The Growth of Multi Marketplace Optimisation

Digital marketing is a rapidly evolving industry, just the last five years has seen massive changes that has had a major impact on how campaigns are run. Five years ago businesses could get away with doing SEO and Paid Search, but today if businesses did this they would barley make a digital impact, not to mention completely missing out on potential customers. Today businesses are utilising a vast number of channels to reach and attract their target audience including social media, CRO, SEO, Paid Search; plus with the development of augmented reality (AR), Voice Search and Apps the industry is expected to change massively over the next five years.

 

The one aspect that always remains the same with digital marketing, however, is the need to reach your target audience and for retailers this means putting your products in front of your customer by promoting them on the websites your customer is using. It is not just about driving traffic to your website, but actively placing your product in front of your customer. Digitally savvy retailers have already been doing this with multi marketplace optimisation, a trend that we predict will grow over the coming years.

 

What is multi marketplace optimisation?

The term Marketplace Optimisation (MPO) is not regularly used within the digital marketing industry yet and it is still known by several different terms including eRetail or even SEO for Amazon. What it means is optimising your product on multiple selling platforms, including Amazon, Apple Store or even Facebook.

 

Why is multi marketplace optimisation important?   

A study by technology company Kenshoo suggest that 56% of US, UK, German and French shoppers use Amazon as a starting point for their search. This means that, especially for smaller retailers, being on these large selling platforms helps to get your product in front of potential customers where they are already shopping, rather than fighting against large national brands to drive traffic to your website.

 

As the numbers of customers searching on marketplaces continues to grow the need to increase product prominence on these ecommerce platforms is only going to become more competitive. Each marketplace has its own algorithms and optimisation techniques, so what works well on one platform will not necessarily work on another. Those within the digital marketing industry believe that over the next few years these marketplaces will become more aligned with the SEO best practice Google implements.

 

It must be noted that social media platforms have already identified ecommerce platforms as a growth area and many including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are already looking at ways to make it as easy as possible for retailers to use their platforms to sell products. Each individual social media platform has its own algorithm, so social media marketers will need to create strategies that take into account the platforms audience and algorithm when selling products through different social media channels.

 

The growth of multi marketplace optimisation is good news for smaller retailers as it provides multiple channels to sell products and enables them to put their products in front of potential customers. It is, however, going to become a very competitive area of digital marketing where a combination of knowing the latest SEO techniques combined with working with digital marketing strategist and social media marketers will be needed to ensure your products are seen by potential customers on these platforms.