In a world of increased competition amongst online sellers, combating Amazon counterfeits has become a necessity for most businesses. Here are several tools to help beat bad players. 

Did you catch the Amazon Black Hat tactics webinar we had last week? I hope you did – and no, of course, we didn’t teach black hat tactics. But we did expose and openly discuss the worrying and expanding growth of criminal activity in the Amazon marketplace.

You could argue that this is Amazon’s problem to deal with, and of course, you’d be correct. But as business owners, you are the ones who struggle with the problem.

And it’s our problem, too – because we want you to succeed. But while we can’t chase down the bad guys and rip their computers out of their hands (or their counterfeit products) ourselves, we do want to equip you with best practices and the best products.

Our tools help you win with white hat

There are some proven, ethical ways to make sure your products are winning the Buy Box and edging out counterfeiters. The most important ones are:

1. Ensuring you’ve invested in cultivating product reviews and feedback. You already know that Feedback Genius is the top product on the market for soliciting that feedback – and I hope you know that asking for reviews is absolutely a best practice (and allowed by Amazon). And as Prime Day approaches – one of the biggest selling days of the year – it’s a great opportunity to capitalize. Check out these tips for using Feedback Genius after Prime Day.
2. Promoting your products intelligently. Getting your product in front of customers more prominently never hurts – especially when you can do it at the highest profitability. And with the latest release of Ignite, we’re making it easier than ever before to grow your advertising sales.

Our tools help you monitor

On the long list of things you should be monitoring – including sales performance, profitability, advertising return, and much more – you should be keeping an eye on arising risks.

1. Check your Buy Box performance. It should be high – or at least consistent. Check out Quantify’s Hijacked report, which we wrote about recently as a tool that can help you identify malicious activity. This report will show you what percentage of the Buy Box you regularly win. For any listed ASIN, this number shows you the percentage of page views where you appeared in the Buy Box. For private-label sellers, you should be winning the Buy Box every time since you own the listing. So, if you sort this reporting field and see any ASINs below 100% for Buy Box wins, you know that something isn’t right, and you can take immediate action to investigate if there’s a counterfeiter at work.
2. Negative reviews can reveal if customers receive counterfeit goods. Feedback Genius can send you an alert through an email or text message whenever a negative/neutral product review is left. When you see comments about a received product not matching what you sell, for example, you know something is amiss.

But sometimes you need to act

Actively cultivating your products, keeping on top of performance, and identifying risks proactively are all great things to do. But if a hijacker, malicious competitor, or counterfeiter appear on your listings, you have to take the reigns and navigate Amazon’s procedures for reporting the problem.

Ultimately, until Amazon gets a handle on the counterfeiter and other criminal activity, you will have to be vigilant. But we’re here to help you with resources, information, and the best products on the market.

Get all the tools I talked about in my blog this month with Seller Labs Pro.