How to promote an online marketplace in 2018

Creating a good online marketplace with professional help can be faster than you can imagine, but to involve sellers and buyers there is not an easy challenge.

Many e-commerce marketplace owners concentrate on the standard methods of promoting (SMM, SEO, Adwords) their business while skipping the not so traditional, but very effective methods. I’m not saying in any way that the widely used promotion channels do not work, but why not try to look a little more abstract about it. Let’s imagine that you get 200 new users to your trading platform every month from SEO, 400 users — from social media and over 1,000 new (buyers + sellers) reach your marketplace with Adwords. This can be enough to get the profit, and you stably adhere to the strategy used. I have only one question: “Do not you want more?”

If you tell me — No, I don’t, I will not believe it. I believe everyone who decides to start a business, and especially if this is e-commerce business, always wants to develop and grow.

So below I added some methods which are not so often used, but quite effective for promoting your online marketplace.

1 Influencer marketing

It is super effective in generating sales! And if you don’t start experimenting with it, you’re losing quite a big money.

So the first thing you should do is to find the right influencer.

The challenge is that finding an influencer to work with your brand isn’t as straightforward as it seems. But it is possible.

First, determine who your target audience. If you’ve already used any advertising in your promotion campaigns, it won’t be difficult.

In another case, I would recommend starting with Facebook Ads. It is really easy to customize and allows selecting the audience automatically.

You must select the influencer according to your target audience.

Try also the following services to find the influencers: influence.co, Openslate, Grapevine and Famebit.

• Do not hesitate to ask the potential leader for the full statistics on his/her profile, depending on where you want to promote your marketplace (Instagram, Facebook, Youtube etc.). It is also will be useful to do some research on your influencer using such services like Social Blade, to be sure on the true of this influencer popularity.
• Do not hesitate to bargain! Of course, before you write to your potential leader, you need to review forums and other resources where the information about approximate prices for bloggers services of this category. Try to lower the price, presenting your store in the best light. It is possible that the blogger will become your buyer or seller in the future.

Offer the blogger some benefits on your trading platform. This proposal can also reduce the price.

It also should be noted that when addressing the influencers for the promotion of your online marketplace, you must be assured of marketplace quality (convenience for buyers and sellers, security, relevance, etc.). That’s why it is best to use expert help to create your online trading platform.

Using the power of influencer marketing for your marketplace, you can run a strong grapevine among your potential sellers and buyers. So think carefully before you skip this idea and go back to your old strategy.

2 Video Marketing

Create Your Own Promotional Videos!

With adding a qualitative video about your marketplace on your promotion channels you can increase the number of new users by 80%. And it has been already proven that video works well regardless of the category in which you deploy it.

But when you use video marketing to promote anything and even truer for business, the video content provided must be perfect! I don’t advise you to create a video for promotion your marketplace by yourself (of course, not when you’re experienced video maker). Video creation like any other content creation it is a work for professionals. In this case, you can suggest with an idea for the future video clip if you have something interesting.

Vision is our most dominant sense. Think about something really exciting for your potential clients, your video must hit on its visitors.

Moreover, coming back to the marketing, Google loves videos! Videos allow you to increase the time spent by visitors on your marketplace website. And this, of course, will affect them progress in the search results for your marketplace.