Do not sell anywhere and everywhere! As an ecommerce business owner, you must know your target market. You must be aware of where to find them to increase your brand visibility. This becomes super easy when you expand your selling horizons. This implies that you must extend to different marketplaces to sell where your buyers are trying to find you. At first, it can feel like charting an unknown territory but sooner it can prove to be your biggest milestone. However, fruitful ecommerce expansion asks for more than just listing your products in multiple places. Let's show you how to navigate the intricacies of global marketplaces, manage cross-border logistics, and scale your ecommerce operations seamlessly, step by step.
What Exactly is a Market Expansion Strategy?
The term “market expansion” involves selling your existing goods or services to new areas, customer segments or distribution channels. If you are a newbie in the ecommerce domain, market expansion, or ecommerce expansion can be understood via this worldwide famous brand, Amazon. Amazon entered the Indian market and tapped the potential of Indian customers. At that time, most of the Indians did not have internet access and rarely used credit cards. Amazon created the Amazon Chai Cart to serve free drinks to small business owners while promoting the advantages of ecommerce. This cart was developed to give small business owners free drinks. Amazon used the campaign to contact over 10,000 retailers across 31 cities. The Amazon Tatkal initiative was then launched to assist the retailers in serving as liaisons for Amazon's web interface.
Amazon educated the business owners to assist customers in finding their products on the platform, provided them with internet connectivity, and registered them as online merchants. In addition to receiving a handling charge and collecting money for Amazon, the store owners also acted as a distribution hub for customers. Amazon made changes for an India-specific strategy while maintaining its flexibility when entering a new country. This clearly explains the idea of ecommerce expansion and also highlights how it can work wonders in your business future.
What are the Types of Marketplace Expansion?
A good marketplace strategy is indeed the need of the hour! But did you know that there are multiple strategies that you can follow, let us know about them.
- Retail: One of the earliest choices for an ecommerce expansion strategy is retail. For instance, if you sell your goods on Amazon, you might want to reach out to Etsy. It is an easy method to hike up sales, expand your audience, and benefit from another platform. Make sure you never sign an exclusive deal with your present marketplace before branching out to another retail platform. You are free to sell your goods elsewhere if you never did.
- Geographical: Expanding geographically is another common marketplace strategy utilized by ecommerce businesses to increase revenue and draw in new buyers. Purchasing overseas might be challenging due to logistical concerns, even though the internet may help us reach a worldwide customer base. Brands can use a variety of tools to sell their goods on a global level. However, they must sell in nations where there is a need and an opportunity before going international. Additionally, brands must take into account best practices in areas like advertising, legislation, and language.
- Product: Another way to expand into a new marketplace is product expansion. You can add new products to your inventory or upgrade the existing ones. Revamping the existing products can engage existing buyers and attract new ones. For some ecommerce businesses, product expansion might include introducing new advertising methods. This might include showcasing various features of a current product or adding new graphics to it.
Step-by-Step Process to Expand to New Marketplaces
- Step 1: Are You Aware of the Marketplace? The first stage in your ecommerce expansion process is selecting the right marketplace. Consider things like each marketplace's costs, competitiveness, and consumer base if you are not sure where to start. You need to look at factors like regional preferences, customer buying patterns, and the platform’s reputation in the region you are aiming to enter. Such considerations will help choose the right marketplace that aligns with your business objectives and stimulates your chances of success.
- Step 2: Set Up Your Seller Account: A very essential step is to set up an account on your new marketplace. For open marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, or Walmart, the registration process is generally self-guided. You will need to provide basic information like your business details, tax ID, payment information, and sometimes product-related data (depending on the platform). Contrary to this, closed marketplaces (or curated platforms) like Zalando, Farfetch, or Wayfair usually have more stringent entry requirements. These marketplaces may only allow a group of sellers or require you to apply and be approved before you can start selling. Each platform has its own rules around product listings, fees, shipping policies, and customer service, and understanding these guidelines upfront will help you eliminate any issues later.
