13 Business Growth Strategies for Content Marketplaces in 2022
Do you run a business about e-commerce for digital content and content creators open their stores and sell their products directly to their audience? Your responsibility is taking care of storage, delivery, and payments so that clients can focus on creating great content.
Here are 12 ideas Growth Strategies for Content Marketplaces:
- Use the power of social media
- Create an online contest
- Help creators
- Encourage nonbuyers
- Simplify “invite and share” purchase
- Integration with platforms
- Refer friends and get rewards
- Create a Popup to convert visitors into customers
- Integrate a lead generation mechanism
- Let them add their own products
- Embedded product page
- Simplify the ‘signup’ process
1.Use the power of social media
Charge authors a percentage of the sales from their books or products to share on social media pages with their followers. The more the content is shared on these social media platforms, the more customers will be directed to your website. You can also allow clients to charge customers less for digital products when they use one of your affiliate links found on social media platforms - when customers click on those links and become a new customer, the author or creators earn a small commission.
2. Create an online contest
Offer a unique incentive to engaged followers by setting up a contest, for example, where users have to create a specific type of content using your marketplace and win through voting. This may include determining the best cover art for an upcoming album or the best way to present an e-book by evaluating different book covers. This will go beyond just receiving likes and comments and will also create word-of-mouth publicity.
3. Help creators
This can be achieved by providing them with an email newsletter as well as providing a weekly digest with product suggestions and reviews. This would help to increase retention and acquisition rate for your marketplace.
4. Encourage nonbuyers
Send a message in your community forums to members that have not purchased any of the products. Encourage these users to purchase a book or an ebook from the seller's store and give them a discount or free trial of your marketplace’s services. In return, the book mentions them and gives credits to their account. This way word of mouth starts spreading in different communities, increasing the word of mouth in your platform
5. Simplify “invite and share” purchase
You should allow customers to buy on your marketplace and then share a multi-use free "gift code" with anyone they wish, resulting in an incremental viral loop. This strategy takes advantage of the viral sharing nature of instant product deliveries and acts as a catalyst for fast growth
6. Integration with platforms
For example, integration with an e-commerce platform such as Shopify or Magento.
7. Refer friends and get rewards
This is similar to the strategy used by ride-sharing services such as Lyft and Uber, where customers can earn more points by referring and recruiting other drivers.
By simply sharing in their activity feed that they have purchased some music or book, users can earn rewards by sharing. Snapchat's SnapCash allowed users to give money back and forth directly between each other and with its 178 million active daily users could be a great encouragement to start using your marketplace
8. Create a Popup to convert visitors into customers
On the homepage, a CTA button will appear when a visitor is using AdBlock. A popup will appear when the visitor clicks on the “shop” button which provides information about e-commerce, benefits of your marketplace and Sellfy’s products. This growth hack is also based on the “what to do” mindset.
9. Integrate a lead generation mechanism
Give away some great content free of charge, and then ask the user to subscribe to gain access to all future product releases. You can integrate a lead generation mechanism within the application that captures and stores the user’s e-mail address so that they can receive an alert when a new product is available. Some entrepreneurs have had success charging a price for an eBook as low as $1.00, and then increasing the price incrementally as they release more products in order to encourage repeat purchasing behavior at a later date. As soon as a customer pays for a product through your marketplace, a link to the product is generated on the dashboard and sent out via email. The entrepreneur can automate this process so that each time someone buys their products.
10. Let them add their own products
This could bring clients to your marketplace for the first time and showcase its easy-to-use interface. They can then be enticed to add their own products for sale and create a loop of users subscribing to another user’s products.
11. Embedded product page
As a visitor views the Seller's product page they are encouraged to buy. This creates a viral loop where the seller will receive revenue on each sale that creates a boost in traffic back to their product page. This strategy can also be used for your email subscriber list and social media followers as it includes special pricing promotions for subscribers.
12. Simplify the ‘signup’ process
Make the signup process as simple as possible for potential customers, so that they can get started right away.