<ul><li>The Covid pandemic has ushered in a new wave of digital adoption and we have witnessed tremendous growth in online e-commerce. </li><li>A multi-vendor digital marketplace provides businesses with the right technology and customer outreach. </li><li>While B2B marketplaces are the future, managing your listing on multiple platforms has numerous challenges.</li></ul>Have you listed your products and services on multiple marketplaces? If yes, are you able to manage the listings, prices, creatives, and content efficiently? During the pandemic, customers’ buying habits changed as they preferred online stores over brick-and-mortar shops. Since then, online marketplaces have become the key drivers of growth for businesses. But <a href="https://www.infosysbpm.com/blogs/digital-business-services/six-ways-to-managing-multiple-marketplaces.html">managing multiple marketplaces</a> and staying on top of your listings can take time and effort. The digital marketplace model is an excellent way to reduce the risk of holding excess inventory and the expenses of managing a physical store. It provides a low-risk model to reach a significantly larger audience. The benefits of a digital marketplace The aforementioned challenges should not deter you from going online. Statistics reveal that the e-commerce market in the US will surge past $1 trillion by 2023. The <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/792047/india-e-commerce-market-size/">e-commerce sales in India</a> were at $84 billion in 2021, up from just $30 billion in 2020. Businesses must recognise their growth potential in a digital marketplace. <ul><li>Convenience: The marketplace model has eliminated any entry barriers for a business to reach its customers. Businesses no longer need large investments to manage physical stores and warehouses. Most marketplaces offer fast onboarding and assisted promotion to boost sales. </li><li>Global outreach: With an online digital marketplace, your business can sell their products and services anywhere in the world. You can target a specific country or demography with ease. </li><li>Access huge customer base: Marketplaces offer a one-stop-shop solution for all customers. A physical store cannot match the choice and inventory that an online marketplace offers. Hence, a large customer base can be reached by an online marketplace due to the variety of products it offers. </li><li>Easy payment and logistics fulfilment: Your marketplace manages operational requirements, be it payments, shipping, refunds, returns, or product pickups. This delivers efficiency into the system, allowing businesses to focus on their core job. </li><li>Measure the KPIs: Most online marketplaces provide dashboards that help you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, sales, reach, and customer satisfaction. It is not feasible for most businesses to develop this capability independently.</li></ul>The challenges of listing on multiple B2B marketplaces While B2B marketplaces are the future, managing your listing on multiple platforms has numerous challenges. <ul><li>The online B2B marketplace is a fast-changing model where you need to update products, services, prices, and creatives frequently. Doing so on multiple platforms manually is an uphill task. </li><li>Providing customer support and keeping track of agreed-upon terms with multiple marketplaces is difficult. </li><li>Lack of backend technology can create a large amount of manual work. </li><li>Tracking and dealing with counterfeit products from suppliers and frauds is necessary but difficult without technology.</li></ul>Industry trends in marketplace management The pandemic has shifted the way customers buy products and services, and the following industry trends are set to influence online marketplaces. <ul><li>Shopping on mobile phones: Over 70% of online shopping happens on smartphone apps. It is crucial for businesses to offer a great buying experience for customers on mobile phones and desktops. </li></ul><ul><li>Vertical marketplaces: Vertical marketplaces connect businesses with a group of customers within a specific niche. They have a specific target audience. This model brings high-quality leads that can be converted into sales quickly and easily. As a business, a vertical marketplace can help you offer more value to the customers. </li><li>Voice commerce: The use of smart devices that work on voice commands is growing rapidly, and customers are using them to purchase products and services online. In the future, these devices will optimise voice search queries, increase search speed, and help businesses make their listings friendly to voice search. </li><li>Artificial intelligence (AI): Chatbots are a great example of AI technology. They provide instant answers to customer questions, as well as learn and improve over time. Online marketplaces serving global customers cannot have a human workforce serving 24 x 7 and need to rely on AI chatbots to fill the gap.</li></ul>Marketplaces have been the lifeblood of commerce since times immemorial. In today’s world digitization is expanding rapidly, and so is the need for digital marketplaces. Like any new digital transformation, this disruption too is currently on a test run and requires some tweaks, but it certainly promises trailblazing advancements and opportunities. Disclaimer: This article is authored by Sreepriya Swaminathan, Senior Domain Principal, Infosys BPM. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Business Insider India.<meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Digital marketplace: The future of online shopping

