Page 44 - CBM10

~ Newegg/WorldFirst ~

of fostering brands with a long tail marketing strategy Comprehensive control
centred around supporting the brand story and creating • Pricing - A common pain point for brands coming into
educational content that informs and engages our cus- marketplaces is having to navigate the unique pricing
tomer base. By offering marketing avenues that emphasise strategies of these individual platforms. Some market-
brand, not price, we combat profit-draining price wars places place greater emphasis on having the rock-bottom
and support customer acquisition and retention. best price. This can lead many brands to feel pressure to
compete on price with third-party sellers – or even com-
Examples of marketing services that marketplaces may offer: pete with the marketplace itself on wholesale. As a strat-
• Brand storytelling through dedicated pages or “spotlight” egy, this approach to pricing can potentially undermine
content the strength of a seller’s own brand. Marketplaces such
• Site exposure through banner ads and focused category as Newegg choose to support long-term growth plans for
visibility our sellers and want their brands and promotions to thrive
• Enhanced, “A+” product page content in a sustainable way. This focus on brand building begins
• Editorial and video content production by giving sellers the freedom to price and promote their
• Targeted email programs products in their way. Campaigns and listings are also
• Google Shopping support mindfully maintained start-to-finish with support from
• Social media exposure dedicated marketing teams with content championship as
• Strategic campaign management a priority.
• Hands-on guidance with a management team
• Content champion - As a brand, correct representation is
• Fulfilment - When it comes to meeting customers grow- essential and messaging and portrayal of the business and
ing expectations, quickly fulfilling online orders is a criti- products should not be compromised. With a high brand
cal component. A brand may be competitive with their standard being such a key ingredient of the e-commerce
products and pricing, but if a newcomer cannot match the customer experience, brands are turning to marketplace
shipping rates and fulfilment efficiency and infrastructure platforms to gain optimal control over how their products
of larger companies, lost sales and profits may result. Mar- and company are promoted and portrayed. In the past,
ketplaces want both their customers and their sellers to be traditional retail distribution models created issues for
happy. To address these hurdles, marketplaces can support brands looking to maintain control of their brand story
brands with in-house fulfilment services that focus on across third-party and wholesale sellers. The recent D2C
easing profit-draining expenses such as 3PL logistics, shift to marketplaces has restored this power back to
customer service, and warehousing. brands.

Services such as Shipped by Newegg (SBN) were created to Scaling globally made easy
address the 360-degree fulfilment needs of marketplace sell- Demand for products coming from different parts of the
ers. This includes managing the picking, packing, and ship- world has led to an explosion in business and tech innova-
ping of products the world over – all on the seller’s behalf. tion. As many marketplaces are working to carve out their
The aim of SBN and other marketplace fulfilment services cross-border footholds, the future of e-commerce is clearly
is to free up a brand’s resources and time, and provide them not limited to region or device. Brands may be reticent to
the freedom to focus on larger aspects of the business. expand to unfamiliar territory, but minimizing operational
complexities and risks by leveraging the use of a market-
• Carefully selected partners - If a marketplace does not place’s global infrastructure and partner network acts as a
offer an internal solution for a seller, it is common to turn safe strategy. The collective goal is to make selling interna-
to an established outside partner. These curated partners tionally just as simple as doing business locally and market-
will be attuned to the specific needs of that marketplace’s places are doing just that. ••
sellers and will usually be chosen based on excellent rates
and performance.

With the growing push for e-commerce sellers to expand
cross-border, many marketplaces turned to industry giants in
thriving areas such as global currency exchange. In Newegg’s
example, we turned to WorldFirst and their game-changing
product, World Account, to allow merchants to collect and
manage payments, and hold balances in multiple currencies
while accessing great exchange rates.

44