With marketplaces being some of the best marketing channels for brands – it has become an absolute must to join the momentum.
More“Brands that don’t take marketplaces seriously now may find themselves in the same position as businesses that once dismissed eCommerce as a novelty.” – Deloitte
Marketplaces have grown exponentially in the past years and surged to unimaginable growth throughout 2020 due to the pandemic.
eCommerce sales soared 44% in 2020, reflecting the most substantial single-year growth in two decades, while “gross merchandise value is up 81% year over year, according to a recent, comprehensive report on marketplaces.” – Mirakl In other words, digital marketplaces outpaced general eCommerce nearly twofold.
What is an online marketplace?
Online marketplaces connect buyers and sellers on a proprietary platform. Often, the marketplace operator does not hold or own any type of inventory but helps the buyers and sellers to facilitate a transaction.
Why should you start selling on marketplaces?
- Increasing sales
The obvious benefit of expanding to marketplaces is the potential to make more sales and increase your profit. Each marketplace has its own audience, which often overlaps. This means your brand directly benefits from their reach both with the marketplace’s customer base but also with their marketing spend and social reach – leaving the hard work to the marketplace to get your brand in front of new audiences.
- Growth
Marketplaces are eager to expand their catalog and reach a broader customer base by serving a variety of brands. Maisonette is a great example of this and with Cymbio, they’ve onboarded hundreds of brands to their marketplace. The brands directly benefit from the growth of the marketplace as a new distribution channel – increasing online visibility and making it possible to acquire new clients and grow sales. The more customers see a particular brand, the more familiar it becomes to them, and they are more likely to buy or recommend its products to their friends.
- Loyal customer base
One of the greatest reasons you should sell on online marketplaces is the established audiences that they provide. Take Walmart, for example, and you’re looking at over 130M+ active monthly visitors – that’s a huge chunk of online real estate.
And if you’re thinking of launching on more boutique marketplaces like Farfetch or Urban Outfitters, each one has a very loyal customer base that is genuinely excited to discover new products on those platforms.
- Excel in customer service
This sounds like a no-brainer, but when you sell on an online marketplace, you have to go above and beyond on your customer service. Every marketplace builds different customer expectations on the shipping and customer service, and you have to match those to be successful. Each marketplace has its own SLAs, and not meeting these requirements could suspend your partnership. Through automation, you will be able to meet all requirements to accomplish the highest level of customer service.
- Long-term growth
Last but not least, once you start getting traction, you can expect long-term growth both within specific marketplaces and also on additional marketplaces. Once you are connected through Cymbio, you can easily start selling on new retailers with just a click. Connecting and scaling for growth is fully managed by Cymbio from A-Z by automation and will get you live and selling on multiple channels, including fully automating the product data syndication, imagery, mapping, taxonomy, inventory syncing, orders, billing, tracking, returns, reports and more.
Wrap Up
Marketplaces proved themselves in 2020 as a growth platform for brands. In this new era of eCommerce, proactive brands need to ask themselves the right questions to carve out a marketplace strategy that attracts and retains loyal customers and drives revenues. Connecting your brand with Cymbio will enable you to add multiple channels, including the day-to-day management of your retail partners. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity for your brand.