- Step 3: Get Ready to Set Up: You have your seller account ready! Now, you need to consider certain key elements to boost your visibility. First is the product listings, you need to understand that every marketplace has its own set of rules for product listings. You can opt for good marketplace integration software to adapt your listings to meet marketplace-specific criteria. Next is correct content and category mapping. You need to ensure that your products are mapped correctly to the right category to show up in relevant searches. Last but not least different marketplaces have varied fee structures and your rivals may charge different prices for their products on various platforms. By establishing several pricing criteria, you can automatically modify prices in response to market fees, rivals, or your profitability targets.
- Step 4: Check Your Inventory: Now that your listings are good to go, inventory management is a vital step. The complexity of inventory management may come up when entering new marketplaces, making it more arduous to avoid stockouts or overselling. Invest in reliable inventory management software to ensure your stock levels are precise everywhere. This software syncs inventory across all of your marketplaces in nearly real-time, which keeps your buyers satisfied and your ecommerce business operations efficient.
- Step 5: Manage Your Orders: Once your inventory part gets sorted, you must focus on handling orders across multiple marketplaces. This can become hectic without an appropriate process in place. However, you can simplify your order management with powerful applications like MapMyChannel. MapMyChannel enables you to sort your multi-channel order management system via a single dashboard. Through a single interface, you can manage orders, and inventory and ensure on-time delivery.
- Step 6: Scale Your Ecommerce Operations: Last but not least once you have successfully established yourself in one marketplace, it is time to scale further. Consider expanding into additional platforms or new regions, using the lessons learned in your initial expansion. Look for marketplaces that align with your business goals and customer base, and replicate your successful strategies.
Tips to Enhance Your Online Marketplace Strategy
- Direct Purchases from Any Social Channel: Avoid losing your customers by providing them with an easy path to purchase. Today’s buyers are most active on social media which gives you golden conversion opportunities. Allow your customers to directly buy products from your social media channels or advertise your products on all your social media platforms.
- Boost Your Ratings and Reviews: Positive reviews automatically attract new buyers and retain existing ones. Customers are more likely to trust and buy from a business with good reviews. Therefore, you need to focus on maximizing your ratings and reviews. This can be done by instantly analyzing reviews and ratings, immediately reacting to major issues and automatically adding top reviews or ratings to enhance conversions.
- Specialize and then Branch Out: If you are just starting to sell on an online marketplace, choosing a niche is a good strategy. This implies offering some related products or only one product. Specializing in a niche enables better control over sales and shipping as well as an enhanced business reputation. Furthermore, you can think of adding more products without having to fetch new buyers from scratch.
- Select Reliable Fulfillment & Warehouse Partners: It is up to your shippers, warehousing partners, and suppliers to transport the actual product and fulfill all of the promises made by your brand. After all, the buyer can only be delighted by the product once it has arrived, right? You or your ecommerce staff are required to inspect foreign warehouses. You can talk to entrepreneurs who sell goods in the same niche as yours. Additionally, you should search for a procedure that prioritizes timely deliveries and error minimization over pricing alone. Having technical support at the warehouse is a crucial part of a successful process.
Integrate Multiple Marketplaces/Channels with MapMyChannel
Broadening your ecommerce store to multiple online marketplaces can substantially hype up your visibility and sales, but handling orders and inventory across these platforms can quickly become complicated. MapMyChannel provides a simple solution that integrates all of your marketplaces into one centralized system, enabling you to manage orders, track inventory, and ensure timely deliveries via a single dashboard.
As you outgrow your presence on platforms like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, and more, the need for a unified tool becomes progressively important. MapMyChannel helps ecommerce business owners maintain optimum stock levels, prevent stockouts, and manage pricing across different platforms. With powerful features such as automatic order routing, real-time inventory syncing, and multi-channel management, MapMyChannel minimizes the stress of running an ecommerce business across multiple marketplaces, letting you focus on scaling and reaching new audiences efficiently.
To Wrap Up!
From tapping into new geographical areas to offering new products or reaching entirely new customer segments, the right ecommerce expansion strategy can skyrocket your brand visibility and sales. However, successful ecommerce expansion demands careful planning, seamless integration, and efficient operations management.
Embracing applications like MapMyChannel can help streamline the complexities of multi-marketplace selling, ensuring your inventory is synchronized, orders are efficiently managed, and your brand thrives across all channels. Whether you are venturing into new markets, experimenting with different platforms, or scaling your operations, the key to success is simple: expand smart, integrate seamlessly, and scale faster.
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