Etsy Marketing Strategy Tips – Etsy, OnBuy, eBay and Other eCommerce Places You Can Scale Your Online Store
So you successfully set up your e-commerce store. Or you might not. But you have a plan and already thinking that if you do, how would you acquire more sales in an already saturated market? Whether you’re still detailing your e-commerce plans or already selling, thinking about your business’s future might often leave you wondering, “What’s next?”
With your new sales goals, your next step is to scale your business. It would require you to research, learn, and carry out concerted actions toward new strategies. But with 155 global online marketplaces available to leverage your business, the next important question to ask is “Where can I scale my e-commerce store?”
What does it mean to scale your online business?
Many often think that growing and scaling a business are one and the same. But little do you know, they are separate, independent terms. Technically, when you grow a business, it means you add new resources, people, and capital to increase business revenue.
To grow a business means to allot a heavy volume of resources and funds that usually amount the same as the revenue you will reap after.
Conversely, scaling a business means allotting more effort and shifting to different strategies to exponentially grow the business. Your goal in scaling is to increase your revenue and sales with minimal costs.
Both scaling and growing your business mean preparing and embarking on the next stage of your business after you have successfully established it and built a loyal customer base. You take necessary steps to prepare yourself and your team in handling increased responsibilities.
Both need in-depth planning, and it would usually need you to upskill. Yet, scaling brings faster sales than growing your business.
Other eCommerce Places You Can Scale Your Online Store
In 2020, research and analysis from Statista showed that global retail e-commerce sales accounted for $4.28 trillion. This market share is expected to grow to $5.4 trillion in 2022 and continuously grow over the next few years.
With very promising prospects and online shopping becoming a thing of normalcy, tools and software to scale your online store business are readily available all over the internet. Even online marketplaces are continuously upgrading and adding services to support your moves of growing your sales.
Below are several marketplaces that support and allow sellers to strategically stretch their businesses in the e-commerce scene.
1. Amazon – Amazon is one of the longstanding and largest e-commerce marketplaces around. It is a multi-vendor platform that offers a wide selection of products in 36 categories.
You can take advantage of its 18 marketplaces to globally scale your business. You can expand your reach and make your brand visible to over 300 million active Amazon customers. Amazon members are still growing by the minute and you can make the most of promotions like Amazon Prime Day to strategically promote your products and brand.
2. Etsy – Etsy is a niche e-commerce marketplace for creative and craft-loving people. Etsy is primarily dominated by three categories: handmade, vintage, and supplies. Last year, almost 90% of Etsy sellers are represented in the handmade section. Additionally, the first quarter of 2021 reports a 77% increase in sellers from 2012.
Etsy connects 81.9 million active buyers to millions of global sellers on the platform. Creativity is one key strategy used by sellers to get noticed on the platform and boost sales. Etsy integrates marketing tools and management apps that you can use to improve your store performance- from how your listings look to how you reach prospective buyers.
3. eBay – Like Amazon, eBay is another longstanding and well-known online marketplace. It’s been around since 1995 and now prides itself in accumulating 187 million active buyers and approximately 1.7 billion live listings.
It offers seller promotions and selling tools that will help you achieve your sales target. It also has its own eBay Business Scaling Program will support you with training resources and other exclusive perks to successfully hit your business goals. You can even manage you’re your ads and promo offers on its dedicated Promotions Manager.
4. OnBuy – Compared to other known marketplaces, OnBuy is a new player in the e-commerce scene, having started its online operation in 2014. It was forecasted that OnBuy digital buyers will grow to over 2.14 billion from its 1.66 billion buyers in 2016.
With these many patrons, it is another marketplace that can give you not only a promising profit but also a chance to grow more in the online setting.
OnBuy doesn’t have its own inventory and instead provides a platform full of integrated tools and resources to help optimize and scale your business. It has a marketing tool called Boost that allows sellers to manage and control marketing efforts and product visibility. It was created with the goal of helping sellers accelerate and maximize their sales.
5. AliExpress – As an Alibaba subsidiary, AliExpress grew to be one of the most reputable online marketplaces, just as its founder Jack Ma hoped it to be. With over 150 million buyers from 220 countries all over the world, it is one of the most visited retail sites online.
AliExpress provides support for automated selling. Sellers in this China-based marketplace are made up mostly of Chinese suppliers and international dropshippers.
AliExpress allows multi-channel integration and in-app advertisements so you can promote your products and store. It also provides seller programs that gives sellers protection and resources.
6. Facebook Marketplace – Facebook Marketplace is an easy start-up opportunity for entrepreneurs who plan to sell online. With people already on Facebook, you’ll only need to plan a strategy on how they’ll visit the marketplace to browse for items you are selling and make them buy. In the first quarter of 2021, there are already 2.85 billion active Facebook users. With these many users, it’s easier to reach a wider audience to boost your visibility and establish your store’s brand and image.
- The downside of Facebook Marketplace is that it just appears as an extension or a section of the Facebook menu. Given that not all Facebook users are there to buy because it’s primarily a socializing platform, other marketplaces then appear to have more advantages on conversion.
- Why? It’s because when users go to Facebook, most of them are only thinking of using the site for social reasons, whereas if they go to other marketplaces that aren’t extensions of a social app, their primary reason is to browse products to buy. You have to make an extra effort on Facebook to lead people to purchase but buyers on another marketplace may already be thinking of buying and only need a little nudge.
- Contrarily, selling on Facebook Marketplace offers great promotion and advertising advantages. As social networking giant, it is one of the most sought-after platforms for advertising products and businesses.
Proven Ways to Successfully Scale Your E-commerce Business
1. Enter a niche that you can easily expand. For example, if you enter the fashion niche, you can sell anything from headpieces to shoes.
2. Optimize your store and product pages.
3. Create ad campaigns and register for sponsored ads and other promotional offers from the marketplace.
4. Use only necessary keywords on product titles and descriptions
5. Automate your business and subscribe to tools that will help manage your products, inventory, and orders.
6. Hire professionals to do the work you can’t do excellently.
7. Learn and stay updated! Use the resources that the marketplace readily offers on its site.
8. Keep your authenticity. Nothing beats an original.
You should also check out 10 Rules for Scaling eCommerce Product Sources for more scaling tips!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is scaling your business important?
Scaling your business can give you a lot of benefits. It helps you establish your brand image and reputation, gives you a wider customer reach, increases your conversion rate, and ultimately, boosts your sales faster. It gives a quick return in terms of revenue and loyal customers.
What selling niches are scalable?
Fashion, beauty, health, and home supplies are a few of the many scalable and profitable niches you can enter.
Gadgets and computers, electronics, handmade products, men’s grooming products, pet care, and supplies, still a few others are also promising niches.
Before you start your e-commerce business or decide to expand your niche, do a market analysis and learn about your industry and competitors.
Do I need a big budget to scale my online business?
When you decide to level up your business goals, you need to allot a considerable fund to subscribe to tools and resources you will need to upskill and scale.
Yet, it will not be worth as much as the budget you’ll need to set up a physical store. Your resources may or may not include people you’ll hire to manage additional responsibilities so you’ll have to consider employee salary in your budget.
Conclusion
As the e-commerce industry grows, software and tools created for e-commerce solutions are also growing in number. Online marketplaces are also in constant pursuit of offering in-app marketing and scaling solutions to support sellers’ goals of boosting their sales and growing their businesses.
With the many competitive marketplaces around and online resources available to learn about e-commerce business scalability, you’ll definitely have more references and tools to hit your business goals. In-depth strategic planning and in-depth learning will help optimize your business and maximize your sales.
