Marketplaces are a must for every consumer brand (even if you don't sell on one)

A marketplace (also called an e-commerce marketplace or digital marketplace) is a website or app that enables selling between suppliers and buyers. With sales of $386 billion in 2020, Amazon is the largest B2C e-commerce marketplace worldwide.

As a result of marked shifts in consumer behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer purchases on online marketplaces have skyrocketed. In addition, marketplaces are responsible for a drastic shift in the customer journey. Where the assessment phase used to be carried out mainly via search engines, contemporary consumers increasingly start their search for products on a bol.com or Amazon.nl.

More than half of all online purchases are made via marketplaces, according to research by Multiscope and AUAS. In Belgium, too, there is a rapid transition to a platform economy, the economic system in which supply and demand are connected by smart algorithms.

The top 10 of BeCommerce's Shopping100 is dominated by online marketplaces and streaming services. With 12.5 million active users in the Netherlands and Belgium, bol.com is the market leader. But for how long? Amazon.nl is already in third place. That makes the Dutch branch of the American e-commerce giant more popular than Coolblue (in fourth place) and AliExpress (number five). Amazon.fr is doing well in Belgium, with 8.73 million users.

Despite the increasingly important role that marketplaces play in the customer journey, many brands are reluctant to engage. They have several perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so. For example:

• As a brand, you don't want to get in the way of your resellers

• Selling through marketplaces puts pressure on margins

• A massive platform like bol.com or Amazon doesn't pay special attention to your brand

For brands that make these trade-offs, it is worth realising that marketplaces offer more than just an extra sales channel. In fact, avoiding e-commerce platforms can sometimes cause considerable damage to your brand. And that's the most important message for brand managers, online marketers and brand strategists: marketplaces should always be part of your brand strategy.

Okay, you have your reservations about selling through a marketplace. But what if your resellers run out of stock? And that outlet stock, your longtail products: aren't they just somewhere taking up valuable space? Through marketplaces you can be smart in your responses to capricious consumer preferences.

It’s worth mentioning that you do not have to sell. Marketplaces, for example, can be used just to give your brand awareness a huge boost. With bol.com and Amazon.nl alone, you already have an audience of 15 million people. And then there are the niche and luxury marketplaces that generally have rock-solid content strategies with fantastic brand engagement results.

As a brand you have several options when it comes to your approach to marketplaces. You can sell your products directly through a sales account, indirectly as a supplier, or B2B through resellers. And then there is the sales less option, trademark registration, which is always a good idea. You don't sell your brand, but you retain complete control of your brand on the platform.

This should never be regarded as a superfluous luxury. At iO, we regularly see harrowing examples of product pages "gone wrong" with typos in the product titles, inimitable product descriptions and unclear product photos in grim places. This is damaging and unnecessary because trademark registration protects you from such branding mistakes happening at all. Trademark registration is already an option for Amazon, but bol.com has also started implementing this process.

With trademark registration you retain control over the product information of your own brand items. This product information is then protected and cannot be changed by a third party. This gives you the certainty that your brand items are presented in the same way everywhere. At the moment, only text content is protected at bol.com: this means product titles, descriptions and specifics. In the future, the protection will also apply to product images, something that is already the case with Amazon.

Amazon has even more great features for registered trademarks:

• A+ content – Helps you to highlight your brand story and product descriptions.

• Sponsored brands – Ads with your logo, brand name and up to three products.

• Amazon Stores – Your own branded, multi-page shopping environment.

• Brand Analytics – Data on search terms, customer behaviour and more that helps you make smart well-informed decisions.

For trademark registration on bol.com or Amazon, you must be the owner of the trademark in question. The trademark must be registered with an official body such as the BOIP trademark register. Your brand has to be visible on the original product packaging, or on the article itself. If you comply with this, the marketplace will approve your registration request within a few days.

When you have completed the trademark registration, the marketing game can begin. We follow a simple but effective step-by-step plan:

1. Review – A review of the brand: what is the current situation? How many providers are there? What is the quality of the content?

2. Keyword research – Which keywords connect to your brand items? Which keywords are missing?

3. Optimise products – Optimise products according to the marketplace standard: product titles, descriptions, and specifications, using the insights from your keyword research.

4. Testing and optimising – Content optimisation: testing with variations in text and image.