The Insider’s Guide To Marketing Your Marketplace Store

As a marketplace seller, you’re probably familiar with the standard advice for e-commerce marketing: take out ads on sites like Google, issue coupons, and use social media to name just a few examples. But if you’re hoping to be a successful seller, you may want to go beyond the basics.

We turned to two experts at DealNews to get their best insider tips on how to market your marketplace store. Learn why diversifying, picking the right partners, and retargeting could all help drive sales for your business.

Diversify With Your Marketing Dollars

You’ve likely heard the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” but perhaps you didn’t know that it also applies to marketing.

“A successful marketing mix, like most investments, is diverse,” says Keira Lim, head of marketing at DealNews. “For marketplace sellers, this means that they will want to spread their marketing dollars around.” She suggests including the following:

• Marketplace advertising like Amazon ads
• Search engine marketing through platforms like Google Ads
• Targeted social promotions such as Facebook ads
• Deal site advertising via channels like DealNews

“In each case, you’re mitigating the risk of having all [your] eggs in one basket; testing different pricing methods like CPC, CPM, and flat fee; and securing a new, incremental audience for your deals,” Lim notes.

So what steps can you take to diversify? Lim recommends testing one or two new sources of customers each month with a small investment. That way, “you can learn what types of messages and offers resonate with the audience and whether the initiative should become an ongoing partnership,” she says.

Seek Out Partners That Focus On Money-Saving Topics

When it comes to marketing, partnering up can pay off. Tim Mueller, the head of business development at DealNews, notes that partner marketing with Facebook groups, deal sites, and savings “influencers” can be a good way to up the number of visits to your store and convert sales.

“Partners that focus on ‘saving money’ topics can be great…because it means readers are actually thinking about how to spend their money (but less of it),” he says. “So you will get a reader that may see your product in a money-saving article as a great deal, and click through to convert to a sale when your product is discussed on a deal website or money-saving social group.”

Mueller offers a couple of tips to keep in mind when considering new marketing partnerships:

Ask about the return on investment. This refers to the expected sales of your product versus the amount you invest in the ad. If the creator or publisher doesn’t know what ROI to expect, they should be clear about that.

Beware of partners that seem like they’ll accept a fee for posting practically anything. If they don’t have clear guidelines about what their readers like to see, chances are they don’t really have actual influence over their readers’ buying decisions.

Try Retargeted Ads

Have you ever checked out products on a retailer’s website, then seen ads for the same store or items on other websites? If you answered yes, you’ve experienced retargeting firsthand.

“Retargeting is an online marketing strategy that involves serving customers who previously visited your website with relevant ads as they browse external websites,” according to The Balance Small Business. Oftentimes, the goal is to get customers to take a specific action, like revisiting your website.

“For sellers with their own sites, retargeting is a great tactic to bring interested consumers back to your site to finish a purchase, especially when offered a compelling deal to do so,” Lim says.

Just remember that time is of the essence with retargeted ads. A 2019 study out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that retargeted ads shown to users in the first week after they visited a website were more effective than the ads shown in later weeks. What’s more, 33% of the effect of the first week’s advertising happened on the first day!

While e-commerce marketing is never a one-size-fits-all endeavor, trying out retargeting, diversifying, and other strategies could give your marketplace store the sales boost it needs.

Contributed by By Katie Roberts, Blog Editor