As of now, Snapdeal has over 1,50,000 sellers; Shopclues –over 1,25,000; eBay India – 40,000; Amazon –over 35,000; Flipkart – over 30,000;. Intimidating? Worried that you might get lost in the crowd? Please don’t. Because another way to look at it is that listing on these sites exposes your product to millions of buyers across India who has broadband and/or mobile data connection. A number that’s impossible to touch with one offline store.
With spirits lifted now, let’s find out how to stand out in a crowded marketplace and drive traffic and sales.
No surprises here, offer something unique that immediately gets you noticed. Or offer your product at a price that’s hard to compete with (not cheap but reasonable; a price buyers feel worth paying for the product).
No doubt that Facebook & Twitter are the biggest social media platforms to market products/services. Besides these two, there are other platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram.
Create social media pages, insert all your marketplace stores links in the description and keep it active & fresh. Don’t let less ‘likes’ discourage you from posting regularly.
Actively tweet/post/click & share your content using the relevant hashtags when marketplaces trend their special sale events or punch lines. Few examples are Snapdeal’s #AzadiKeFaide, Amazon’s #AllThingsIndian or Flipkart’s the infamous #BigBillionDay.
Use regular trending hashtags too at times if you can plug in your product/service without sticking out like a sore thumb, ignorant or insensitive. Best times are around festivals, sports events, and other special events when the general mood is celebratory like Diwali, World Cup, IPL, etc.
Make use of Facebook’s sponsored ads and Twitter’s promoted tweets (ranges from $0.20-$4.00 per engagement) service by paying a fee. This can bring substantial amount of traffic to your digital store. Read ‘Facebook for Business’ details here. The cost depends on your budget and number of people you want to reach through sponsored posts.
A former online seller of fashion bags & accessories shared with IOS, “I used to promote my marketplace store through Facebook. Instead of paying for 1000 likes, I paid for 20,000-25,000 reach. I opted for more reach than more likes as the reach always helps. And it used to work. After every such activity the sales used to always exceed the money used in promoting the posts.”
Event calendar of most of the cities is filled with conferences, trade shows, meets, flea markets & bazaars, exhibitions and pop-up activities. Plus, we are blessed to be in a country which has so many festivals that creates space for many such special shows and exhibitions.
Needless to say high ratings on etailer’s site will make your brand more trustworthy and will get you more business. Slide in a printed/handwritten note with every package and thank your buyer for the purchase along with a request to leave a positive feedback, if they are happy with the product. If there is any way to SMS or mail them, even better.
Read IOS’s insightful article on how to maintain a good seller rating to know more about it.
Nothing can beat good old Search Engine Optimization. Keyword rich product titles and descriptions will always compel search engines like Google to bring your ranking on the top thus resulting in more visibility and traffic. Besides SEO, there are various other ways where good content can come in handy.
We suggest merchants to insist on getting all possible contact details (email ids, addresses, telephone numbers) of account manager/executive/contact person in the initial stages of the registration process.
IOS asked Surabhi Talwar, Head of Communications at Wildcraft, what specific marketing strategies the company applies to drive traffic to Wildcraft’s online store on Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. She said,
“On these online partners we have quite a substantial presence in our respective category so we are an important player on the portal. We sometimes do targeted campaigns with them for example we recently did a visibility drive with both Amazon and Myntra where we pushed our campus bag collection (Wiki) and our rainwear category through category page banners, sparkles and slider ad presence.”
You can do the same. Speak to the contact person assigned to you and discuss new policy changes, issues, special deals & discounts, visibility drive, targeted campaigns etc. If you can think of innovative campaigns, giveaways (very useful), fun contests that you execute in collaboration with marketplaces, then nothing like it as it can work wonders for your business.
We get it, not all sellers are tech savvy or know how to capitalize social media and sell effectively. This is when you should make use of Seller Advantage features offered by marketplaces and optimize training programs and initiatives offered by them. Not only your products get featured on top, but you also learn new things.
Small and medium sized businesses can benefit immensely from seller advantage services such Snapdeal Plus, Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), Flipkart Advantage and similar services. Because merchants that use these services become more visible and close more sales.
If you are an independent or a small seller without any team, it is wise to hire an agency that can do all the above for you (Try Browntape Enterprise Services). Because let’s face it, tracking orders & inventory, along with planning marketing strategies, handling social media, writing blogs, communicating with account managers and participating in events & exhibitions can be very overwhelming. Outsourcing tasks will leave you time and energy to do the biggest task at hand – i.e. Build Good Product/Service. Building relationships with the media by asking to be featured in popular publications is another way to bring attention to your business.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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