Do you want to attract more users to the marketplace you created recently? It isn’t that easy to grab potential traffic on a newly launched marketplace when there are giant competitors like Amazon. A marketplace needs to keep up with the change as the industry trend changes rapidly. But, as a small business or a start-up, you cannot invest a lot of money into paid marketing and advertisements. Instead, you need to look for some alternative solutions to bring more sellers and customers to your marketplace.
The seller and customer are both associated with each other and share an interdependent relationship. Simply quoting, a platform with a large customer base will compel the sellers to register and the seller with quality products will attract potential customers to your marketplace. In this article, we will show you how to easily bring more customers and sellers to an online marketplace using Social media and some OpenCart extension without spending thousands of dollars.
Show benefits and Spread brand awareness on Social Media
I am keeping this first on the list because it works magic when you sell a product by showing the benefits other than highlighting its features.
You can add product details with benefits, run promotions, and connect with users over social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest and spread brand awareness.
What you can do on social media for this?
- You can create posts by highlighting product benefits
- MakeInstagram reels for marketing
- Share stories of a new product launch, deal of the day, discount coupons, etc.
- Start selling with Facebook Shop
- Make use of Goole My Business
- Link your marketplace website to online business pages and promotional posts.
Market with Email Marketing
Another low-cost way to market your product to attract customers is email marketing. Email marketing can bring your old inactive leads back to the marketplace. Send follow-up emails with OpenCart extension, User Abandoned Cart Extension to notify them about abandoned cart or you can share discounted emails to grab their attention back to your marketplace.
Run affiliate and Referral Programs
If you are looking for low budget marketing tools then Affiliate and Referral marketing are among the best practices you can go for. Let your sellers and customers become an affiliate. Or you can allow customers to refer a product to their friends by offering a discount coupon that can be availed in the next purchase.
The affiliate and referral programs will increase marketplace sales, bring new customers, and enhances the customer retention rate. If you don’t know how the affiliate and referral program works then this article can help.
How does the OpenCart Marketplace extension can help?
If you haven’t created a marketplace yet and looking for an extension then Knowband’s Marketplace extension can be a great fit. The module is rich in features that can help you grow your seller network. Also, the seller dashboard of the marketplace extension for OpenCart has a lot to offer to the sellers and customers.
Assure customers with review and rating system
If you want to increase sales then earn customer loyalty and strengthen the trust. The OpenCart marketplace module has review and rating functionality for the customers and these can be approved and showcased on the seller page and product page. Customers can review and rate both the product they have purchased and the seller of the product.
Customer support
Communication is the key to maintain any relationship and as I said before that the customers and sellers are interconnected hence it is needed to provide a customer support system on your marketplace.
The OpenCart Marketplace plugin allows the customer to raise a ticket in case of any queries or questions. The status of the ticket can be seen and an email notification will be sent to the seller if any customer raised a ticket.
Offer easy refund and return
Finally, when you successfully grabbed the customer and compelled them to make the purchase there is one thing you need to take care of, the return policy of your marketplace. Any customer looks for the return policy even before the purchase. Many a time it happens that the product received by the customer does not match the description provided by the seller and he likes to return it.
The OpenCart Marketplace module has an easy return and refund feature which can be handled by the seller from the seller dashboard.
Final Words:
This is all that I have for you. If you have applied any other method to attract customers and to increase sales then do write a reply. The more the customer more will be the sales. These tips will help you to bring back old customers but what about the sellers? How to bring more sellers to a marketplace? You can read this article to know the best possible strategies for attracting sellers to the marketplace.
The Multi-vendor Marketplace module by Knowband is also available for Magento 2 and PrestaShop platforms.
