Best Practices for Third-Party Marketplace Integration

Despite all the positive momentum these past few years with third-party marketplaces, brands encounter many challenges when working with these platforms — from meeting complex onboarding guidelines to integrating APIs to cataloging data in real time. Brands also have much to lose if they partner with the wrong platform.

The obvious loss is time and money. Resources lost on channels that don’t yield short- and/or mid-term results can introduce risk in the form of tying up otherwise useful capital, and distract you from the channels that are healthier for your business at that time.

Your brand being the wrong fit for a given channel is also a risk. By selling products that don’t match the marketplace or advertising channel, your products may inadvertently be associated with products of a different category, which will attract the wrong shoppers.

You can also lose out on opportunities with other channels. If you’re investing in a diverse set of channels, some of which may not be great fits for your brand, there's an inherent opportunity cost of not investing in better suited channels, especially in today’s capital-restrictive environments. If your brand spreads too thin too quickly, the distributed focus may end up costing you opportunities on the channels that are already driving success.

Finding the Right Third-Party Marketplace

Given the high stakes of working with third-party marketplaces, here are some best practices to consider when choosing one:

1. When identifying potential marketplaces, brands should see how much support the marketplace will provide the brand from the start. Having the right support team for implementation, go-to-market and beyond sets brands up for success and helps efficiently address challenges along the way. Also, if your selected solution provider isn't bringing new opportunities and helping driving revenue generation, consider alternatives.
2. Brands must confirm that their customer base truly lives on the channel they plan to invest in. No one wins when products are placed in front of the wrong shoppers — the shopper doesn’t find what they’re looking for, the marketplace doesn’t deliver value, and the brand doesn’t sell.
3. Showing up isn’t enough. Brands must invest in the channels they engage. Succeeding on a new channel requires considerations around integration, content, advertising, fulfillment and more. For example, if you adopt TikTok but don’t have resources for content, your brand may not perform as well.

Understand the Value of Your Catalog and Product Feed Data

Every marketplace has product listing requirements, but brands need to go beyond the bare minimum if they want to stand out. Filling in as many attributes as possible, front-loading titles, and categorizing products accurately are just a few ways to optimize your data and improve search relevancy. Also, marketplaces have very particular schemas that require premium solutions to help address their complexities.

However, these data-driven activities are complex and require robust, artificial intelligence-driven technology to analyze the enormous amount of information that goes in and out of the marketplace. Brands aren’t usually equipped with the needed technologies to maximize the full value of the data. In that scenario, they’re better off partnering with a proven product feed management solution that helps with the organization, sourcing and optimization of product data for distribution across multiple channels, including marketplaces.

When looking for a product feed partner, brands should choose a solution that offers integrations into the channels they wish to sell today and in the future. Invest in platforms that align with your vision and demonstrate unwavering support for your business throughout the year.

Lastly, brands should invest in platforms that help unlock opportunities for their business and introduce them to teams or concepts that can produce new revenue lines now and in the future.

Matt Dornfeld is senior director, head of global partnerships, Feedonomics (a BigCommerce Company). His team negotiates, structures and launches programs with the world’s leading commerce partners, including Amazon.com, Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and more.