How to Scale Your eCommerce Business on Marketplaces Worldwide
Did you know? 52% of all online retail sales come from eCommerce marketplaces. If you’ve ever thought about expanding your business and selling on new marketplaces, our session from our recent Beyond 24-hour virtual global summit for digital business, is just for you!
Here we bring you our expert panel who combined, have over a century of eCommerce experience and have worked with marketplaces worldwide to help sellers like you find the best ways to build your business and expand.
The sessions was hosted by Payoneer Australia’s very own Senior Customer Success Manager, Remy Jansons along with Paul Sonneveld, Co-Founder & CEO at MerchantSpring, Frank Nesci, Co-Founder at Comestri, Apurva Chiranewala, Chief Development Officer at Sendle and Darren Kawalsky, GM & Head of eCommerce, Cross Border & Omnichannel ANZ at CEVA Logistics.
To learn more on how to scale your business on global marketplaces and maximize sales, watch the full session below!
Why You Should Build a Marketplace Strategy
With so many eSellers on the market and the competition getting tighter, there are three reasons on why it’s important for sellers to implement a marketplace strategy.
First, it’s all about protecting the brand and if you decide not to sell on a marketplace, another eSeller will, taking your place and your opportunity to grow. Second, it’s crucial to generate brand awareness and be extremely visible to your audience. And of course, the last reason is to generate sales by reaching more consumers.
In addition, it can be really hard to win in eCommerce without being present on global marketplaces and again, if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities that a marketplace can offer, someone else will.
For smaller businesses that are just starting out or are brand new to the world of eCommerce, marketplaces can truly provide a great place to start out, one where you can build plenty of traction and create higher searchability. As a smaller brand, it’s vital to build trust with your consumers and a marketplace is the perfect place to begin building that trust.
Which Global Marketplaces Should Sellers Consider
As we’ve already understood that online marketplaces are a must if you want to expand your business, but to be as profitable as possible on these platforms, you’ll have to first identify which marketplaces is best for your brand. Before getting started, it’s important to distinguish between the two types of marketplaces.
There are the open marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, meaning they are open to all sellers that want to sell on the marketplace, resulting in higher competition. Furthermore, there are curated marketplaces where sellers need to be approved in order to sell their products, but these are marketplaces where sellers can achieve significant sales and ROI, even more than even the open marketplaces and bigger names. However, with curated marketplaces, do take into consideration business operations like payments, returns, shipping, etc.
Furthermore, it’s important to also choose a marketplace based on the categories they specialize in and which types of audiences are shopping there. In order to succeed and build a brand, you have to align the products you sell with the types that are being sold on the marketplace.
Finally, determine which markets you’re interested in selling in and research which regions are a best fit for your products. If you see that your products are in high demand in a specific market, then you’ll know that you have higher chances of maximizing your sales there.
Once you’ve identified the markets, identify the top marketplaces in the region and even try testing them by selling your products on multiple marketplaces. That way, after a certain amount of time, you’ll understand where your brand is performing best. For example, if you’re thinking about expanding into Southeast Asia, the bigger marketplaces you may want to consider include Shopee, Lazada and Qoo10. In the U.S., other than Amazon, Walmart is really booming.
As the panelists in our session agree, there’s no reason to just go for one marketplace when you can maximize your visibility on multiple marketplaces at the same time.
To continue watching all of our Beyond sessions, click below!