For any marketplace to run smoothly, it is important to attract customers on your marketplace who can easily get converted. The most pressing question is who your potential customers are and how to identify them? The answer to this is not easy to find but we have done some research and came to the conclusion that strategic planning and conducting surveys can help you find your future leads. There are many factors involved in this which are discussed in this article.
The challenges faced by business owners in the sharing economy are more complex than those faced by conventional e-commerce firms. Provided that a platform service is an online marketplace, owners need to acquire customers from both the supply and demand sides.
To attract customers on a marketplace you should have some quality content and you must market by showing the benefits of your products. A multi-vendor marketplace is a platform where many sellers can sell their products but it is important to maintain their unique identities to get new buyers. You can allot categories to your seller; this will limit their area of interest.
How to attract different types of potential customers to the marketplace?
Not all customers have the same choice rather different customers will have different opinions. Are you doing anything to attract them to your marketplace? Are your strategies working to get new customers? If not then this article will help you find potential customers and attracting them to your marketplace.
1. Offer Deals and Discounts:
To attract customers to your marketplace, you can run exciting deals and discounts occasionally. This can be organized before the festive season, holiday season, or for clearing the old stocks. Deals always work when it comes to bringing new customers to the marketplace. The deal seekers are always waiting for this and this will help you generate revenue in less time which can be used in future supply and product inventory management.
Sellers can run deals and share coupons with customers by the marketplace extensions and these modules allow the admin to configure the seller profile from the backend of the marketplace.
2. Market with Email Marketing
For emails to prospects and clients, email marketing is an extremely productive technique. Successful email promotion converts prospects into customers and turns one-time customers into loyal ones.
Compared to individuals who don’t accept email offers, people who buy products sold via email pay more. Currently, selling emails has a big ROI and that’s massive! And if you’re wondering, social media makes higher conversions.
3. Social Proofs increase brand awareness and conversion
Find reputable reviewers, find your product pros and cons and then launch it with so much expertise already on the market
Having users to share blogs, images, feedback, and video marketing by showing unboxing videos of your products or services is one tactic that will cost you no money. The key thing here is to develop a reputation so that your customers mention your brand in the content they create.
You can throw out a challenge on social networks to boost content creation and inspire clients to share images with your brand’s hashtag.
You can ask them to drop product reviews on the product page after their successful purchase. The reviews built trust and attract customers who are new to the marketplace.
4. Contacting old customers again
Even old clients who have not done business with you in a while, anything old can be fresh again. Go through your customer contacts on a regular basis and reach out to inactive customers with a special offer via email, direct mail, or phone after six months or a year without interaction or purchase. They’re going to be happy that you remembered them and that you want to win them back.
5. Refer a friend and get discount
Referral marketing works magic when you want to attract customers to your store. You can run referral programs for a limited time and ask existing customers to bring a friend and give them some discount coupon codes which they can use in the future.
Referral programs are a great tool to bring potential customers into a marketplace. The marketplace is a two-way platform. Both sellers and customers are inter-dependent. If you are able to attract customers then sellers will automatically start selling with you or if you have created a strong seller network and then customers will be attracted sooner or later.
Summing Up
The challenges faced by business owners in the sharing economy are more complex than those faced by conventional e-commerce firms. Provided that a platform service is an online marketplace, owners need to acquire customers from both the supply and demand sides.
- Well, you need to create your brand on the basis of the opinion of people.
- Identify which side of the marketplace is hard to get and concentrate on first gaining that side.
- Ask for advice from experts like a next-level ninja.
- Consider if there is a possibility to sell one side of the marketplace (producers or consumers) a stand-alone product. You can then open the platform on the other side of the marketplace until you have captured the customer base.
The Marketplace module is available for PrestaShop, Magento 2 and OpenCart platforms
