WHAT ARE 3 BENEFITS OF MARKETPLACES? WHICH ONE IS FIT FOR YOU?

 

What are 3 benefits of marketplaces? How can we decide which one is fit for us?

Most marketplaces offer 3:

-To Increase brand awareness,

-More online channel to your company at search engines,

-Leads and prospects.

I have an experience about B2B marketplaces more than 3 years. Before starting, I would like to pay attention that explore your ideal customer profile first!

It is very important to define ICP!

Top accounts, revenues, locations, size of companies, buying comittees, qualification criterias etc.

So important!

B2B, B2C, C2C… Secondly, you can check categories of those marketplaces after your ICP. Categories show your future customers!

There are 2 types of goods at all!

Consumer goods and manufacturing goods! Manufacturing goods can be thought as producer goods, capital goods or industrial goods.

More wide product range than consumer goods.

If you have consumer goods, you may focus on B2C or C2C marketplaces. Consumer goods can be thought under categories as man, woman, child, electronics and so on.

Also there can be some niches. For example, a jewelry marketplace!

These marketplaces usually offer an e-commerce. It means that buyer is going to add the product to cart first! Then payment. Finally logistic.

3 steps but hard to manage!

There is usually a decision maker in buying process. 1 buyer.

On the other hand, if your focus is B2B. It can be much more complicated. First you should focus on categories as well. Consumer categories can also be B2B but not usually in e-commerce type.

Also those marketplaces may have industrial categories as a mechanical, a civil, a chemical etc. In B2B, there are 4 decision makers average in the end. So, B2B marketplaces may affect more people than their website traffic. Cross 4 it!

At B2B industrial goods, product prices are changeable in the way of stock status, manufacturing quantities, global logistic costs etc.

It may also change in the way of culture. I mean, countries by a countries. Finally, there can be minimum order quantities of those products.

Product prices are also not available for e-commerce purchasing.

Most B2B buyers usually search for products that they need. Caused by an emergency stop, a monthly – a yearly periodic maintenance.

Than they request for a quote. They may come for the bargain after quotation.

Then there are steps of a delivery date( may be 12-14 weeks…), logistic costs, an aggrement about responsibilities, a payment (May be %30 first and %70 at delivery…)

So as you see, it is not easy to be managed all processes by a marketplace. Even, there can be no marketplaces such that kind of an end to end organizer.

I believe, we are going to see in the next 5 years!

So your main goal should be to reach leads or prospects first with your subscription but there are another things to be thought about this!

I have been working for 3 years at Bidustry and it is one of those B2B marketplaces to be a good example!

You can upload all your catalog products, even can be thousends or ten thousends and have different pages for each of your products.

Buyers can request for a quote or send a message. Even, reach you. A seller may send the offer within the system or by itself. Than buyer can send a target price and may order.

So as you can see, there is no add to cart option and as the marketplace, it is not looking for seller’s 30 or 40 stock products.

More as an example:

If you have suppliers as manufacturer, you can invite them to receive inquiries as well! Some manufacturers joined with their suppliers and thousends of products. Because, 50K different products can not be in their stock at the same time.

Colective move needed at data management!

As a result of all:

-Check your ICP,

-Check your product type, a consumer or a manufacturer?

-Check if there is a nich type?

-Check marketplace categories, then sellers and buyers,

-Check a buyer journey,

-Check marketplace revenue model,

-Focus on brand awareness,

-Focus on uploading thousands,

-Focus on language options,

-Focus on opportunities rather than leads and prospects.

It also may take time from a marketplace to a marketplace! You should be in marketplaces but even you are in, you should also focus on your website!

At your website you should also think about contents and resources as inbound marketing.

At the end of the day, channels to your company will save you in the close future from both marketplaces and your website!

 

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