Ways to attract customers to your marketplace
Ways to attract customers to your marketplace: build your audience before launch, run a small product launch, then use PPC, SEO, social media and press.
How do you attract customers to your marketplace? You attract marketplace customers the way you attract vendors: start early, test it with a small launch, then combine community, search, paid ads, social and press for the big push. At Code23 we've watched a lot of marketplace founders make the same mistake: they spend months onboarding vendors and only start talking to customers once the site goes live, which means starting from zero on both sides at once.
The fix is simple to say and easy to skip. Build an audience before you need one, even if it's just a landing page collecting email addresses. Run a small, invite-only pilot to test the transaction and gather evidence before you spend a penny on wider marketing. Expand only when the pilot gives you enough evidence to justify a bigger push: community and content, influencer partnerships, PPC, SEO, social media and press. A pilot reduces uncertainty, but it doesn't prove long-term demand.
It’s imperative to know at this stage that you are meeting your customers’ needs. Meeting their needs with a quality service is far more important than providing an average service to a greater volume of customers. So focus on the quality, not the quantity.
Getting vendors onboarded to your marketplace is where you’ve been focussing, but you should have also been starting conversations with potential customers in the early stages. Think about collecting email addresses via a landing page in the run up to your marketplace so you have already generated interest. As an aside, if this list looks healthy, it can be useful to show to potential vendors too.
The way to attract a marketplace customer is very similar to the way you get vendors. Think about who your first customers are likely to be, and how you can communicate with them, both online and off.
Build a community
Identify your potential customers and target them. Write blogs, join social media sites, put on events… all with a view to showing them why your marketplace is relevant to them. Make sure anything you write online is optimised for search engines, so people looking for a solution are more likely to find you. Also be sure to engage with other people’s content if it’s relevant to your marketplace, comment, talk… make yourself part of the community.
Look at existing communities
There may be an existing Facebook group or forum whose members overlap with your target audience. If you find one, start communicating with them, talk about your marketplace in a way that generates useful feedback. Anyone who is interested can be pointed to a landing page where you are signing people up for your email list. Also consider what type of people will be able to influence potential customers, contact them and tell them about your value, ask for relevant feedback and measure whether the outreach leads to sign-ups or transactions.
For localised marketplaces, drop flyers to people, talk to them, invite local feedback and measure whether the activity produces useful interest.
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Once you have your list it’s time to let those potential customers start using your site, in other words it’s product launch time!
So how exactly do you go about doing a product launch? If you haven’t validated your concept yet (How do I validate my marketplace idea?) don’t think of this as a huge marketing launch, you’ll want to save that for when you know you have everything in place. Concentrate on this being purely a product launch – ideally aimed at a chosen group of recruited participants who match the target audience and can test the transaction. In a similar way as to how you spoke to early vendors, make these users feel exclusive with access to an early launch. You could even incentivise them to give you feedback by offering a discount.
Don’t be put off by how much time this will take. Use their feedback and transaction data to decide what needs changing before wider promotion.
And now it’s time for a full marketing launch! The idea here is to make a lot of noise about your marketplace and gain interest from a lot of potential vendors and customers in one go. As a result, set a controlled launch target that the marketplace can service reliably.
An engaged, consented email list can be one launch channel; assess list quality, deliverability and conversion rather than relying on its size alone. But there are other things you’ll want to consider in addition to that list. These include:
Influencer marketing
Talking to an influencer that you think your potential customers will trust. A well-matched influencer can help you build credibility faster than starting from zero.
PayPerClick (PPC)
Enter the Google Ads auction for relevant searches; whether and where an ad appears depends on Ad Rank, including bid, ad and landing-page quality, thresholds and search context. You can also target adverts at a specific audience on social media channels.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO for marketplaces is the practice of improving your position in the organic search engine results (SERPs) without paying for each click.
Social Media
Building a community of potential customers via an organic or paid social media content strategy.
Press
Involving the press can work well when you have a clear, evidence-backed story for their audience. Take your story to journalists at publications pertinent to your marketplace who reach your potential target audience. The idea behind your marketplace may be enough to generate interest, or you may need to talk more generally about the industry that you're in. Either way, coverage is editorial and never guaranteed, so pitch relevant journalists rather than assuming a good story will land it.
None of these approaches are mutually exclusive and some may require the assistance of a marketplace marketing agency like Code23. Protect the quality and service level of your marketplace as you push for a successful launch, rather than chasing growth at any cost.
And if you don't get the results you hoped for? Review your positioning, supply, demand, unit economics and channel data before spending more. Again, we'll emphasise here the need for a good product launch and taking onboard the feedback before a marketing launch. If the pilot meets defined service, conversion and unit-economic thresholds, test expansion with a controlled budget and keep measuring quality.
Frequently asked questions
How do I attract customers to a new online marketplace?
Start before launch. Collect email addresses on a landing page, talk to potential customers directly, and use that early interest as evidence to bring vendors on board too. Run a small, invite-only pilot with recruited participants who match the target market, before spending on wider marketing. It is one useful sequence, subject to the marketplace’s transaction and supply model: pilot it small, then go loud.
Should I focus on customers or vendors first?
Neither on its own. The two sides feed each other: a healthy vendor list gives customers something to buy, and a growing customer list gives vendors a reason to join. Start conversations with both as early as you can, even before the site is live, and use measured interest on one side as evidence when speaking to the other.
What’s the difference between a product launch and a marketing launch for a marketplace?
A product launch is small and controlled: a chosen group of vendors and customers you already trust, so you can fix problems before anyone else sees them. A marketing launch is the wider push, using PPC, SEO, social media, influencers and press, once the pilot has produced enough evidence to justify a wider test.
Next step
One of the surest ways to waste a marketing budget is to spend it before you have useful evidence about the marketplace. Build your audience first, pilot it with a small launch, then put your money behind the channels that fit your customers once that pilot gives you enough to go on.
If you want a second opinion on which channels are worth it, our free Marketplace Growth Review is a 30-minute call that helps you work out where to start. If you want it mapped out properly, in writing, ask about the Marketplace Growth Plan. We’ve built 50+ marketplaces over 15+ years, so we’ve a good idea of what tends to work and what doesn’t.
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