We’ve all heard of Amazon. You likely have an account with them.
It’s one of the biggest digital marketplaces in the world, shipping approximately 1.6 million packages every single day and fielding 18.5 orders every second (Source: LandingCube).
However, it’s not the only one of its kind.
There are also other household names that offer a fairly similar service, including:
eBay
Shopify
Etsy
Redbubble
Each one of these versatile shopping platforms are giving UK businesses the power to tap into a wide, global audience.
Every day, more organisations are recognising these digital marketplaces as the opportunity they are. Now, they’re starting to make the most of the benefits these sites have to offer.
What is a digital marketplace?
In essence, it’s an online platform that matches interested buyers (customers) with sellers (businesses). They do their own marketing to generate traffic, and some sites offer a more niche service than others.
The benefits of digital marketplaces for UK businesses
There’s various reasons digital marketplaces are so beloved.
First of all, customers that log into these sites are already interested in a product or service and are nearly ready to move to the next stage of their buying journey, looking at a variety of providers, comparing reviews, and adding something to their basket.
Alongside this, digital marketplaces…
see a lot of traffic
deliver high-intent leads
support targeted advertising
grant competitive advantages
increase audience reach
encourage business growth
That's a lot, isn’t it?
However, it’s not the only reason businesses are seeing such huge success when using digital marketplaces. Customers celebrate them for being trustworthy and convenient places to shop. For example, if an issue were to arise with their order, Amazon would step in and have their back.
This eradicates the element of risk often associated with online shopping.
The rise of digital marketplaces
Over the last few years, digital marketplaces have transformed from simple online websites into complex and evolved entities.
Brands like Amazon and eBay have developed unique, custom mobile apps to further encourage customers to shop through them, saving a lot of time and hassle for:
Individual businesses that want to reach a big audience.
Buyers who don’t want to frequently create new accounts when shopping.
Due to this ease of access, ecommerce is booming.
Today, anyone can go international. All they need to do is create a business profile on a relevant platform (such as Etsy, which is focused on handmade products), and start to optimise their presence.
How to tap into the vast potential of digital marketplaces
Much like social media, there is a hefty amount of competition present when selling through digital marketplaces.
Unless you offer an entirely unique product or service that no one else can even begin to compare to, you’ll likely have at least a few other businesses that you want to make sure your products rank above.
This takes work.
Thankfully, like with all elements of marketing, there are multiple ways to:
differentiate your products
build your reputation
drive traffic
convert sales
maintain customer relationships
Step 1: Set up a detailed seller profile
You’d be surprised how many sellers there are on digital marketplaces that share no information about themselves.
This isn’t going to convince a customer to trust you with their money.
If you want to see success and convert leads, be sure to spend time and attention on establishing a comprehensive seller profile that links back to a credible website, product reviews, and more.
Step 2: Publish and optimise product listings
It can be a difficult task to decide which products you want to put on a digital marketplace.
Too many businesses make the mistake of putting every single thing on their portfolio on Amazon, even though some aren’t appropriate and simply won’t sell.
But, once you’ve decided what to feature… there’s another job to complete. Much like your website, product listings should be keyword optimised according to the specific requirements of the platform you use.
Step 3: Share with your existing audience
Although digital marketplaces usually take a percentage of your sale, it can be extremely profitable for your business to promote its presence on such sites.
Leads that were hesitant about buying directly from you might feel more confident ordering through a third party that they trust.
So, be sure to communicate with your audience about what products you have listed, build backlinks, and share any new products when they go live. This way, you can always look to encourage traffic to visit your profile.
Step 4: Sponsor targeted adverts
Did you know that Amazon and eBay collect vast amounts of customer insights that you can use to target adverts accurately?
In a world full of privacy regulation, this is an asset that absolutely can’t be ignored, making it well worth directing a part of your marketing budget into PPC.
Step 5: Recruit digital marketplace experts
As customers become more afraid of the increasing number of scams taking place online (Source: Privacy), digital marketplaces could be key to an organisation’s ability to sell online.
Do you use one?
If so, and you want a secure future, start looking at adding experts in PPC, copywriting, and SEO to your wider marketing team. This way, you’ll position yourself in a really strong place for the future.
