July 20th, 2022
Guest Post by Ware2Go
Today’s consumers are shopping everywhere – in-store, on social media, direct-to-consumer websites, and increasingly on ecommerce marketplaces. That means if you’re only selling on one marketplace, you could be missing out on a valuable market segment.
Accounting for 25% of online spending, the Amazon marketplace may be the largest but it’s hardly the only one. Several large retailers have recently opened their own third-party marketplaces, and niche marketplaces have become a magnet for shoppers looking for a more curated product selection.
Listing your products on multiple marketplaces expands your reach, both on platform and off, exposing your brand to more potential customers, and giving shoppers in the consideration phase more opportunities to convert.
Managing listings on just one marketplace can be challenging enough. Between marketing, content optimization, fulfillment, and customer service, the idea of adding additional marketplaces to your sales strategy may be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve compiled our top five tips to simplify and streamline the process of selling on multiple marketplaces.
These tips will cover sales channel fit, the day-to-day of managing multiple listings, customer engagement, fulfillment, and more.
Find the Right Channels
Adding additional marketplaces increases capital and time investment. Before launching sales on a new channel, it’s important to know which marketplaces will be the best fit for your products and where your target customers are most likely to be shopping. The first step is to know who your customers are and what they value. Ask yourself the following questions about your most loyal customers:
- Why do they purchase? Are they looking for the lowest price, best quality, uniqueness, or variety?
- What catches their eye? Are there similar brands in the marketplace that will attract the type of “window shoppers” who are likely to convert?
- How do they like to engage? Do they want to feel like your brand is a trusted friend or simply a reliable vendor?
- Do they make repeat purchases or is your product a one-time purchase for them?
- Does your product fit into a specific industry category that has an established marketplace?
Understanding the unique aspects of each of these communities and how your products fit into the marketplace ecosystem will help you build brand equity with the right customer base. Ultimately, getting your products in front of the right customers will increase your ROI on advertising spend and improve your customer acquisition costs.
Automate Inventory and Order Management
The best way to improve efficiency and accuracy when managing sales on multiple marketplaces is to automate where possible. The great benefit of digital sales channels like ecommerce marketplaces is that they are flexible and often easy to integrate into your current tech stack with tools like multichannel selling softwares.
Investing in a multi-channel selling software will allow you to automate listings and pricing. It will allow you to bulk upload listings across multiple platforms and will automatically format content to be compliant with each marketplace’s unique requirements.
Additionally, many sellers will change their prices daily, either in response to a change in demand or as a tactic to gain algorithmic advantage for their listings, therefore many multi-channel selling softwares offer automatic repricing strategies to help you stay one step ahead of your competitors.
Finally, a multichannel selling software will automatically adjust inventory levels across marketplaces so you don’t have to worry about stocking out and hurting your performance. It will also sync all of your inventory levels across multiple warehouses so you know exactly where your inventory is at all times.
Optimize Content
Especially on Amazon, content plays heavily into ad performance. That’s because your conversion rate is an important factor in ranking for search terms. If too many shoppers land on your product listing without actually purchasing, Amazon will start to see your listing as irrelevant to search terms.
When selling on multiple marketplaces, it can be next to impossible to keep track of content and listing requirements for every channel. This is another area that a multichannel listing software can simplify the process of uploading and updating content across multiple platforms. All content will be automatically updated according to each channel's requirements to avoid listing errors and missed sales opportunities.
Engage Your Customers
It’s important to be an active and engaged community member in every marketplace your brand is actively selling on. This includes responding quickly and meaningfully to customer inquiries and regularly monitoring your reviews and feedback. A few negative reviews can be the death of any merchant’s marketplace listings and should be resolved quickly and empathetically.
Streamline Fulfillment
Streamlining your logistics is a key component to successfully managing multiple marketplaces. Outsourcing order fulfillment will help you to stay competitive with affordable 1-2 day shipping and help you manage and maintain accurate inventory levels across multiple marketplaces.
Similar to finding a multichannel listing software, streamlining fulfillment across all marketplaces through a single partner will give you greater visibility into your inventory levels, order and fulfillment status, on-time delivery rates and more. A fulfillment provider with a platform that integrates with all ecommerce marketplaces as well as your ecommerce shopping cart will allow you to manage all of your sales channels through a single dashboard.
How to Succeed on Multiple Marketplaces.
Online marketplace sales continue to grow, and more and more retailers are expanding their sales channels to include one or more of these platforms in their growth strategies. As marketplaces become more crowded, it will be imperative to have dynamic and nimble operations in order to compete.
Focusing your efforts on the best-fit marketplaces for your business, automating whenever possible, and building a 1-2 day delivery network will make your listings stand out and drive sales across all platforms.
Ware2Go is a UPS-backed warehousing and fulfillment solution that helps merchants of all sizes compete and win. With a nationwide network of warehouses powered by best-in-class fulfillment technology, Ware2Go provides a flexible and nimble solution to fulfill orders on any sales channel, from ecommerce marketplaces to traditional retail.
To learn more about how Ware2Go is helping businesses of all sizes compete across multiple marketplaces, take a look at our solution. For monthly insights on all things supply chain and fulfillment, sign up for our newsletter here.