It’s harder than ever to get into the online marketplace competition. There is, however, always a method to stand out from the crowd.
As Richard Branson said,
“If you want to stand out from the crowd, give people a reason not to forget you.“
To beat your competition and stand out from the crowd, you need to promote your marketplace globally. So that, your audience doesn’t forget you.
Planning and developing strategies are the main things for promoting a marketplace. You have to show the worth of your online marketplace to buyers and sellers in order to stand out in the market.
As a platform owner, you should provide the same priority and effort to marketplace promotion as in platform creation. A smart launch to give you the best result. For this, you need to market your online marketplace platform before launch.
The best move to make your audience look forward to your marketplace is to promote your marketplace before launching. If you’re planning to launch your own online marketplace platform, it’s crucial to understand the must-have features that will make your platform successful. Check out this comprehensive list of must-have marketplace app features that covers essential functionalities and capabilities to consider when developing your marketplace. It will help you ensure your platform meets the needs of both buyers and sellers, setting you apart from the competition.
This blog is for you if you’re starting your marketplace and want to know how to market a marketplace platform before its launch.
Why Promote Your Marketplace Before Its Launch?
When promoting your marketplace before the launch, ensure that your marketplace is perfect. So, it could make a profit. Let’s define how your marketplace should be,
- The marketplace should contain interesting and helpful content.
- Your marketplace should be unique from the competitors. This way, you can convince your customer that your marketplace is the best and differs from others.
- Your online marketplace platform should be user-friendly and intuitive. To be more precise, your site needs to be in a way so that your customer can navigate to get what they want.
If you have already built an online marketplace, then make sure that your marketplace meets all listed requirements.
Every entrepreneur wishes to see a profit after the launching of their marketplace. Your users are in no hurry. They take time to trust your marketplace since, at first, they don’t know about your existence.
It is the main reason to promote your marketplace before its launch. Also, it benefits you by,
- Getting the expected results earlier
- A chance to get extra time to market your platform
- Testing your idea with end users in advance
- Increases the brand awareness
- Obtaining users before the launch
So, let’s dive into the topic to see the pre-promotion options.
9 Ways To Market Your Online Marketplace Platform Before Launch
1. Social Media Marketing
SMM, also known as social media marketing, is a potent tool you can use to advertise your company and discover more about your target market. You may utilize social media to your advantage before your marketplace launches in two key ways.
- Communicate with your target audience
- Create social media pages to boost brand awareness
2. Communicate With Your Target Audience
Communicating with your target audience is the first technique to use SMM for your business.
You may discover your target audience’s problems, passions, and desires by participating in places where they congregate.
More than that, by researching your potential clients on social media, you may get data that will enable better communication with them through content and ads on your website.
Additionally, once you know them, you can begin promoting your marketplace. You may use this to launch your marketplace promotion efforts. You’ll also be able to tell if your business’s concept appeals to customers.
3. Create Social Media Pages to Boost Brand Awareness
Making social media sites increase brand recognition is another approach to advertise your marketplace before it launches. You may gain attention and pique interest by showing up in people’s news feeds.
In your planned online marketplace platform, you may post brief descriptions of features and monitor the response from your target market. You may use this to determine the preferences of your prospective consumers.
The core advantage of utilizing social media for your marketplace promotion is,
- You can cover a large audience in a single place.
- Your platform might get high popularity.
- An opportunity to keep a good relationship with your users.
4. Create a Landing Page
A landing page is a single page that tries to convert visitors into potential customers and vendors. One essential task you should carry out on your teaser landing page is collecting the emails of potential consumers.
You can effectively promote your internet business once you have a list of potential customers at your disposal.
You must provide a benefit in exchange for visitors’ email addresses on your landing page. New e-commerce sites and marketplaces typically provide incentives.
For example, Creative Market, an online store that offers design materials, gave each customer $5 in credit when the store first opened.
You may learn more about your target audience by using a landing page. You may learn more about your website visitors by utilizing Google Analytics to examine the traffic on your landing page.
You may discover their device preferences, frequency of visits, and length of stays on your website.
You may track data like visitors’ age, gender, and location if you include a cookie policy on your landing page. With this knowledge, you may identify an additional layer of possible clients you had not previously considered.
