According to Ebit/Nielsen data, in the first half of 2020, marketplaces accounted for approximately 78% of Brazilian e-commerce revenue. However, with so much supply and demand, how can one stand out from the competition and build a strong and recognized brand in this environment?
In this article, we will explore the specific challenges faced by sellers when building their brand on marketplaces and address specific strategies for sellers to face the fierce competition on marketplaces, emphasizing the importance of branding to stand out.
What is branding and why is it important?
Branding is a set of actions and elements that define a brand's identity, personality, and positioning in the market. It involves everything from the name, logo, colors, slogan, tone of voice, communication style, to how the brand interacts with customers, the values it conveys, the experience it provides, and the reputation it builds.
Branding is important because it helps differentiate the brand from the competition, create emotional connections with customers, build trust and loyalty, increase the perceived value of products and services, and strengthen the brand's presence and visibility in the market.
What are the challenges of branding on marketplaces?
Branding on marketplaces is not an easy task because there are some challenges that sellers need to overcome, such as:
Standardization of ads: Marketplaces often have rules and limitations for creating ads, making it difficult to customize and differentiate the products and services offered by sellers. Additionally, ads are displayed in a standard layout that follows the visual identity of the marketplace, not the seller's brand.
Intense competition: Marketplaces are highly competitive environments where consumers can easily compare prices, conditions, reviews, and seller reputations. This forces sellers to compete for the attention and preference of customers, often resorting to low pricing strategies that can harm profit margins and brand value perception.
Marketplace dependence: Marketplaces act as intermediaries between sellers and customers, meaning sellers don't have complete control over the sales process, customer service, delivery, post-sale, and customer loyalty. Sellers are also subject to the rules, fees, policies, and changes imposed by marketplaces, which can affect business performance and profitability.
Difficulty in building relationships: Marketplaces are transaction-focused platforms, not interaction-focused, limiting opportunities for contact and communication between sellers and customers. This makes it challenging to build a lasting relationship that generates trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. As a result, customers tend to associate their purchases with the marketplace rather than the seller's brand, reducing brand recognition and recall.
How to stand out from the competition on marketplaces?
Despite the challenges, it is possible to stand out from the competition on marketplaces by investing in branding strategies that value the seller's brand and create a sustainable competitive advantage. Some of these strategies include:
Define your target audience and positioning: Before entering a marketplace, it is essential to know who your target audience is, their needs, desires, pains, and expectations, and how your brand can uniquely and differently meet them. Additionally, define your positioning—how your brand wants to be perceived by the market and customers and what sets it apart from competitors.
Create a strong and coherent visual identity: Visual identity is the visual expression of the brand, conveying its personality, values, and purpose. It includes elements such as the name, logo, colors, fonts, icons, and images. It is important that the visual identity is strong, grabbing attention and standing out from other ads, and coherent, being consistent across all customer touchpoints, whether on the marketplace, social media, website, or email.
Craft compelling product and service descriptions: Product and service descriptions are crucial for informing, persuading, and convincing customers to make a purchase. They should be clear, comprehensive, concise, attractive, and optimized with relevant keywords that facilitate search and ranking on marketplaces. Additionally, they should reflect the brand's tone of voice and communication style, tailored to the target audience and brand positioning.
Offer an excellent shopping experience: The shopping experience is the set of perceptions and feelings customers have when interacting with the brand throughout the entire purchasing process, from research to delivery and post-sale. To provide an excellent shopping experience, pay attention to aspects such as product and service quality, customer service, delivery time and method, packaging, exchange and return policy, and feedback. A good shopping experience generates satisfaction, trust, recommendation, and customer loyalty, improving the brand's reputation and visibility on marketplaces.
Invest in marketing and relationship-building actions: To stand out on marketplaces, go beyond mere sales and invest in marketing and relationship-building actions that bring the brand closer to customers, generate value and engagement, and stimulate repeat purchases and recommendations. Some of these actions include sending welcome emails, purchase confirmation emails, thank-you emails, satisfaction surveys, offers, and updates; creating a loyalty program that offers benefits and rewards to loyal customers; participating in holidays and seasonal events; sharing relevant and educational content that helps customers solve problems, ask questions, or learn something new; being present on social media, interacting with customers, sharing testimonials, tips, and trivia.
Conclusion
Marketplaces offer many opportunities for online sellers to increase sales and growth, but they also require differentiation from the competition and the construction of a strong and recognized brand. To achieve this, it is necessary to invest in branding strategies that value the identity, personality, positioning, communication, experience, and relationship of the brand with customers. This way, it is possible to stand out on marketplaces and gain more visibility, trust, loyalty, and profitability.
Stand out on marketplaces with the strength of your brand!
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