Alejandro Cardenas

Ecommerce platforms like Shopify and marketplaces like Amazon and eBay dominate the commerce world. While brick and mortar stores’ growth flatlined over 2020, the ecommerce industry grew by 32%. As an online business owner, you need to “meet people where they are, not push them where you want them to be”, as a successful marketer Meghan Keaney Anderson wrote. The concept illustrates a simple ecommerce strategy that’ll help you reach more customers—multichannel retailing. In this blog post, we’ll focus on how to increase your revenue by selling on multiple platforms and what online sales channels can best support your marketing strategy. But most importantly, we’re going to dive deep into multichannel retailing. What’s multichannel retailing. Multichannel retailing, or multichannel selling, is the strategy of selling your products on more than one channel to reach a larger audience. The more space you carve out for your products online, the more potential sales you’re gaining. Plus, the sooner you start with multichannel retailing, the more potential revenue you’ll get in the future. Understanding multichannel retailing. There are countless potential combinations of sales channels to use for your business. A common multichannel selling example would be having a main store with Shopify, a secondary set-up on an online marketplace like Etsy, and a buy button on your Facebook page. Selling on multiple platforms brings many advantages that on their own are insufficient, but put together, pave the road for the final goal: increasing your sales. Why you should sell on multiple channels. Sticking to one sales channel limits how many people discover and buy from you. Luckily, multichannel retailing can help you solve this problem by: Increasing customer reach. You can have a beautifully designed website and offer top-notch quality products. But if nobody stumbles upon your store, you’ll have a hard time making sales. If you sell your products on your website and also list them on several marketplaces, your brand and product reach can increase significantly. Offering a convenient shopping experience. People are creatures of habit. If they’re used to shopping on Amazon, placing an order on eBay or Etsy might seem like too much work. By being where your customers are, you’re making their shopping experience easy and more pleasant. Helping you understand your audience better. Selling on multiple sales channels gives you a chance to gather more information about your customers and their shopping habits. You can later use this knowledge to craft a more targeted marketing campaign. Multiplying sales during peak spending days. Doing multichannel retailing on peak days like Black Friday, Christmas, or Boxing Day is like hitting a double-word score in Scrabble—add more channels to multiply your sales. On average, if you’re selling on an ecommerce store and additionally start selling on one marketplace your revenue will increase by 38%. That number gets to 120% if you add a second marketplace, and to 190% if you add a third. Marketplaces and ecommerce platforms: allies, not rivals. Ecommerce marketplaces and ecommerce platforms share a goal: to support sales. Although they might’ve been designed to be rivals, marketplaces and ecommerce platforms offer benefits that, if combined, can tackle each other's weaknesses. Having a marketplace and an ecommerce platform at the same time builds the foundation for a holistic marketing strategy: Identifying and targeting your niche with an ecommerce platform is challenging, but if you choose the suitable marketplace for your products, you’ll have millions of people who are already looking for your items. One thing is to identify and target your niche, and a completely different thing is to get them to buy your products. On marketplaces, especially the most renowned ones, you’ll have to compete with other sellers that offer similar products to yours. When you own an online store, visitors will only see your products. Ecommerce platforms allow you to personalize your store, add your logo, etc. On the flip side, marketplaces are often rigid when it comes to branding. Amazon, for example, doesn’t allow you to display your logo on your store page. With an online store, you can use tools to create more comprehensive marketing strategies, such as email marketing tools, SEO tools, etc. Marketplaces, on the other hand, tend to offer more limited options to reach people outside of their platform. Source: Printful Things to look out for when doing multichannel selling. Selling on several different channels can help you generate more sales. But with new sales channels come a few extra challenges you need to be aware of: Rules and restrictions. Each marketplace has its own rules you must comply with. Sometimes this means you can’t brand your store the way you’d like, or you might not be able to sell the products you want. Inventory. Managing inventory can get difficult when selling on various channels. You have to make