Sell on Online Marketplaces
As you are probably aware, Amazon, Walmart, Newegg and many other e-commerce companies offer third-party marketplaces that give you the opportunity to sell your products on their websites. You may view them as your competition or at least a distraction that pulls away buyers at critical moments. What if online marketplaces are actually your ally in growing your business?
Think Complementary, Not Competitive
You need to shift your perspective so that you’re viewing e-commerce markets as a complement to your business. They offer quite a few benefits to small businesses, with an established user base that is accustomed to making purchases on these sites.
You piggyback on their marketing and advertising efforts to take advantage of the traffic it brings in. Advanced seller tools give you the opportunity to work with a technology infrastructure you may not have available for your sales efforts. They have more resources at their disposal for experimenting with new technology and techniques, and you reap the rewards.
It’s time to make third-party marketplaces an essential part of your online approach. Whether you sell online or not, they can form an important part of your business growth strategy.
How to Get the Most Our of Online Marketplaces
Before you start putting products on these marketplaces, you need a solid strategy to maximize the benefit of using them. The audience that uses Amazon and other massive e-commerce sites may be far different than the people who shop at your business. You may need to curate your product line to match their expectations, as opposed to offering everything you have for your regular customers.
Brand awareness is another major benefit of getting on these marketplaces, so make sure you’re taking advantage of that. Promote your business as much as the product so you can start to grow your customer base through a broader reach.
Make sure that your product information is up to date and synchronized with the rest of your online presence. You don’t want inaccurate information to cost you customers when they compare listings between your site and the marketplace. With synchronization, you also don’t have to spend time updating every single listing on every single site. Instead, you change it once and automatically refresh the rest.
Product Information Management Online marketplaces are a tool to add to your small business marketing toolkit. They might seem like they’re taking sales away from you, but in reality, they bring you far more customers than you lose out on.
Sources:
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/Third-party-Marketplaces-What-Merchants-Should-Know
