The success of a niche marketplace start-up often depends on its approach to managing and marketing its launch. Unfortunately, the majority of start-up founders lack the much-needed experience of managing the things. The good thing is that this dangerous contradiction can be handled with proper planning.
Before you get into launch marketing, brand development, or PR for the launch of your niche marketplace be sure you have an expert website designer by your side.
An in-line product launch strategy helps in rolling out the launch carpet within fast turnaround time. Here is all you need to know about launching your niche marketplace within 48 hours.
1. Be careful when placing your bet on the technology
Unlike online stores, niche marketplaces feature a huge catalog of products for sale. It means your platform will need to host thousands of service providers to meet the needs of a huge number of customers. An ill-suited technology will leave your business in losses. So first, look for a technology that guarantees performance, stability, and security to your mega online e-store. The budding entrepreneurs lacking technical backgrounds should consult a technology expert even before shortlisting the potential options.
2. Decide The Price of Your Products and Services
To grab your seat in the marketplace you’ll need to offer good services at cheapest price possible in order to entice customers and vendors as well. Keep in mind that disrupting the existing niche marketplaces or even standing in their competition isn’t going to be easy. In order to make a stable stand in the industry, you will need to pursue every facet to make the company stand in profitability. The high profile existing platforms could fix their roots in the industry because they offer products and services at cheaper rates.
3. Aim for highly fragmented marketplace
The profitability of a niche marketplace is directly proportional to the number of buyers and vendors aggregated through it. For example, if your platform has few number of sellers then it would have less value for the customers. This will result in low-profit making due to low range of value-added services. To compete with the large players in the market, make sure you successfully pool up a good number of sellers and buyers. You can achieve good results only with good strategies and proper planning.
4. Define your target market properly
Strategic positioning is one of the important steps in a successful launch program of a brand or product. The sooner you understand the target market simulation the better the end results of your efforts. Correct positioning of the strategies is important to hit the target in the right direction. Define the category of your product or service and then map its competitor benchmarking, core value proposition and key benefits.
5. Focus on building a tempting website
Building a niche marketplace calls in for a huge expenditure. It is therefore important to make sure that the big investment is done wisely. From SEO to online banner ads, media coverage, PPC and everything else will demand money. A start-up should always focus on building an awe-striking website. Your website should have everything needed to showcase the aims and vision of your brand to the world. The right kind of design and layout is half the victory when it comes grabbing a seat in the industry. Generalisations won’t work here. Your website should be unique in every aspect.
6. Focus on maintaining a healthy web presence
In the age of social media, the web presence of a platform is important than anything else. Merely having a functional site isn’t enough. It is important to aim for a sophisticated site that can efficiently perform multiple roles at a time. The function of your website shouldn’t be limited to giving information. Note that web presence isn’t limited to maintaining a good presence on social media platforms. The structure, content, and visual elements design of your site should feature all the elements of on-page SEO. This is to ensure high rank of your site on the search engines.
7. Find a unique brand name
Branding is everything in this world of endless competition and intangibles. Your URL, logo, and name need to be exceptionally unique with some real meaning. Look for some examples online. To get an idea start with the active URL’s present out there. You can also use some program to develop the best-fit brand name and logo. Get creative. At the same time, it should not have too much of everything (design, colors, etc.) If you already have an idea of your brand name then give it the right feel and look. Keep in mind, an arresting logo attracts a huge number of eyes from day one.
8. Develop Empathy For Potential Customers
Every start-up should spend a considerate amount of their time in developing empathy for their prospective customers and sellers. This can be ideally achieved by interviewing the users observing customer behaviors and putting themselves in the position of customers. If one side of the marketplace is less responsive, you’ll need to invest more time in knowing their behavior towards the marketplace. Conduct a minimum of 20-30 open interviews to discover the existing loopholes in the marketplace. Remember, the more the observation the better ideas you get to build your stand in the industry.
Launching a niche marketplace business isn’t easy, if not that hard though. You need to work on countless things in order to keep the risk proposition to its lowest. Aspiring entrepreneurs should count on their failures to come up with the next best possible idea that can make their venture successful. Taking help of an expert is also a good idea. In short, if you are willing to build the next Fiverr or Amazon you will need to give up all that you have, only to get the success that high. Get access to all the tits and tats of running a marketplace; know your audience and customers. Even the tiniest of things make a huge difference.