Today an online marketplace is a must-have sales channel. By working with it right, you’ll discover a new world of possibilities, including international ones. So, what is an online marketplace, and how you should work with it? Here are 4 distinctive features:
An online e-commerce platform
An online marketplace is usually an e-commerce platform which provides third party products to be sold directly to a customer (either B2C or B2B). In addition, it uses its own transaction system. The best examples of such marketplaces are https://www.amazon.com/ or https://www.alibaba.com/
Large advertising platform
The most complicated thing to do while working with a marketplace is to make listing right. For instance, most online marletplaces provide great analysis tools.
By providing right information, sometimes using methods similar to creating meta-tags in SEO, your products will always be on display. Likewise do not forget different trade marketing opportunities, such as discounts, gift-for-purchase and so on.
Online marketplaces have great capabilities for international sales
Some companies have most of their products distributed online through a marketplace. For instance, we know one such company – a producer of wood materials, – which exports most of its products through alibaba.
Flexible working conditions
From our personal experience working with 3 different marketplaces, we can definitely say that all of them have different working conditions, but at the same time, it’s easier to get a product on a marketplace, than on a shelf in a retail chain. Please, remember that most marketplaces do not have to contain so many staff or premises, so the price of “entry” to the marketplace is minimal.
We must say that working with a marketplace opens huge perspectives in one’s business, since e-commerce market is constantly growing. Under different circumstances, international marketplaces can become the main sales channel for one’s business.
