How do you know if your brand protection efforts are maximizing Buy Box win rates?
In the early days of the online brand protection industry - shortly after Amazon started selling more products than books - the predominant method of measuring success for a brand protection strategy was by reporting your compliance rate. In essence, scrape the web for unauthorized content, compile a massive list of URLs that infringe upon your intellectual property, report them to the platforms hosting the content and monitor which ones are removed. Then, calculate your compliance rate; ‘we actioned 100 listings, 50 came down so our program has a 50% compliance rate.’
While this traditional approach to brand protection can identify infringing content at scale, some of the infringing content returns to the web due to the efforts of the highly-motivated sellers behind these unauthorized listings. It’s worth noting that the sellers behind the unauthorized content are nimble, expert digital marketers who are incented to continue to sell. As a result, many experts started comparing their efforts to a game of whack-a-mole. There had to be a better way.
One of the biggest flaws in traditional brand protection is that it uses only one litmus test for success, the presence of unauthorized content. It’s like a Polaroid of the ocean, a snapshot in time of unauthorized listings. Often, by the time the data is analyzed, and enforcement actions are approved and taken, the massive list of infringing URLs representing unauthorized content is outdated, just like a wave that broke upon the shore and then retreated.
IPSecure took a different approach with our platform. We recognized the fluidity of the Amazon platform and we were particularly motivated to nullify the deficiencies in traditional brand protection. Unlike traditional brand protection approaches, we focused on the sellers behind the unauthorized content and on the business impact of that content.
Our platform places a high importance on the infringer, rather than individual examples of abuse. We track and measure multiple factors about an unauthorized seller’s activity on a steady, ongoing basis. We use ecommerce metrics that let you chart the impact of unauthorized sellers on your Amazon business. It’s as if each unauthorized seller is connected to a heart rate monitor that is constantly charting information about their sales efforts, their Buy Box win rates and how those win rates are affecting your Buy Box win rates.
This information helps you pinpoint the sellers who are having the largest negative impact on your business so you can take action, all within the IPSecure platform. An extra benefit to this approach? If you can track unauthorized sellers, you can recapture revenue from them as part of your overall enforcement program.
Successful seller enforcement is not like flicking a light switch; rather, think of it as a series of escalating steps, sometimes involving shifts in strategy. As you target unauthorized sellers with enforcement actions, you need a straightforward way to visualize progress, dig into seller enforcement cases, and track results. The answer? Seller Tiles.
Whenever an action is taken for the first time against a new seller, a new Tile is created for that seller. As enforcement actions occur, the unauthorized seller’s vital signs begin to take a turn for the worse. Their Buy Box win rate starts decreasing, and the amount of sales they are siphoning away from you starts heading towards zero.
The dashboard above lets you see how your enforcement efforts affect your Amazon business. It's not about how many unauthorized sellers you target with enforcement actions; it’s about understanding the impact on Buy Box win rates. The context is vital for managing your business, increasing your Buy Box win rates and recovering stolen revenue.