To sustain a competitive advantage, it is vital for brands to reach out to new markets by selling across multiple channels. In this scenario, it is a priority for companies to protect their brand online.
Brand protection is the process, policies, and guidelines that organizations follow to
- Protect brands against sellers who sell counterfeits or violate MAP policy
- Safeguard intellectual property, trademarks, patents, copyrights, and product designs
Competition between sellers often leads to price wars, a major reason for brands to lose their value and reputation online.
To maintain a company’s profit, reputation, integrity, and customer trust, having a brand abuse protection strategy in place is essential.
How to Do Brand Protection Online?
Before selling products online, companies should have a solid digital brand protection strategy. To protect brands online, outsourcing the monitoring aspect of a product at the micro-level to a digital shelf analytics service provider is the best solution.
Here are some solutions to preserve brand identity and reputation online:
Competitor Monitoring
Competitive price and promotion monitoring with that of their own helps brands alter their pricing and deals as per the market demand.
Seller Tracking
MAP violators and unauthorized sellers who infringe on the intellectual property (IP) of renowned brands sell products at a lower price. This may possibly draw away potential customers from authorized sellers.
Therefore, monitoring the price at which the vendors sell assists companies in protecting their brand image online.
Customer Review Tracking
Customer reviews can make or break a brand’s reputation. When consumers share their feedback publicly, companies are held accountable for their shortcomings.
Hence, tracking customer reviews, especially the negative ones, assists brands in comprehending how customers perceive similar products in the marketplace. In addition, based on customer feedback, companies can make alterations to the product.
Ensuring Content Compliance
One of the online brand protection solutions that also improves organic ranking is e-commerce product page optimization. To uphold the integrity of a brand, companies can scrutinize product pages for detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, videos, and a uniform customer experience across the entire omnichannel ecosystem.
MAP Enforcement
Companies that aim to establish an enhanced reputation enforce MAP pricing policy. Here are some of the reasons why brands selling online should do MAP monitoring:
- MAP violations can erode a brand’s positive perception and cannibalize sales by lowering the price lower than the company’s recommended price.
- When the product price is reduced considerably by 3P sellers, it leads to price erosion.
- Reducing prices considerably affects in-store pricing by stimulating showrooming behavior among customers who may buy cheaper counterfeits online.
- Customers may struggle to distinguish original products and sellers from unauthorized ones.
Read more: How to Stop Unauthorized Sellers on Amazon?
What are the Stages of Brand Protection?
Brand protection services can be categorized into four stages:
- Detection
- Validation
- Enforcement
- Reporting
Detection
By using software tools or taking the services of a digital shelf analytics service provider, brands can detect MAP violators, counterfeit listings, and rogue sellers across various e-commerce channels where a brand has its presence.
Validation
The validation step is executed to double-check the authenticity of identified infringements and violating sellers.
Enforcement
It is ideal for brands to take appropriate action against violators. They can request the e-commerce stores to delist the infringed listing and remove the rogue seller’s Buy Box, send cease-and-desist letters to unauthorized sellers, or stop promotional funding and shipping new products to MAP violators.
Reporting
In case of infringement, brands may inform regulatory bodies and update unauthorized sellers on the brand’s website as done by Dahua.
How MetricsCart Plays a Part in Brand Protection?
MetricsCart empowers you to protect your brand online and maintain integrity across channels with our real-time MAP monitoring service.
- Capture price changes in product listings on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and send you alerts when the MAP price changes.
- Spot unauthorized sellers and any third-party sellers who sell your products below the price set in your MAP policy.
- Provide screenshots of the violations in real time
- Track counterfeits of authentic brands based on keyword monitoring.
Monitoring ensures sellers in your supply chain are adhering to your MAP policy. This helps to maintain your pricing power in the online market. If you are considering outsourcing services to protect your brand online, contact us to explore how MetricsCart can shield your brand from MAP violators.
