The Future of Ecommerce: Marketplace Syndication

Brand leaders have a huge opportunity to take ownership of their market share and capture cross-channel ecommerce sales in 2023. Multichannel ecommerce sales are expected to make up more than 45% of retail sales, and U.S. ecommerce revenue is expected to pass $100 billion. The data is clear: staying profitable and reaching your consumers in 2023 will require a controlled brand presence across marketplaces. Marketplace syndication is key to making that happen. Pattern’s expert teams truly understand each marketplace’s unique traits and how to help your products succeed. We can quickly and seamlessly optimize our brand partners across 6 marketplaces in the U.S. alone: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kroger, Macy’s, and eBay. With our powerful resources and technology, we can magnify your ecommerce efforts across marketplaces worldwide.

What is Marketplace Syndication?

Marketplace syndication is the process of taking a product, with its images, description, and branding, and publishing it to many platforms. This creates a consistent brand experience for your consumers on all the sites where they can find your products online. For brand control, you should have consistent images, titles, and descriptive information across retail platforms.

This can seem simple at the outset, but syndicating content and pricing for ecommerce brands requires a thorough understanding of each platform’s requirements. For example, Target has accessibility requirements for all image text, while Amazon and Walmart have different character limits and title formatting. Many marketplaces have “help documents,” but they often leave out key details you should know. Having an expert on your side who understands these parameters is essential to making sure your product listings are consistent, fully optimized, and compliant across marketplaces.

Capture Cross-Shopping Customers

Frictionless online shopping has made cross-shopping a huge part of the experience for consumers. They can easily search products online and compare them across marketplaces to get the best deal. This phenomenon is becoming more common in physical stores, too. Many shoppers now engage in showroomings—when looking at an item, they pull out their phones and browse online marketplaces for alternate purchase options. When you’re present, recognizable, and in control of the right marketplaces, you’ll be the one capturing that traffic and those conversions, rather than an unauthorized seller.

Maintain Profitability

At Pattern, we often see brands operating somewhere on what we call the Profitability Death Spiral. This downward spiral to zero revenue happens when you don’t have control of your brand on major marketplaces.

Let’s say you’re selling on Amazon and an unauthorized seller posts your product for sale at a cheaper price on Walmart. Amazon’s algorithm will automatically adjust your price. If that unauthorized seller lowers their price in response to drive sales, Amazon will drop again, and so forth–leaving you no profit for any sale. Pattern’s syndication technology can ensure that each brand’s MAP policy or MSRP is sent to all of their ecommerce platforms.

Foster Brand Affinity

In the ever-more-competitive landscape of ecommerce, a big threat to your brand is loss of customer loyalty. But if you have a great product, there’s no reason you can’t expect long-term repeat sales and growth. You just need to ensure that your consumers feel they can count on you with every purchase. It doesn’t matter if they buy on Walmart, Target, or Amazon—your listings are always legitimate and build your customers’ loyalty and trust.

Prepare for Global Growth

We’ve seen a growing trend in ecommerce leaders wanting to take their brands to global marketplaces. What many brands don’t realize, however, is that expanding takes a strong foundation locally. If your brand equity and profitability are at risk due to inconsistencies across domestic markets, you’ll have a harder time reaching true success internationally.

Syndicate with Pattern

The issue most brands face when syndicating across marketplaces is a lack of resources. Many ecommerce teams are small; they manage assets through spreadsheets and lack the resources to effectively manage every marketplace listing. We get it, it’s tough. But the risk of losing brand control and profit is too big to ignore.

As your one-stop 3P partner, Pattern takes on that responsibility for you. We have an entire content compliance team dedicated to making sure your brand stays consistent across marketplaces. Our product information management systems and syndication technology make this monumental task possible. You provide us with all of your content, product info, digital assets, and creative materials, and we do the rest. Get in touch with us here to learn more. Alyssa Morris, SEO Manager at Pattern, part of the team to optimize ecommerce marketplace listings for Pattern’s brand partners