Up until relatively recently, it was more common for suppliers and business buyers to meet during seminars or other face-to-face meetings to connect and promote their brands. This was before the COVID-19 pandemic’s massive worldwide impact, Things changed significantly with the pandemic. B2B sellers now had to look for new and innovative ways to keep selling. Luckily, online B2B marketplaces provided new ways to help a business make sales without having to maintain physical premises that customers visited to buy their products or services.
Understanding B2B marketplaces
A B2B marketplace is a digital platform bringing together B2B buyers and sellers and allowing them to conduct business in a single online space. Unlike a B2C marketplace where the sellers are often retail businesses and the buyers are consumers and end-users, in a B2B marketplace, the sellers are brands, manufacturers, suppliers, and wholesalers, and buyers are the retail businesses selling to the consumer (for example). The marketplace operator facilitates the processing of the payments online.
Benefits of a B2B marketplace
Below are some of the benefits that a company stands to gain by being part of an online B2B marketplace:
· To cut operational costs
Business owners often incur high costs for the promotion and marketing of their brands. They often need to put together product catalogs and they also have to advertise using methods such as print media, radio, TV, and digital routes such as Google Ads and taking part in online events for marketing businesses.
However, companies can reduce the marketing and promotional costs by joining an online B2B marketplace like Virto Commerce. As a member of such a platform, a business can create online catalogs to list its products. This way, they can save on advertising, promotions, and costly business trips to attend expos or other events globally to network and display their products.
· To reach a bigger audience
Businesses in the B2B sphere often incur costs because they need to hire extra staff or when they enter into partnerships with other companies to reach more people in new regions or countries. In addition, the companies face the challenge of recruiting the necessary expertise in cross-border trade and localization of their products to suit different markets.
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For instance, a company may be compelled to hire a local distributor or agent to promote the company’s products to local customers in their native language. The need to connect or work with new partners for logistics and trade reasons costs money.
The good news is that a B2B marketplace takes care of the localization and processes handled by trade partners, relieving the business of those costs. The marketplaces help to reach buyers abroad and help to facilitate trading with them. The platforms also support localization, such as assisting in changing product names to suit different markets and translating their descriptions to the local languages.
· To get help creating an online presence
Many small and medium businesses face the challenge of building an online brand because setting up an online store does not come cheap. Luckily, becoming part of an online B2B marketplace can save the business lots of resources like time, money, and others needed to build a profitable online shop. The B2B marketplace does the heavy lifting, such as optimizing for search engines to make your brands visible online, and all a business needs to do is create its account, add its products, and start selling instantly.
Conclusion
A business stands to gain massively from becoming part of an online marketplace. Some of the benefits include saving operational costs, reaching a broader market or audience, and getting help creating an online presence. The crucial thing is to pick the best platform to get the expected benefits.