Protecting Your Brand on Amazon: What Happens When Black Hats Attack? - Episode 210
INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS MCCABE
DESCRIPTION
Today we are talking with Chris McCabe about what is new and trending in black hat tactics and different ways that inventive sellers use to take each other down. Because there is a lot of money to be made in ecommerce, it attracts the best and worst operators. There are many types of nefarious tactics that are used and this is something that affects all levels of sellers and brands.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
Chris worked for Amazon evaluating seller account performance and enforcing Amazon’s policies. Now he runs ecommerceChris.com where he teaches sellers how to think like Amazon, protect their accounts and appeal listing restrictions and suspensions. He provides expert advice that helps to inform and clarify important decisions around Amazon investments by the sellers and any interested parties.
“If there is such a concept as brand exclusivity, why isn’t that being offered to sellers to help them protect their listings?”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One of the most common ways to sabotage a listing is with back-end illicit keyword abuse.
People have realized that they can get a listing suspended by adding nefarious keywords into vacant fields that the brand’s flat files left empty, which then triggers Amazon bots.
You would expect that the brand registry would give you some more protection than what you get, since you own the trademark and the product-related content put on Amazon.
Though Amazon is aware of this now, the loophole still hasn’t been closed.
Amazon doesn’t have the time, doesn’t have the tools, just hasn’t invested into fixing this problem. It’s a matter of resourcing and probably competency at the top.
Some sellers are getting attacked in this way every week, even every 48h. The best way to solve this is for somebody to dive into the root cause of the problem.
For now, there isn’t even an anecdotal process to ask for brand exclusivity.
In order to deal with these kinds of attacks, if you’re a big player, you should:
Get to know your category manager and push them to understand how brand exclusivity can stop this abuse from happening.
Loop your strategic account manager into your efforts to find out more about this.
Report the issue in the right way.
There is a lot you can be doing to pressure abuse-prevention teams. Don’t stop at just having your listing reinstated; pressure them by asking questions.
A new trend is to file bogus copyright complaints and fake designer patent complaints to overwhelm Amazon’s poorly-staffed infringement and notice teams in Amazon. These start with a baked-in 10 day delay, and can take weeks to be resolved. An accusation is enough to suspend a listing for at least 10 days, but in most cases longer than that.
The most expedient way to resolve this escalation, early and often. It’s important to give documented proof of your claim. Statements with no proof generate template responses which are not helpful.
There is a trial coming up involving internal sabotage through amazon employees. It’s hard to say what percentage of these tactics are done using internal sabotage and what is just the use of the existing loopholes.
The product and brands that are small are usually under the radar. The large brands, big companies that can respond with a lot of force are also not targets. Those in the middle, that sell well but are not large corporations become the victims.
Brand aggregators also focus on acquiring them, and it will be interesting to see what happens when they get attacked because Amazon may treat them better than a small seller.
These tactics change, evolve over time because there is a lot of money to be made in taking out your competitor, and Amazon’s inaction is incentivizing them.
ecommerceChris helps brands deal with these kinds of issues. It’s important to have a plan, especially in Q4.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing
Connect with ChrisMcCabe
Learn more about ecommerceChris
