Selling on marketplaces

0:00 Selling on marketplaces

Many shoppers never start on your website. They start on Amazon, noon or Daraz, type what they want, and buy from whoever shows up with the best listing, price and reviews. For many brands, marketplaces are a major revenue channel, and increasingly an advertising channel too. In this lecture you'll learn the benefits and trade-offs, the regional marketplace map from the UK to the Gulf and South Asia, listing optimisation, retail media and its key metrics, and how to manage channel conflict. Then you'll watch me audit a marketplace listing.

0:39 Benefits vs trade-offs

Why marketplaces? Large, high-intent audiences. Trusted checkout and delivery. Fulfilment services in many markets. Faster entry into new countries. The trade-offs are real too: commissions, fulfilment and advertising fees reduce margin. You own less of the customer relationship and data. Price competition is intense. Platform rules change, and account health can be suspended. Counterfeit and unauthorised sellers can undercut you. Think of a marketplace like a busy shopping mall. Great footfall, but the landlord sets the rules and takes a share of every sale.

1:16 The regional map

The regional map. In the UK, US and Gulf, Amazon is a major player, with amazon dot co dot uk, amazon dot ae and amazon dot sa. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, noon is a leading regional marketplace, with its own fulfilment options and big sales around Ramadan, national days and White Friday. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar, Daraz, part of Alibaba Group, is a major marketplace, with cash on delivery common and huge eleven eleven and twelve twelve campaigns. For cross-border handmade or niche products, Etsy and eBay. And TikTok Shop, but only in specific countries.

2:00 Choosing marketplaces

How do you choose which marketplaces to join? Start with where your target customers actually shop, by country and category. Then look at fee structures, including commission, fulfilment, storage and advertising. Check category restrictions and approval requirements, because some categories, like cosmetics, supplements or electronics, need documents. Look at brand protection tools, like Amazon's Brand Registry, and how counterfeits are handled. And be honest about operations: can you keep stock in sync, meet delivery times, and handle returns the way each marketplace requires? Start with one marketplace done well, rather than five done badly.

2:41 Listing optimisation

Listing optimisation. Marketplaces have their own search engines, which reward relevance, conversion and availability. Write titles that follow the style guide: brand, product type, key attribute and size or quantity. Use at least six images, including scale, detail, in-use and an infographic, following the main-image rules. Write five benefit-led bullets, with specs as proof, answering the top objections. Fill backend search terms where available, without competitor brands. And for amazon dot ae, amazon dot sa and noon, have Arabic listings written or reviewed by a native speaker.

3:19 AI shopping assistants

Marketplace AI is changing discovery. Amazon's shopping assistant, Rufus, available in some markets, answers questions like which water bottle keeps drinks cold longest and summarises reviews. That means complete, accurate listings and genuine reviews matter even more, because the assistant draws on them. Fill every attribute, answer common questions in bullets and descriptions, and keep specs consistent across images, text and your own website.

3:47 Retail media

Retail media is the fastest-growing ad channel for marketplace sellers. It's advertising sold by a retailer or marketplace, using its shopper data, mainly sponsored product and sponsored brand ads. Know the metrics. ACoS, advertising cost of sale, is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales. ROAS is the inverse. TACoS, total advertising cost of sale, is ad spend divided by total sales on that marketplace, ads plus organic. And your break-even ACoS is your contribution margin before advertising, after marketplace fees. Start with bestsellers that have good reviews, use automatic campaigns to discover search terms, then build manual campaigns around profitable ones.

4:31 Simple example: Multan handicrafts

A simple example. A handicrafts brand from Multan sells on Daraz in Pakistan, Etsy internationally, and its own website. Daraz carries price-competitive bestsellers with local delivery and cash on delivery. Etsy carries unique handmade pieces, with stories about the artisans and international shipping. The website carries the full collection, custom orders and a loyalty programme. Each channel has a clear job, and the brand tracks contribution margin by channel, not just revenue.

5:02 Realistic example: Saudi skincare (illustrative)

Now a realistic scenario with illustrative numbers. A Saudi skincare brand sells on amazon dot sa and noon. Contribution margin before advertising, after marketplace fees, is thirty percent, so break-even ACoS is thirty percent. Their sponsored products campaigns run at an ACoS of twenty-five percent, which looks fine. But TACoS has risen from eight to fourteen percent over three months while total sales stayed flat. That means ads are increasingly buying sales they used to get organically. The team cuts bids on their own brand terms where they already rank first organically, shifts budget to discovery campaigns for new customers, and improves the listing's images and Arabic bullets to lift organic conversion.

5:51 Watch me do it: listing audit

Watch me audit a listing. I open a noon listing for a bestselling product and walk the checklist. Title: follows the style guide, with brand, product type, key attribute and size. Images: only four, with no scale shot or infographic, so that's a fix. Bullets: features only, no answer to the top objection about suitability for sensitive skin, so another fix. Search terms: filled, but include a competitor brand, which I remove. Arabic listing: machine-translated, with an awkward product name, so I request a native review. Price and stock: in sync. Brand protection: enrolled. Reviews: coming only through permitted programmes. Four fixes, prioritised by how much traffic the listing gets.

6:39 Cross-border selling

Cross-border marketplace selling deserves a moment. Marketplaces make it easier to reach customers in other countries, like a Pakistani brand selling on Etsy to the UK, or a UK brand selling on amazon dot ae. But check the details before you list. Import duties and taxes, and who pays them. Product restrictions and labelling rules in the destination country. Delivery times and costs that stay competitive. Returns across borders, which can be expensive. And local language listings. Many sellers start by testing a small range of their best, lightweight, low-return products, and expand once the numbers work.

7:21 Channel conflict

Channel conflict and pricing. Selling on marketplaces and your own store at once can create tension. Some marketplaces monitor prices elsewhere and may reduce your visibility if you're cheaper off-platform, depending on their policies. Coordinate promotions so one channel doesn't undercut another by accident. If you also sell wholesale, marketplace pricing affects your retail partners. And check each marketplace's rules on directing customers to your own site, because some prohibit it, including packaging inserts.

7:53 Common mistakes

Common mistakes. Treating every marketplace the same. Weak images and feature-only bullets. Machine-translated Arabic listings. Measuring ads by ACoS alone and ignoring TACoS. Bidding heavily on your own brand terms where you already rank organically. Incentivising reviews off-platform, which breaks marketplace rules. And ignoring counterfeit sellers until they've damaged your ratings.

8:15 Recap

Recap. Marketplaces bring high-intent shoppers at the cost of fees, data and control. Know the regional map, optimise listings for marketplace search and AI assistants, run retail media with ACoS, TACoS and break-even ACoS in view, and manage pricing and channel conflict deliberately. Try this now: run the listing checklist from the lesson text on your top three marketplace listings, and calculate your break-even ACoS and current TACoS for each marketplace.