How to become a marketplace manager

Contents:

• What is a marketplace?
• What does a marketplace manager do?
• Soft and hard skills
• How to become a marketplace manager. Lifehacks for responding to job vacancies
• From a company manager to creating your own agency. How to develop in your profession

What is a marketplace

With the development of the Internet, commerce has become electronic, and against this background, marketplaces began to open - trading platforms or digital markets with secure payment and fast delivery.

A marketplace is often confused with an online store, although the difference between them is significant. Chain stores sell goods from their own warehouses, and a marketplace aggregates products from different suppliers. The sites differ in the degree of risk. Online stores often sell their own products, the quality of which they know, while marketplaces offer products whose quality is not fully checked.

Such aggregator stores include:

• services that sell one category of goods (for example, only shoes) or several at once: Ozon, Wildberries;
• platforms that provide services: Yandex.Taxi;
• Services for obtaining information and exchanging data: Spotify, YouTube;
• Investment platforms for trading assets: Kickstarter, Indiegogo.

Marketplaces can be horizontal, when they offer products of the same category from different suppliers, and vertical, when different types of services are provided. There are also global marketplaces where almost all goods are sold. Among these, we can mention Amazon or Ebay.

The main advantage of marketplaces is their impressive audience, including international ones, which becomes available to sellers as soon as they register on the platform. Merchants don't need to invest in technical solutions for website development; they are invited to register on a ready-made platform. However, it's important to keep in mind that marketplaces are highly competitive, and the platform's representatives control the inventory—they can hold sales or raise prices. Among the disadvantages, one can note the lack of contact with the client - the buyer may be left with a good or bad impression not of the manufacturer, but of the marketplace itself.

What does a marketplace manager do?

A marketplace manager sells the company's products through the platforms we described above. He is responsible for sales and promotion of products. And audience interest and company profits depend on him. Let's dwell on his responsibilities in a little more detail. Marketplace manager:

• Registers the seller on the marketplace.Helps fill out the questionnaire, checks the status of individual entrepreneur or self-employed, and other documents.
• Develops the strategy for the electronic platform.Searches for sales channels, organizes SEO optimization and the creation of unique content, uses digital marketing tools to retain customers.
• Conducts analytical work to study the strengths and weaknesses of competitors.Improves the quality of service, increases the profitability of online sales.
• Creates product cards, maintains document flow, downloads current prices and sorts remaining products.
• Determines pricing policy, launches promotions and sales.
• Organizes fulfillment (ed.:complex sales): from visiting the page to delivery of products.
• Promotes products, organizes advertising campaigns, interacts with bloggers, and monitors customer reviews.
• Produces detailed reports for management on supplies, shipments, and deliveries.
• Conducts logistics activities. Tracks and controls deliveries, monitors the work of the delivery service.
• Looks for employees to perform specific tasks. Copywriters, photographers, drivers, sorters, etc.

At first glance, it may seem that the manager has too many responsibilities. But with experience comes the understanding that all tasks are interconnected, and their implementation does not require too much time and personal resources.

Soft and hard skills

A marketplace manager is a specialist who combines the skills of a marketer, analyst, and manager. We will tell you which soft and hard skills you need to develop to become a professional in this field and achieve success.

Soft skills:

• Self-organization.An employee has many tasks, from which he must be able to select the primary and secondary ones. A qualified manager knows how to plan time, complete the tasks assigned for the day, leaving time for proper rest.
• Communication skills.They help to negotiate, communicate with colleagues, customers and sellers.
• Analytical mindset.The manager must be able to structure marketplace information, select the important ones, and conduct logical analysis.
• Attentiveness.You need to be able to process a lot of information without missing anything.
• Responsibility. The company's profit, personal income, and customer reviews depend on the quality of the manager's work.

Hard skills:

• Understanding of marketplace mechanisms, the ability to recognize the target audience and communicate with people.
• Managing and protecting marketplace data. You need to be able to coordinate, sort data and present it in a form understandable for the site's management and its visitors.
• Understanding the e-commerce market, which consists of trade and financial transactions, business process chains, and online spaces.
• Ability to work with marketplace documents, oral and written literacy, letter writing, negotiation, and instant messaging skills.

How to become a manager Marketplaces. Lifehacks for applying for vacancies.

A manager manages people, sales processes, and marketplace resources. This requires quick problem-solving skills and making the right decisions. This profession can be learned through specialized courses, but continuous self-improvement is also a plus.

If we talk about income, then, according to belmeta.com, the salary of a marketplace manager in Belarus is 600-800 dollars. The income level depends on the company's profit, the popularity of the online platform and the quality of the manager's work.

When looking for a job, marketplace analysts recommend paying attention to assistant manager positions, which are readily available to people without experience. However, in this case, you need to be patient—at first, you will have to perform routine tasks that will help you gain experience. In your resume and job applications, we recommend:

• Describe the tasks that you successfully completed during your internship, traineeship, or at your previous place of work;
• Talk about the benefits you can bring to the company;
• Give specific examples of problem solving, for example, "the marketplace card rose from 150th to 27th position"; the company's revenue growth can be illustrated using infographics;
• You can also add a manager's review with work results to your resume.

From a company manager to creating your own agency. How can I develop in this profession?

The marketplace manager profession is interesting because you can constantly expand your skills and expertise. For example, you can work for a company and eventually grow to become a marketing director, a department head, or a new business development department. Or you can open your own store on the marketplace or create an agency that provides analytics and consults to newcomers. You can even go into education and create your own courses to train marketplace managers. And if you brush up on foreign languages, you can try to enter the international market.

Many people start their careers in this field without experience, but with diligence and an understanding of the ultimate goal, they become professionals in demand in the developing field of e-commerce. To get a better understanding of the marketplace manager profession, Skillbox.by recommends exploring the following resources:

• https://t.me/sellerozon — the first unofficial community of marketplace sellers, pickup point owners, and technology partners. Here, people discuss tasks, talk about the nuances of the profession, and experienced sellers and managers share life hacks.
• https://t.me/wbsellerofficial — The official Wildberries Telegram channel for entrepreneurs. Here they discuss the nuances of deliveries to marketplaces.
• https://t.me/s/marketplacejob — a Telegram channel where Belarusian companies post manager vacancies. Links to professional training can also be found here.