sure you have enough products for each, and that you can deliver every order on time. If you’re selling Printful products, you don’t need to worry about inventory. Fees. Many marketplaces will require you to pay fees. These can range from monthly subscriptions to a percentage of each sale. Setting up and keeping track. Every marketplace is different. So setting up on each, understanding how it works, and maintaining it can take quite a bit of your time. Taxes. Managing your taxes can get complicated as you’ll have to pull and juggle data from each sales channel. You can overcome these obstacles. You just need patience and an extra hand from tools that are specifically designed to minimize the downsides of multichannel retailing: multichannel retailing software. These tools will help you to: Automate product listings so you can set up product data and descriptions in one place and then push it to your different sales channels. Keep track of your inventory throughout many platforms in case you’re working with stock. Another big reason to choose Printful if you want to sell across different channels, is that it streamlines the process. We integrate with major ecommerce platforms and marketplaces, and manage inventory for you. Which marketplace is right for your products? First and foremost, you need to understand each marketplace. Do your research and compile a list of ecommerce marketplaces with these points in mind: Product. Take into consideration the types of products that are sold on each marketplace and whether your products are suitable for each specific marketplace or not. Target audience. You’ll want to be where your ideal customers are, so sell on the marketplaces where you’re more likely to find your buyers. Regulations and fees. Pick the marketplaces with fees you can afford and with regulations you can comply with. Competition. You’ll want to sell where your products fit the audience, but also where they can stand out and your prices can compete. Now, let’s take a look at some of the most popular platforms you should start selling on. Amazon Source: Amazon Amazon is an online marketplace giant that has over 310 million active customers and welcomes over 197 million unique visitors every month. Amazon holds 41.1% of all the US ecommerce market and 7.7% of all retail sales. According to the Amazon Advertising Report, 74% of US consumers start searching for a product on Amazon. How to succeed on Amazon. Amazon is the place to get the best prices online, so competing in this marketplace by only offering low prices can get difficult. If you want to be able to compete on Amazon, you need to carefully follow their seller guidelines and pay attention to: SEO. To sell, first, you need to get your products in front of people. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique that’ll help you make your products more searchable. Be sure to give your products a title that follows Amazon instructions. A comprehensive product description is also key for appearing in more searches. Metrics. If you’re a brand owner, be sure to join Amazon Brand Analytics. Use it to identify your best-selling products, or find out how your customers feel about their purchases. Pricing. On Amazon, choosing competitive prices for your products can also get you more search appearances. Amazon Prime. Customers subscribed to Amazon Prime buy more. Offering your products under Prime means offering perks like free shipping, and that can be a definitive purchase factor. Selling on Amazon has a cost. The platform charges you two fees, one flat and one variable per every item you sell. The exact amount depends on the type of product sold and whether you have an Individual or Professional plan. If you’re up for selling, you can connect your Amazon store with Printful. We have a video tutorial to help set up your store and add your first products. Useful resources: Guide to selling on Amazon Amazon’s page for sellers Amazon seller FAQ How to Sell T-Shirts on Amazon: From $0 to $1,000 a Month Etsy Source: Etsy Etsy is a marketplace that specializes in handmade goods, vintage items, and craft supplies. It’s a go-to place for 90 million online shoppers who are looking for unique products that aren’t available in big-name retail stores. Setting up a store on Etsy is free and there are no monthly subscription fees. However, you’ll be charged a fee for listing the item, plus 5% of the total item costs (plus postage) on every sale. How to succeed on Etsy. On Etsy, you might be able to price your products higher because people expect to pay more for personalized items or handmade items. To get your first sale on Etsy: Upload high-quality product .jpg images (both mockups and lifestyle) Write creative and accurate product descriptions. Make your products searchable, following Etsy’s SEO principles that include things like relevance, postage fees, recency, etc. If you think that Etsy is your place, connect your Etsy shop with...

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