<ul><li>Today, marketers cannot settle after merely creating brand campaigns - they must navigate a sea of data and the unpredictability of the online world to ascertain what makes a campaign work. </li><li>Organisations can combat this uncertainty conducting a periodic and in-depth analysis of critical online marketing metrics. </li><li>The experts at Infosys BPM explore eight key performance indicators for digital marketing professionals to pay attention to when assessing campaigns.</li></ul>Marketing agencies operating in the digital space came to take the moniker of digital marketing agencies. With the passage of time and higher measurability of the digital medium, marketing agencies are today all about elevating performance using multiple channels – both traditional and digital media. Hence the latest and trending, Performance Marketing agencies. With performance being the criteria for success, performance marketing professionals are constantly analysing copious amounts of data from various sources to optimise ad campaigns in real-time. Several performance-related metrics can be monitored and tracked using digital analytics. This will help marketing teams precisely interpret a campaign’s <a href="https://www.infosysbpm.com/offerings/functions/bpm-analytics/case-studies/documents/getting-a-birds-eye-view.pdf">performance</a> and make appropriate changes to deliver the best possible impact. Let’s take a closer look at eight key metrics that marketers must deploy. <ol><li>Impressions: This is one of the most basic metrics to track ad campaign performance, capturing data on how often a particular ad has run on a website or an app. This metric also captures the number of times a campaign appears in search results, or when the ad banner is displayed on any of the network sites. Due to an increased share of bot-generated internet traffic, impressions data may not be an accurate indicator of ad reach in today’s times. But when integrated with the data of a third-party ad verification service, a clearer picture emerges of the number of times potential customers saw the ad. </li><li>Clicks: This performance marketing metric measures the number of times users interacted with a particular ad and followed the CTA (call-to-action) link. The higher the number of clicks, the more people are engaging with your ad and are interested in finding out more about the product or service. Cross-referencing click data with website analytics insights on the number of website visits can be revealing of any system failure or technical glitch that could have prevented the user from landing on the website. A standard rule of thumb says a 15% variation in this data is acceptable, anything beyond that needs to be looked at. </li><li>Clickthrough rate (CTR): The CTR adds meaning to impressions and clicks metrics, and is calculated as the total number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. This metric indicates ad efficiency and is highly instrumental in fine-tuning marketing campaigns. CTR data highlights both high-performing ads and campaigns that could benefit from an increased budget and the underperforming ones that are a drain on resources. Proper analysis of CTR data helps marketing teams optimise ad spending by focusing on effective campaigns and reducing the budget on underperforming ones. </li><li>Cost: Marketing budgets are limited, which is why it is important to consistently monitor ad spend. A data integration solution helps consolidate ad spending from various platforms and campaigns on the performance marketing dashboard. This gives marketers clear insights into spending dynamics and helps with informed budgeting decisions. </li><li>Average cost per click (CPC): This performance marketing metric provides marketers with insights into the profitability of various promotions and ad campaigns. Average CPC is calculated as the total cost of the clicks on an ad, divided by the total number of clicks on the ad. Average CPC can vary depending on the industry, location, and several other factors. The idea is to keep the average CPC as low as possible without compromising on campaign quality, which could negatively affect impressions and clicks, and positions on Google search. </li><li>Cost per mille (CPM): Mille is French for one thousand, and the CPM metric is also referred to as cost per thousand. It indicates the price of one thousand ad impressions. This KPI is more relevant to branding and awareness campaigns than it is to acquisition and direct conversion campaigns, where CPC values are more relevant. As mentioned above, impression data isn’t always accurate due to large amounts of automated internet traffic. A critical measure of impressions is also the Ad-Viewability factor – which determines if the entire ad was loaded and actually viewed or not. Ad platforms use various methods to estimate how often a person views an ad to arrive at the viewable CPM (vCPM) metric. </li><li>Conversions: The conversions metric takes things a step beyond the clicks and CTR KPIs. A conversion requires users who have read the ad, clicked on the CTA, and arrived at the business’ website to complete a specific action. This could include creating an account, signing up for a newsletter, contacting the business, or completing a purchase online. </li><li>Cost per conversion (CPC or CPCon) / Cost per Lead (CPL) / Cost per Acquisition (CPA): This KPI is the total ad spend on a particular campaign, divided by the number of conversions generated by the campaign. This metric indicates which marketing campaigns are providing the <a href="https://www.infosysbpm.com/offerings/functions/digital-business-services/service-offerings/content-marketing-operations/case-studies/documents/putting-content-back-on-the-throne.pdf">best ROI</a> on the marketing budget. CPC data can help marketing teams fine-tune and optimise various elements of an ad campaign, leading to a positive response from users.</li></ol>For organisations on a digital transformation high road, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like living organisms, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future. Disclaimer: This article is authored by Sreepriya Swaminathan, Senior Domain Principal, Infosys BPM. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Business Insider India <meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

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