The competitive nature of the marketplace industry makes it difficult for companies to get ahead. There are over 200 million online shoppers in the world today, and that number continues to grow at a steady pace year after year. By 2023, 17% of all transactions are expected to take place through an online store or marketplace.
How can you make sure your platform is a destination for them?
Many multivendor marketplaces use different marketing channels to attract potential customers. Things like social media, email, and web content help them appeal to potential buyers at different stages of the customer journey.
These multichannel marketing tactics, while a great start, could leave room for inconsistencies between engagements. Customers might have a great interaction over social media, but that may be the only place they engage with your brand.
Getting a consistent experience requires something a little extra. It requires omnichannel marketing strategies.
What is an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
Omnichannel marketing strategies take the best parts of multichannel marketing and combine them to create a seamless user experience. Customers can bounce between online and offline channels without feeling like they have to start their interaction over.
One common omnichannel strategy is ordering online and picking up the purchase in-store. The customer keeps moving through their journey even though they’ve switched between multiple channels to get them there.
Why do Multivendor Marketplaces Need an Omnichannel Strategy?
A successful omnichannel marketing strategy will bring a variety of benefits to any online marketplace. While it might push your marketing team at the beginning, the rewards will come in the end.
Omnichannel marketing leads to happier customers, increased revenue, and more opportunities to reach your target audience.
Let’s talk about how it does that.
Improve Customer Experience
Digital customers crave consistency from their brands, and developing an omnichannel marketing strategy enables you to create a better and more integrated shopping experience.
This is big because the buying experience is increasingly becoming a core motivator for making a purchase.
- Positive experiences make it more likely that customers will return.
- Good experiences lead to social sharing to six or more individuals.
- It only takes 2-3 negative experiences to make customers reject your brand entirely.
The easier it is for customers to engage with your brand on any channel the more likely you’ll leave them with a lasting, positive impression.
Reach People Where They Are
If you want to reach your target audience, you have to be where they are, and research shows that they’re bouncing around quite a bit.
More users are online than ever before and there are more digital channels for them to choose from. Consumers use an average of almost six touchpoints when buying an item. 50% use more than four.
The numbers are similar on the business side of things. When teams use three or more channels in their marketing campaigns, they saw a 287% higher purchase rate than companies that used single-channel campaigns.
Increase Average Order Value
Consistent customer experiences have been tied to a greater number of purchases and a higher ticket price.
Research indicates that 86% of buyers don’t mind paying more for an item if they have a great experience. 49% say that they’ve made impulse purchases because of some sort of personalized experience.
Omnichannel marketing allows you to keep creating these experiences, so customers keep spending. It’s why companies using omnichannel strategies see 250% greater purchase frequency than single-channel campaigns and an AOV that’s 13% higher.
Improve Customer Lifetime Value
This probably won’t shock you, but customer retention rates go up with omnichannel options. You give the people what they want (a consistently good experience) and they stick around. At least, that’s what the research shows.
Omnichannel strategies bring in 90% higher retention rates than their single-channel counterparts.
When you’ve got customers spending more money with every purchase for a longer period of time, it naturally leads to a higher customer lifetime value. Plus you’ll save on acquisition costs and efforts. It’s always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.
Stand Out Amongst Competitors
The secret is out on omnichannel marketing, but few companies have actually capitalized on the opportunity.
61% of customers still have a hard time switching between channels for the same brand, and 87% of shoppers believe brands should put greater effort into creating a seamless experience for buyers.
Most customers feel like their missing something with their brand engagement. Giving them the thing they’re literally asking for will push them right to your business.
5 Best Omnichannel Marketing Strategies for Multivendor Marketplaces
That’s a pretty good deal, so how do you get it?
Here are five great strategies to start with.
Have a Variety of Purchasing Options Across Channels
Not all customers want to visit your website to make a purchase.
Some want to order from the social media app their scrolling through or visit an in-person location. Others want a mix of both where they can order online but pick up the product in a physical space.
An omnichannel approach will offer customers a chance to do any of these, helping customers move through different channels as they want to.
Never Make Customers Restart Their Journey
Bouncing between various marketing channels can cause customers to lose the progress they made in one interaction after they moved on to the next.
The starting and stopping interrupt the flow of the buyer’s journey, potentially causing them to reconsider or worse, give up the purchase entirely. It can be very frustrating to start from scratch on a different channel after spending time shopping on another one.
Bringing omnichannel strategies into the picture allows you to reduce the friction of channel hopping while shopping. Save the cart information to the customer’s profile so that they can always pick up where they leave off regardless of which channel they’re using.
There are other ways to implement this same idea, too. Crate & Barrel takes it a step further by offering seamless registry additions. Users can receive real-time updates on whatever device they’re using and not lose their progress when they move to another one.
Utilize Data to Know What Your Customers Want
Data rules just about everything in ecommerce. The more you know about your customer behavior, the more you can show up where and when they need you.
For marketplaces, that means monitoring the success of your vendors and seeing what will help them succeed. A good customer relationship management (CRM) tool or sophisticated plugins can help you access all sorts of customer information.
You can also try to get customer data by
- Encouraging them to get feedback from customers
- Building surveys for vendors to send out
- Understanding all the channels their customers use
- Surveying vendors about their customer’s behavior.
Getting your vendors to understand their customers will allow you to help them succeed on your platform, which leads to your success, too. Once you have the data, you can strategize the best ways to reach customers on multiple channels.
Have a Consistent Brand Across Every Platform
Customers should never have a doubt about who you are and what you represent.
The more channels you add, the easier it can be to let some slip through the cracks. Maybe your Instagram isn’t as active as your Facebook or you have a haphazard app on the market because you just wanted to get something out there.
These types of inconsistencies can cause long-term problems with your customers. You want to instill trust with them on all your channels. Always show that your brand is professional and put together no matter how someone chooses to engage with it.
A few simple tips that will help you offer these experiences include
- Keeping imagery and design consistent
- Using similar messaging
- Updating content regularly
- Managing all accounts from one platform.
Make Things Personal
Personalization is one of the major trends nearly all ecommerce marketers are thinking about in 2022.
Impersonal experiences frustrate customers, and most are willing to share information about themselves to get more personal engagement. 80% of consumers are more likely to spend their money with brands that offer them those kinds of personal experiences.
Omnichannel marketing takes that desire for personalization seriously. Its customer-centric approach enables consumers to shop and engage with brands the way they want to. It gives them control over the customer journey.
Companies can use omnichannel marketing strategies to appeal to that personal nature. Each channel gives a fresh option to personalize an experience. As that personal experience extends from one channel to the next, customers will feel more connected to your brand and choose you when it comes time to make a purchase.
Omnichannel Marketing for Marketplace Success
The multivendor marketplace industry has grown immensely in the last few years, and it’s showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
Omnichannel marketing gives marketplaces a chance to offer customers better, more personalized experiences that lead to
- Greater customer loyalty
- Higher customer retention rates
- Increased revenue
- Wider reach
- A competitive advantage.
The benefits are clear, and the opportunity is there. You just have to execute.
If you’re looking for a marketplace management platform that will grow with you as you increase your customer base, check out a free demo of WC Vendors. We’d love to help you build and manage the best marketplace possible.
