How to drive sales in today’s highly competitive online marketplaces

_{By Jessica Kay, Commerce Strategy Director Marketplaces, Mindshare Worldwide}

Online marketplaces, such as Amazon and Walmart, have become huge and dominant in recent years. They now account for the largest share of online purchases worldwide (Statista) and account for 85% of web traffic. It’s predicted that marketplaces’ share of online sales could reach a whopping 60% by 2027.

So, in such a highly competitive and saturated retail environment, brands are fighting hard to increase visibility over competitors. This means winning top first-page rankings in marketplace searches and search engine results pages (SERPs). These battles are becoming ever fiercer as the majority of shoppers don’t make it to the second page of search results (Forbes). Brands are having to pull out all the stops with paid and organic search to achieve #1 ranking, fighting hard for prominence and visibility. Amazon, is now the world’s most popular marketplace, averaging 4.8 billion monthly visits (April 2023, Statista).

The challenge for brands is made even harder by the fact that there are relatively low barriers to entry when it comes to marketplaces, increasing the competition. We’ve seen a plethora of challenger brands launch in recent years and steal market share from traditional CPG brands. In the world of marketplaces, long-term brand success can be quickly eroded by smart-thinking start-ups that rapidly build up customer loyalty whilst actively trading marketplaces as a sales channel as part of their business model.

So what is the key to brands looking to compete and win on marketplaces, ensuring they stand out from the ever-increasing competition to succeed? All too often, brands ask this question once they’re on a marketplace and discovering that their performance is not that great. Retail readiness is the foundation to success on marketplaces. Being retail-ready boosts your products organic rank, enabling you to stand out from competitors and to increase consumer engagement.

Retail readiness is all about your digital shelf. This is where consumers find your products in a marketplace. It is the online version of how your products are set out and promoted on a physical shelf in a store. In marketplaces, your digital shelf comprises both search pages and product display pages (PDPs). The digital shelf plays an important role in maximising product visibility and rank. A strong digital shelf accelerates organic share of voice and category rank, which grows market share and reduces reliance on media. Unilever Netherlands saw +30% increase in share of shelf, achieving no.1 and no.2 BSR positions with its Lipton 33cl launch. This was achieved by setting the foundations with optimised content, amplified by search and DSP ads to drive clicks, sales, conversion uplift and reviews on Amazon.nl.

There are several key factors that brands must focus on to have a fully optimised digital shelf and be retail ready. This begins with the core fundamentals, the product display page (PDP). It is imperative that PDP content is optimised, from both an SEO and asset perspective to showcase the product in the best light.

Get maximum value from optimisation

SEO is key to optimising elements of the PDP, including title, bullet points, and description. You must clearly detail your product's benefits and USPs, whilst also incorporating high volume consumer search terms. This will enable your products to organically appear in front of your target audience looking for your product. In addition to maximising text for SEO, you must also optimise your creative assets. This is something that Unilever leveraged well on Amazon.nl for Lipton 33cl. Titles were re-written, descriptions optimised, engaging content created and SEO-keywords deployed.

Focus on your creative assets

To achieve an optimised asset gallery at the top of the PDP, brands should look to curate a set of 6 assets, incorporating a mix of product, infographics, lifestyle, USP and if applicable brand mission/ethos. The assets should be supported with an engaging product focused video up to 30 seconds. A video length any longer risks dis-engaging the consumer.

Enhanced brand content

As consumers cannot pick up your products, many marketplaces offer additional PDP space for enhanced brand content to drive the consumer experience. Once you’ve engaged the consumer in your PDP, there is an increased chance they will scroll down to learn more. This is your big – possibly final - chance to convert the consumer to purchase and avoid an abandoned basket. Enhanced brand content can also be used to educate consumers about your wider product range and up-sell complementary products.

Use marketplace levers to drive growth

Brands can further improve their organic rank, by taking advantage of marketplace ‘growth levers’ that provide the offers and service to consumers. For example, Amazon’s Subscribe and Save programme gives consumers a small brand-funded discount of between 5 and 15% on purchases, with subsequent orders automatically delivered at their desired frequency. As the product has been enhanced by Subscribe and Save, it will be favoured by the algorithm over competitors not partaking or eligible for the programme. Importantly, by tying the consumer into future purchases via the marketplace it grows the lifetime value of the consumer.

Embrace marketplace innovation

Marketplaces are continuously investing in tech to improve consumer experience and product selection. Amazons’ latest initiative ‘Rufus’ is an AI shopping assistant to help consumers find the right product. As this functionality is rolled out globally, brands need to gather learnings to ensure their PDPs are correctly optimised to interact with the AI technology, to ensure their products are recommended over competitors.

Drive growth through ratings and reviews

Once you’ve nailed the PDP content fundamentals, you can build new-to-brand consumer confidence through positive product reviews and ratings. A minimum rating of 3.5* is recommended. The reviews section enables customers to share their thoughts and experiences of using your products. Ensuring your content correctly reflects the product, creating consumer post purchase satisfaction will help build positive reviews and ratings. Some marketplaces offer a service to help brands build reviews on new listings e.g. Amazon Vine Programme.

Build out a compelling consumer offer

Unfortunately, optimised content and positive reviews and ratings are not enough to convert most consumers.Brands must also meet increasing consumer expectations through favourable pricing, options for next-day delivery and loyalty programmes – these are now minimum entry requirements for successful brands selling on marketplaces. These elements all increase the likelihood of you winning the PDP recommended offer to consumers above other sellers selling the same product.

Marketplaces’ relentless focus on consumer need through product variety, favourable pricing, next-day delivery and continual innovation, has driven their phenomenal success and made them incredibly attractive to brands. But before you leap in – and start spending money on media – you have to be retail ready. If you’re not, you risk wasting budget and driving quality traffic to PDPs which don’t capture consumer attention or educate about need. Ultimately you risk significant failure to convert.