5. Utilize Current Platforms to Find Potential Customers
Go around and consider whether you can draw people from other platforms, no matter whether they are online or offline if you have no clue where to look for your initial consumers. It may be a successful tactic, as seen in the case of Airbnb, whose founders reached out to their first prospective customers via Craigslist.
As Tinder did, you may also advertise your marketplace during in-person gatherings. Co-founder Whitney Wolfe would arrange encounters with nearby college students and introduce them to the app from the early beginning of Tinder’s existence.
Additionally, she encouraged all attendees to sign up, which is how Tinder acquired its first 15,000 members.
6. Email Marketing
By sending an email to people who have given their consent to get your e-Letter, email marketing enables you to promote your marketplace. Email marketing is the most effective method for staying in touch with your audience.
You need an immense contact base to imply email marketing, or it is a useless idea. Some of the email marketing ideas are as follows,
- Email Newsletters
- Transactional Emails
- Behavioral Emails
You’ll be able to begin and maintain efficient communication with your users before and after your marketplace is launched if you have an email list of potential consumers.
When interacting by email, though, you should use extreme caution. You shouldn’t send emails too frequently. Otherwise, your clients could think you’re obtrusive.
Consistent and intriguing email correspondence is ideal. Send emails with product news and educational material. People will visit your website as a result of this information.
7. Video Sneak Peek
Compared to articles or other content, videos are more engaging and give information quickly. In addition, 54% of respondents to a HubSpot poll from 2017 said they wanted to see more video content from the companies they patronize.
You could wish to use a video to promote your marketplace in order to take advantage of the rising demand for video content. Its topic might range from your marketplace’s key features to potential usage related queries.
Any topic you choose to cover in your video is a successful piece of content that you can share anywhere, including in emails, landing pages, and social media.
Your video sneak peek content should follow the below rules,
- The start of your video should be more informational because information can reach the audience when it is kept in the first few minutes of the video.
- Your video should be dynamic and concise. The user may get bored of seeing overly long and dead-alive videos.
- Make users delighted by taking every chance of the video to explain your marketplace in an exciting way.
- Adding subtitles to your video is a good idea if it contains a voiceover because not everyone can watch videos with audio.
8. Promotion Events or Partnerships With Complementary Brands
You can further advertise your online marketplace by forming partnerships with businesses that complement it. In this situation, even if your platform will be new, you can develop a user base with a prospective interest in it.
Share one podcast or blog article as one of your promotion strategies if you want to draw more clients. Additionally, you two may recommend a joint present. Offer discounts or free follow-up purchases if you manage to build a customer base with a consistent interest in your brand.
Another strategy to increase your market exposure is through webinars and online conferences. You will expose various individuals to your website in this method.
Additionally, you will increase your knowledge of your specific Internet market area. Thus, as a founder, you also profit from the ability to influence your own brand.
Such conferences will assist you in making vital contacts if your market is a startup. Additionally, the conferences will produce the first user experience, which is beneficial for enhancing your Internet store. Online presentations are a technique for established markets to find new vendors or investors.
9. The Right Marketing Strategy For Your Marketplace
The marketing plan is essential to expand or grow your online marketplace platform. Making the appropriate decision can increase your customer appeal and help your company.
Understanding your clients’ demands is the cornerstone of the marketplace marketing approach. The correct presentation of the unique value of your marketplace is another crucial aspect. You may choose tools to advertise your internet company to more people based on these primary factors.
Final Sayings
I hope you get an idea to promote your marketplace platform before its launch. Never undervalue the advantages of marketing your marketplace before it opens to the public.
Utilize a pre-launch marketing strategy to gather a sufficient number of potential clients to launch your company. So implement these tips to promote your online marketplace platform.
You May Like To Read:
- 6 Effective Ways To Market Your Small Business
- Freelance Content Marketing: How To Write For Media & Promote Your Personal Brand
- Why Promote Your Business on Social Media?
Author Bio: I am Dhivyameena, a content strategist for the SaaS marketplace startup QoreUps. I am an explorer of the numerous markets, the trends that shape the markets, and the strategies to prepare ready to construct the market that is most suited to the trends. With the readers of my site, I want to impart my expertise in numerous subjects. Would you want further information? Follow my blogs to learn more! Follow Dhivyameea on FB & TW.
