focus on optimzing both of these fields, to gain increased traffic to your listing page.

Let’s first take a look at optimizing your product images.

WHY IS PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY SO IMPORTANT?

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Wrong. Our brain processes images in a parallel sequence, whereas text requires our brain to process individual characters, one at a time, identify them, and combine them into words and sentences, to eventually form a thought. It can be said that a story is worth a hundred words, or that a video is worth a million images. But from the perspective of how we analyze information, there is an integral divide between images and text. Therefore, it cannot be said that a picture is worth a thousand words-our brains just don’t work that way.

So why am I telling you this? It’s imperative to understand the psychology behind the human brain, so that we know how to market our products to eCommerce customers. We know that there is a paramount difference between the way we understand text and images, and we need to capitalize on this when creating our Amazon (and eBay & Jet!) listings.

Let’s start with analyzing the strategy for your product photos.

GREAT PRODUCT PHOTOS SHOULD:

• Fill the entire space. Don’t leave white areas on the top, bottom, or sides of the photo.
• Always have a white background. The main product photo for your listing needs a clean, pure-white background. It not only looks good and exudes professionalism, it’s also required by Amazon.
• Be well lit and high resolution. Your photo needs to be at least 1000×1000 pixels in order to activate the “zoom” feature on Amazon’s product detail page. Studies show that products with zoom-able images see 52% more views than products without the zoom feature.

Of course, getting white-background shots of your product is just the beginning. Lifestyle shots and infographics can really help sell your product, and help your customer visualize how they can use your products in their every-day life. This is especially true for sellers and vendors who have access to A+ listing content.

Keep in mind however, that your first image must always be on a clean, white background, and be professional in nature. You cannot have lifestyle images as your main image.

LISTING OPTIMIZATION – THE KEY TO PRODUCT SUCCESS

You can apply these new tricks to your Amazon listings and see the results quickly. When using our methods and strategy to optimize Amazon listings, our clients have seen sales and conversion increase significantly, as fast as overnight! If you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share, please leave them in the comments section below!

See our post here for tips and tricks on optimziing your product title! Learn best-practices for Amazon title length, keyword inclusion, and how to rank higher.

PROFESSIONAL AGENCY HELP

Need help with your listing creation, or do you want to increase your sales and conversions? Pitted Labs can help! We offer the following services to help Amazon sellers succeed on the ever-increasingly competitive marketplace:

• Professional Product Photography and Videography
• New Listing Creation and Existing Listing Optimization
• Content Creation – Product Title, Bullet Points, and Description Copywriting
• Amazon SEO – Backend Keyword Indexing and Organic Keyword Ranking
• And much more!

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So you’ve got your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, maybe even some Sponsored Display ads all humming along on Amazon and you are looking for ways to expand your reach for new/existing customers throughout their shopping journey. Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that enables advertisers to programmatically buy display and video ads. For the first-time DSP readers out there: its Amazon’s version of Google AdWords. This article will focus on utilizing Amazon DSP from the perspective of a brand that currently sells on Amazon.

You’ve heard of the sales funnel, right? If you haven’t, here is a nice little graphic to remind you before we get into the article:

Amazon DSP allows advertisers to target shoppers in virtually all segments of this funnel, but becomes especially useful when used as a mid- to upper-funnel advertising vehicle. Because of the access you get to Amazon’s exclusive audiences, the targeting is especially beneficial to Amazon sellers wishing to expand their advertising beyond PPC.

How much does it cost? You’ve got two options when it comes to running DSP ads: (1) hire Amazon’s in-house DSP team to create, optimize, and run your campaigns with a minimum $35k spend or (2) utilize an agency like Pitted Labs to offer the same white-glove service with no minimum spend requirements. Although using an agency like Pitted Labs does not technically have a minimum spend requirement, we highly recommend spending at least $5k/month.

For brands with an existing advertising strategy (i.e. sponsored products, sponsored brands), here is a general approach we’d recommend when layering in DSP ads (bold text):

Step 1: Lay Foundation – Optimize detail pages to be “Retail Ready” so customers are taken to beautiful and engaging detail pages.

Step 2: Harvest Demand – Layer always-on Sponsored Ads to harvest demand, pushing searchers and intenders to purchase

(and now for the DSP part)

Step 3: Maximize Existing Demand through DSP – Leverage retargeting audiences to maximize sales from traffic already coming to your brand’s detail pages

Step 4: Increase Scale through DSP – Attract customers already searching and browsing in your product categories

Step 5: Build audiences – Reach new shoppers with display and video ads to educate about your brand

Amazon DSP is a completely different advertising beast, especially if you are coming from the sponsored product/brands world on Amazon. However, it’s an extremely effective tool when utilized properly and can help get your brand in front of millions of potential customers that otherwise would have been impossible to reach.

Interested in seeing how DSP could help your brand reach new levels on Amazon? Contact us today and one of our DSP experts will be in touch shortly!