Perfecting your Amazon marketplace management strategy is important. However, Amazon’s not the only fish in the eCommerce sea. If your love-hate relationship with Amazon is getting old and other marketplaces are starting to catch your eye, it might be time to seriously consider ending your exclusive relationship with Amazon and broadening your horizons. Here are a few guidelines and points to improve your eCommerce marketing strategy along the way.

1. Expand only after you’ve locked down Amazon.

There’s an estimated 103 million Amazon Prime members in the U.S.—almost a third of the U.S. population. If you’re an Amazon marketplace seller distributing from the U.S., mastering your Amazon offering first is key. Then you might consider trying on other U.S. marketplaces like Walmart.com or eBay for size. Once you’ve done that, consider just how big markets are elsewhere. For example, China’s population numbers over 1.4 billion. That’s a lot of potential buyers. “Amazon is just a fraction of a percent of the market in China,” said Garrett Bluhm, Pattern’s former VP of eCommerce and Strategy. “A lot of companies don’t have any presence on Tmall, JD.com, Taobao, Lazada—any of these Asian markets.”

2. Be present on all key channels.

You should sell where your customer segments are. That may or may not be Amazon. Other niche marketplaces like Zalando (a German shoe and fashion eCommerce site) exist—and you may grow faster there than by being on Amazon, said Lara Jelowicki, Pattern’s International Director. “Some of the ways that our clients can accelerate growth is by making sure that they’re present on all the key channels that they should be on,” Jelowicki said. “They should be making sure that they’re there and present and building up their awareness so that people are searching for them in the first place.”

3. Ensure you can dedicate the necessary resources to do it right (which will be more than you think).

Other marketplaces aren’t carbon copies of Amazon. Figuring out a new marketplace and a new eCommerce marketing strategy is harder than you think, Bluhm said, especially when brands have focused on one thing for so long. “People can niche themselves into one specific segment and become good at it, but they’re missing the overarching picture where there’s a lot more work that actually has to be done,” Bluhm said.

Working with a team that already knows the marketplace and eCommerce climate can be a huge advantage for brands when they want to go beyond Amazon and their exclusively Amazon business partners. “Probably the biggest thing that companies miss when they’re going into different industries and different international countries is likely just the understanding of how big of an opportunity and how big of a complexity it is,” Bluhm said.

At Pattern, we know how complex it is—we’ve been there. See how our team can help you develop a new eCommerce marketing strategy and a better platform for your business by getting in touch below.