Any web marketing strategy involves a combination of methodology, rigor, common sense, and appropriate tools! For a marketplace, these criteria apply in the same way. The key is to know where to go, which path to take, and which steps to follow, while demonstrating the right level of creativity. From defining your objectives to measuring results, and understanding the various web marketing levers, we provide you with the recipe for a relevant and winning strategy for your marketplace.

Define Your Objectives and Targets for Your Marketplace

Define SMART Objectives

When you create a marketplace, it is imperative to establish the pillars of your strategy by precisely defining the purpose of your project, the associated objectives, and the means you will rely on to reach your destination. In other words, set a framework for your strategy by ensuring that your objectives meet the SMART criteria, meaning they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

For example: your goal is to increase your offer by 30% in one year (number of listings posted by third-party sellers) by recruiting sellers for a new category of your marketplace. Official figures show that there is still market share to be gained in the targeted segment, and your sales force is mobilized to carry out the project… you have just defined SMART objectives!

Create Buyer Personas

Next, identify your target profile well, segment it by user type, and create the corresponding buyer personas.

Draw a complete and detailed portrait of your typical customers (identity card, typical day, issues, challenges, goals, pains, solutions, relationship to your offer, obstacles, etc.). This way, you will be able to understand their buying journeys and determine the different browsing profiles, their ways of getting information online, their use of social media, their behavior on your marketplace… and therefore position yourself as closely as possible to their needs to deliver the right message at the right time!

Note that for a marketplace operator, third-party sellers are personas with a different profile – “sellers personas” – but your web strategy can also address them, so don’t forget them!

Conduct Competitive Intelligence

Let’s talk about your competitors now. What are their web marketing strategies? Implementing competitive intelligence across all web marketing axes allows you to identify opportunities and evaluate the actions to be taken.

Here are some pieces of information to monitor about your competitors:

What is their positioning on search engines? With which keywords?

What is their content strategy?

How do they communicate online (display, Google Ads, affiliation…)?

How is their presence on social networks manifested (page animation, profile management, sponsored posts…)?

At the end of this first preparatory phase, you have all the ingredients to attract your target’s attention, generate interest, and drive action. Now, it’s time to move on to the technical phase!

Different Web Marketing Levers for Your Marketplace

The right tools, used at the right time, yield good results… for your marketplace’s web marketing strategy, it’s exactly the same! Web marketing levers are linked and interact with each other. Therefore, it is important to consider your strategy and these levers as a whole.

Natural Referencing of Your Marketplace: SEO Optimization

One of the challenges of your strategy lies in the natural referencing of your marketplace on search engines, particularly Google, which captures 90% of the market.

Ensure that the content of the listings respects the SEO optimization rules you have communicated to third-party sellers and that your categories are clearly defined and also referenced with the right keywords. A Google-friendly site drives more traffic!

However, merely adhering to Google’s technical standards would not be very useful without a volume of quality content to index.

Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing

Write quality content for your marketplace users. It allows you to demonstrate that you have in-depth expertise in your field through discovery articles, analysis, advice, decision-making support, or testimonials… Content marketing has become an essential tool for traffic acquisition and lead generation.

Inbound Marketing is a key lever, so take good care of it! The quality and relevance of content are even more essential in Inbound Marketing campaigns, as it’s about attracting relevant visitors to your business.

Building on these practices, and ideal for marketplaces managing a large number of users and data, marketing automation allows you to automate marketing actions without sacrificing personalization, quality, and monitoring.

Advertising

Another web marketing lever, advertising, is also a good way to develop the notoriety of your marketplace and increase traffic to boost your conversions. Like paid referencing on search engines – notably through the very famous Google Ads (formerly Adwords) – you can run display ads. Google Display Network is the leading network in terms of the volume of websites.

There are also other alternatives to increase the visibility of your marketplace. To broadcast the message to the right audience or convert previous visits into purchases, remarketing and retargeting techniques are also very effective. They help keep the products, brands, and services offered on the marketplace at the center of attention. These techniques rely on display campaigns.

Another tool, affiliation, represents a significant source of traffic. Through banners or sponsored ads, via commercial links related to their site (integrated affiliation) or through white-label stores like Amazon, affiliation is not the pinnacle of targeting but can be very profitable.

The same goes for price comparison sites, essential traffic sources that allow quick searching and comparing of many products. Google Shopping, which increasingly tends to become a marketplace, is an example. It is an effective way for the marketplace operator to broadcast ads on its offer to attract qualified traffic.

Social Networks

Social networks are a formidable traffic generator. They go hand in hand with your content strategy and amplify its visibility. Some are more B2C oriented, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Pinterest, while others are B2B such as LinkedIn or Twitter. In any case, it is important to define an editorial charter specific to community management, tailored to the network used, to develop a strong and engaged community that plays its role of recommendation well.

Advertising on social networks is also gaining importance and technology: targeting options and AI allow displaying ads according to users’ interests, preferences, and even posted content. Thus, your message only reaches a qualified audience. This lever has become an essential part of web marketing… It’s no wonder that a profession was created specifically for this and that the advertising offerings of networks are developing, like Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads! The latter, for example, offers to sponsor content in the news feed or directly send ads to the inboxes of qualified contacts.

Emailing

Although it is one of the oldest tools in the web marketing strategy, emailing is not dead. It remains very effective. Whether in the form of newsletters or Push approaches, addressed to a buyer audience or third-party sellers, it allows regular updates, fosters engagement, invites purchases, and retains customers.

An effective recipe, executed with the right tools and using the necessary and appropriately dosed ingredients for a result that meets your expectations… This is exactly what you have right now to implement a worthy web marketing strategy for your marketplace. Now, it’s time to measure!

Don’t Forget to Analyze Statistics and ROI

How do you know if the web marketing strategy implemented for your marketplace is or will be profitable? One answer: track the relevant KPIs, estimate your ROI, and don’t be afraid to face reality to make adjustments if necessary.

First, Analyze Existing Activity

Daily, you track indicators such as:

Traffic on your platform

Conversion rate

Business volume

Average basket of your customers

These data allow you not only to determine the return on investment compared to already conducted marketing actions but also to make projections based on concrete data: each influencing the turnover, you will know where to place your efforts to increase it!

Then, Study Your Acquisition Costs

How much do you spend to acquire a visitor, a prospect, a customer? What is the acquisition cost per channel? This information is crucial to know the ROI of your actions, at the risk of continuing to act at a loss. You can compare your costs with general statistics and thus see if you are within the average, if you are performing well, or on the contrary, if you are spending too much… and consequently react if necessary.

Finally, Adjust and Improve

To measure the success of your web marketing strategy and enable its evolution, it is crucial to establish performance indicators for each of the strategic levers implemented and choose the right marketplace builder to implement any web strategy you want.