5 Ways to Drive More Traffic to your Multi-Merchant Online Marketplace

We have gathered some tips on how to increase your website traffic on your multi-merchant online marketplace.

These marketing strategies and technical improvements have been proven by successful marketplaces like Airbnb, Amazon and eBay.

So let’s get started.

1. Increase word of mouth through referral marketing

Why not set up a referral programme on your online marketplace? This could become an effective way to bring in more traffic to your website for free. AdWeek pointed out that 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions. This means that word-of-mouth marketing is scoring higher than any other social media (Youtube-64%, Twitter-61%, and Facebook-64%), so referral marketing is definitely worth it!

What are some best practices to incentivise referrals? Have you ever booked a stay at Airbnb and eagerly shared your referral in to gain some extra money for your next vacation? Referrals on Airbnb are considered as very effective because they offer a 2-way incentive programme to users. Both recipient and referrer are eligible for credits, making this a win-win-win situation for the brand, the host and the guest!

2. Keep an eye on the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

There are several ways to drive traffic to you Marketplace through SEO, and it is an area one needs to work on regularly and consistently. One of the ways to excellent SEO is the use of back-links. Back-links are external links to your website, which show the transition from one site to another, and help to index your website’s pages correctly.Planning the words you use on your website can also help increase your SEO ranking. Try using Google’s free tool, Keyword Planner. The keyword planner allows users to research and analyse lists of keywords. Its primary purpose is for PPC, but you can absolutely utilise this tool in choosing keywords and knowing their search volume data.

3. Embed trust in your Marketplace

It’s a known secret that trust in sellers is a significant influence on the buyer’s decision making. This is why it is crucial to showcase the trustworthiness of merchants on your marketplace. One of the ways to moderate advertisers is verifying the identity of the merchant before he could advertise. Once their identity is confirmed, add a badge on their page or ad. Reviews and ratings are also essential in promoting reputations and social proofing. To buyers, social proofs are regarded as experiences that they can rely on. There are more ways to use social proofing on your website and social media accounts, learn more here.

Aside from moderating the merchants and their ads, customers worry about sharing their personal information, due to increasing incidents of identity theft. Set your customers’ mind at ease by reminding your users that you do not share any of their personal data. Strategically place this reminder in newsletter pop-ups, membership sign-up page and on your messaging systems.

4. Facilitate the communication between seller and buyer

In your marketplace, implementing chatbox solutions will help users (both sellers and buyers) on navigating the website, answering urgent interface question, etc. However, you also need to ensure messaging service between the sellers and the buyers is in place.  FiareAds provides Inbox within your marketplace, where both merchants and buyers can communicate. This feature does not only helps the merchants to respond faster and boost buyers’ pleasant experience but also secure the data of the users.

FiareAds ensures that as a marketplace, you provide a single space to sell, to buy and also to communicate. Having this messaging system keep the users on your website, instead of using their email or phone.

5. Send promotional emails and make users feel special

Promotional emails are commonly used by eCommerce platforms, and it is worthwhile to study how they can be utilised in multi-merchant lead generation sites and marketplaces. Mainly, you must have a separate newsletter plan for merchants and for buyers.

For your campaigns for buyers, go for a straightforward approach, get them to revisit your website by sending incentives or promotional offers. While your plan for merchants could consist of: tips on selling, new website features or stats that would encourage them to sell more on your marketplace.

Conclusion

You should now be able to apply a couple of hacks that can help you facilitate a smooth functioning marketplace and drive more traffic because of it. However, one size doesn’t fit all, so if at first, you don’t succeed, try something else. Watch out for our next blogs where we will share more tips and tricks to improve your marketplace’s traffic.
Sources:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/e-commerce-traffic-tips/
https://www.growth-hackers.net/referral-marketing-examples/
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/
https://www.trustmary.com/blog/how-to-use-social-proof-in-marketing/