Outline the key steps for expanding the reach of your marketplace and attracting more users, such as implementing effective marketing strategies, optimizing your platform for search engines, and building strategic partnerships.
Your Internet platform is up and running, but after 6-8 months you see that the portal is not growing and developing. The natural desire is to scale your business to become more productive. And here you need to work hard because your marketplace needs constant attention and improvement. Usually, marketplace development companies take on such functions of growing and scaling your portal. For example, how the Roobykon company does it. But if you are doing it yourself, you need to pay attention to 5 aspects that will take your platform to a higher level.
Many people who have opened their marketplace hope for growing success without their intervention. They have developed a project, launched it, made an advertisement and are waiting for the profit that will fall from the sky. But such dreams do not always come true. Each marketplace is the painstaking and hard work of a team of experts, each of whom works on their own sector. It is difficult for one person to control, maintain and expand the marketplace because he needs to take into account many factors. And here are the main ones.
5 Points for Scaling and Growing your Marketplace
Of course, your first goal is to attract more potential customers. Your second desire is to increase the conversion, that is, the number of purchases. This is not only your profit but also the growth and reputation of your virtual business. But how to make your product popular and recognizable? How to bring it to leadership positions bypassing competitors? There are some simple tips from experts in the field of e-commerce and SaaS projects.
To begin with, you need to make sure that you have chosen the right marketplace that fits perfectly with your offer. There is a simple and clear guide how to choose the right one. If you have already made a decision, then it's time to develop it and make it more successful.
1. Viral marketing. The point is to force visitors to your platform to attract other people. This can be done through promotions and profitable offers. Of course, it depends on the direction of your business, but there are a lot of solutions. For example, a clothing store might offer a discount for a new customer you bring in. The webinars offer referral links to earn a percentage of each new user that a group member brings. This method does not say that you do not need advertising for your product; this is one of the points for expanding your customer base.
2. Search engine optimization. This is an important process that helps your site to rank at the top of the search engines. Users should quickly and easily find your platform for certain queries. These are the keywords and phrases that the search engine finds and analyzes to give people your site. There are certain SEO tools that are very effective in promoting web resources. These are indicators of the number of unique words, nausea, water, and so on. Setting all the metrics right will help you outperform your competitors and put your product in first place.
3. Content marketing. People come to you for a product, but content is also important to them. Half the success of your platform is quality information. If you make your content interesting, exciting, and unique, it will quickly spread across social media. Good content will help spread the word about your site with little to no advertising campaign. However, don't rely on it too much because it takes a lot of luck to create such an effect. The internet contains a lot of information and you need to be super creative to make your product stand out.
4. Traffic payment. There are many ways to increase traffic, the most effective is advertising on social networks or on other sites using banners. But you need to make sure that you get back more money than you spent on it. With marketplaces, it's more difficult because you don't know what the user will be like. It can generate hundreds of transactions or not make a single purchase. It is better to use search engine marketing, another word, to display ads on Google or other search mechanisms based on search keywords. But the main problem with paid advertising remains the same - it's a huge competition.
5. Email marketing. Certain statistic says that attracting new customers is more expensive than activating existing ones. Marketplaces spend a lot of time and money to attract new users and forget about those who have already become their members. Turn your existing users into customers with an email newsletter. Let them know about promotions, discounts and other great deals, tell them about success stories and add a call to action. Email is a direct connection with users to create a friendlier and trusting relationship.
Many marketplaces are successful because they create communities around their products. Both platforms interact with each other and attract people who actively discuss the products of the platform. They may not buy anything, but they create an important effect - publicity. Work on the growth and development of your virtual business so that it becomes even more in demand. Use various methods because they really give results to increase conversions and increase the productivity of your platform.
Conclusion
Experts say that marketplaces need more time to grow than ordinary virtual stores. They advise being very patient and growing slowly in the project beginning so that you can test and optimize your business later. Test different growth channels and see which one suits the direction of your business. Studying competitors is also important; you will be able to understand what their idea is missing and what you can offer your customers. Each stage of growth of your marketplace comes to an end and you need to understand when it's time to move higher.
