The Marketplace is nothing more than a virtual platform where goods and services are sold. This business model is known for directly connecting customers and suppliers without the involvement of intermediaries. In general, it brings together different products and services to reach as many customers as possible.
Marketplaces also specialize in a single segment, such as clothing, toys, or travel.
This type of e-commerce has generated many opportunities for small businesses precisely because of this variety of products and services. By closing partnerships with marketplaces, small companies can market their products on these sites across the country.
These partnerships are an excellent deal for marketplaces, as they do not need to keep products in stock; they only need to promote third-party products and services.
Types Of Marketplace
This business model is expanding worldwide, and four main types are divided, they are:
- Companies (B2B – Business to Business);
- Companies-Consumers (B2C – Business to Consumer);
- Consumers-Consumers (C2C – Consumer to Consumer);
The Marketplace focuses on the B2-B relationship and is responsible for connecting businesses. They are more specialists in small and medium-sized companies, offer different products and services, and are great for businesses looking for suppliers.
The B2C model is the most common, where companies offer directly to the final consumer, facilitating the purchase and price comparison.
The third type of Marketplace, C2C, is becoming quite common, where people sell products directly. Payment is usually made through the platform itself, which facilitates transactions.
In these virtual platforms, the user can search for services or products of interest-based on the types of businesses available. They had thus access to the supplier’s contact and direct access to the website of the same.
Advantages Of This Business Model
The significant differential of the Marketplace is to have advantages for all involved: consumer, shopkeeper, and platform operator.
Taking a small retailer as an example, it needs traffic to its virtual store, a crucial factor for it to be able to sell. Being small and little known, the Marketplace provides marketing and advertising support and this traffic from potential customers. This means increased visibility of products and less investment in advertising to leverage sales.
For the Marketplace operator, this business model further increases its users’ loyalty; in addition to stimulating commerce, it consequently helps to increase their income.
On the other hand, the user finds products from different segments in one place, adding value to the experience of searching for new suppliers and partners; has access to hitherto unknown products at more competitive prices.
The Marketplace works as a bridge, connecting the consumer to the desired products quickly and reliably, and can be an excellent option for you to find suppliers or products and even make your sales, increasing your billing!
CAC
If you’ve been looking for relevant content about marketing and sales, you must understand that metrics are essential to help a company’s strategic decisions, right? And one of those metrics is CAC, customer acquisition cost.
CAC is a metric that has been very relevant for some companies. However, the vast majority have not yet paid attention to this factor, mainly because they do not know its importance when making important decisions.
What Does Customer Acquisition Cost Mean?
Customer acquisition cost is how much your company needs to invest, on average, to win a customer. It is calculated by adding all the investments made in marketing and sales to turn a prospect into a customer, divided by the number of customers acquired in the period.
It is recommended that the customer acquisition cost (CAC) is calculated and monitored every month, taking care of some sporadic events that can increase your CAC. For example, imagine that you have increased your sales team this month; it is possible that your sales will not have a proportional increase in this period, leading to an increase in CAC. Still, over time it will stabilize again; rest assured!
Also Read: Marketing For Startups: Success With A Small Budget
