Insights from the Marketplace conference 2018 in Berlin
One day from Marketplaces in Berlin on 28th of November.
Even organizers were impressed with the number of sold tickets which is definitely a good sign for a marketplace trend.
The conference was full of exciting content with experts working on Service, Sharing and Product marketplaces.
The event gathered all different key marketplace players: online marketplace conferences itself, consulters, investors, vendors and not only.
Trends: SAAS first, Networking effect, expand community
Carol Jiang with Badi shared how to leverage AI in a real estate marketplace. It’s definitely a step further as Badi gathers a lot of data and matches the profiles based on multiple filters.
This allows recommending users the options while looking for hosts/guests based on their interests and characteristics.
Can you imagine how the matched host and guest are glad when meeting?
As they read the same books and adore the same sports activities. That’s definitely a great start of a conversation which makes travelling and renting a flat even more pleasant.
Another story about management of your target audience is connected with fraud detection. It’s important to take care of the marketplace reputation.
That’s why Badi creates Machine Learning algorithms and tracks:
- Cases when “a host” persuades the user to make the payment, not on the platform. As Badi doesn’t take commisions it’s unsafe. And with the algorithm detects such a host as a fraud through chat conversations.
- Not fulfilled and new profiles. In this case, Badi’s algorithms try to persuade the host to add more information about accommodation as it looks suspicious.
Smart marketing in Food delivery marketplaces
Delivery Hero boosts its success in Food delivery. They found how to make typical marketplaces in Food-delivery and conquer new cities and countries.
Though it’s not that simple to launch new products in new countries. For example, when it’s snowing, a food-delivery service earns more because people don’t want to leave their houses. From the other side, there is no snow in any African countries. That’s why a Food delivery company has other backgrounds for picks in sales and it’s important to understand local “rules” to drive the business.
This simple example teaches us that we should take into account all criteria and characteristics such as weather, news or trends to play with marketing activities.
SaaS-enabled marketplaces
Firstly, become the software for the domain, then transfer it to a marketplace.
How it works:
Styleseat is a platform which connects two parties to conduct a transaction. But at the same time, it has a SAAS component that offers software features to one — or more — of the parties.
Their competitor Booksy also follows the same model. Firstly, they sell SAAS system as a management system for Health and Beauty SME with feature “booking” appointment. And only after it they add the business chain into their marketplace platform.
So, basically, they have two almost independent revenue streams:
- SAAS subscription
- Commission from booking
As we can see, SAAS might not only help to create extra value for your marketplace customer but also can help to penetrate the market and generate revenue.
How to create a community to expand the marketplace?
Julia Wadhen (Paul Camper — sharing motorhomes & caravans) and Sam Huber (Admix — sharing VR/AR content) shared few tips:
- you use your own FB profile to position yourself as an expert in the industry and add “as a friend” in your network. And later invite into FB group, where you would post useful content, links and of course, invite into the marketplace
- Julia organises live events for their caravan owners up to 300 people to encourage and celebrate the unity of a community
- By creating a community you should also be careful with critics and bad news. Now your audience have a place to share negative feedback as well
A somehow similar trend we see with scaling “Network effect”. We heard it during the talk from Stephan Heller from FinCompare.
So basic idea is to unite many different players from different groups within your marketplace to expand such “Network effect”. By different groups we mean not only simply buyers and sellers but on the example of FinCompare: SME, investors, banks, government institutions, advisors, different vendors and so on.
And the system of FinCompare via API also lets other players participate within Network.
Repeat customers and booking or sales are crucial for growth. It’s not a secret that it’s more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain a current one, companies that focus on return customers save money by reducing churn.
We all love to speak with real people, not with spammy emails. Personalized emails and calls are what will keeps your repeat customers. It’s all about care and trying to be relevant to your clients. And if you gather feedbacks and help your clients, you’ll keep going on the product development.
Follow trendy news in your industry, then respond to them. That’s how you will figure out what your customers need to ease their customer experience.
How to evaluate your Marketplace and what we can learn from Uber?
Jambu Palaniappan from Atomico (ex-Head of Uber Eats) shared their Framework to evaluate and scale marketplace. As we can see from his slide there are many key factors which marketplace should consider at the same time.
But to simplify there are two key Metrics:
Travis Pittman from TourRadar also shared his story attracting investment. He was asked for data which he was not ready to provide at the time. So he proposes to start collecting it ASAP:
Also, Jambu shared his experience working with Uber:
Giant marketplaces like UBER became popular due to smart marketing.
I’ll just cover a couple of bright examples of how UBER attracts new customers.
The 1st one is their referral program. People are buying through word-of-mouse recommendations and UBER plays well with it. Isn’t it cool when you invite your friend to order a taxi and get a free ride for it in exchange?
A further step is how to make people surprised and happy with the service. Once UBER made a marketing campaign with MacLaren and even got paid for it.
Imagine you order a cab and you can’t believe that MacLaren came to drive you home from the office? And that’s what UBER made and created a dream in people’s hearts!
Just look at how this girl smiles full of excitement.
Conclusion: Marketplace industry is booming
We definitely see marketplace boom. I could call “blockchain hype”. But instead, rear blockchain use in real life (besides maybe cryptocurrency)— these marketplaces change the lives of real people forever.
If you wanna find partners, understand and see the trends — you should definitely visit the next event in SF or Berlin!
We wish you could feel the vibes at the Marketplace Conference in Berlin. Though the videos are not published yet, you can still watch videos from a previous conference in San Francisco and we expect there Berlin video as well: Youtube channel “Marketplace Conference”.
And thanks to my colleague Alex Morgunov for helping me out to write this article.
Few words about us. We are Sloboda Studio — online marketplace development agency. So far we created and support more than 20 online marketplaces. Up today we have mostly worked with the service type ones. Please check our portfolio. And contact us if you wanna get technology consulting, build or rebuild your marketplace from scratch.
