Online Platform Marketing: 10 Tips for Promotion

When marketing an online platform, the most challenging task is to secure the initial user engagement. Especially if it is a fitting platform such as a job board, you must attract both job postings and job seekers if you want your platform to work – one will not succeed without the other.

When creating an online platform the best way to attract users is to create specific incentives for interacting with the platform. But how can you begin building a user base for a two-sided online platform when each side depends on the prior existence of the other? This is where online platform marketing comes into play, including strategies such as affiliate marketing.

Content marketing is another strategy to build relationships with users through valuable content.

Additionally, influencer marketing can be used to create trust and authenticity through social media influencers.

The Most Important Points in Brief

Which Online Platform Would You Like to Create?

The Most Important Step – An Individual Strategy

Since it is very difficult to make your online platform known, you should manage your marketing correctly. Marketing automation can help you efficiently manage and execute marketing activities such as email campaigns and website personalization. Unless you have developed an innovative product or an innovative service that is in very high demand, you can apply some out-of-the-box strategies.

The Piggyback Strategy:

Connect with an existing user base from another platform, as PayPal did with eBay’s online platform. Or, for example, when YouTube offered its powerful video tools to MySpace members, which serves as an online platform marketing strategy.

The Seeding Strategy:

Create value propositions that are relevant to at least one group of users – be they buyers or sellers – and that will attract other users who wish to interact with that primary group. Take Adobe as an example, which successfully marketed its PDF reader tool by ensuring that all federal tax forms were available online. This form of online platform marketing saved the IRS money on printing and postage, while taxpayers received fast and easy access to documents. In this way, millions of people were won over by Adobe and have since chosen Adobe as their document platform of choice.

The One-Sided Strategy:

Build a business around products or services that benefit one group of users. Then, later, transform that business into a platform and invite the other side. How can this work? Use OpenTable as a reference example. To operate as a platform, they needed both a large base of participating restaurants to attract guests and a large base of guests to, in turn, lure the restaurants. Thus, they started by distributing booking management software that allowed restaurants to manage their seating capacity.

The Evangelism Strategy

For this online platform marketing strategy, first attract the producers who can bring along their consumers. For instance, the educational platform Skillshare recruits influential teachers and enables them to easily conduct online courses that encourage their students to come on board.

The Micro-Market Strategy:

Here, the online platform marketing strategy focuses on a tiny market of members who are already connected. The launch of Facebook within Harvard’s closed community resulted in the creation of a small but active community.

The Big Bang Adoption Theory:

Use traditional push strategies to generate a high level of interest and traffic. If the online platform marketing strategy works, it can trigger a simultaneous onboarding effect. While push strategies have increasingly become ineffective in sparking large-scale growth, there are exceptions. For example, Twitter’s breakout moment occurred at the 2007 South by Southwest festival. They installed huge flat-screen displays on which users could see their tweets in real time. By the end of the festival, Twitter usage had tripled.

Traditional Online Platform Marketing Strategies

Running a Blog

Creating a blog should be the first step to ensure that your online platform is easier to find. However, creating a blog is only the first step. You should then actually publish content such as articles, videos, and the like on the blog.

Your blog should be used as part of a content marketing strategy that focuses on creating and disseminating valuable and relevant information for your target audiences. This enables you to consistently publish new topics along with keywords and optimize your search engine strategy. You should make your blog a special place where readers can exchange information or receive advice from you. In this way, a lasting bond is formed with your readers as trust is built over time.

Airbnb has a blog featuring several tips for both travelers and hosts.

SEO

Search engine marketing and optimization are part of what helps your online platform rank higher in search engine results. With a strong SEO strategy, alongside other online platform marketing strategies, your platform will be associated with the keywords used to search for your services.

Keyword research is the initial phase of every SEO campaign and can help you identify user intent and determine what your target audience is searching for. Use tools like KW Finder, SEMRush, or other SEO tools to find the exact keywords and combinations your users are looking for. Identify the problems and solutions your audience is seeking, and tailor your content strategy accordingly to ensure that your platform becomes the one-stop resource for anyone seeking answers to these questions.

Artificial intelligence can help improve SEO strategies by providing intelligent solutions for personalization and data analysis.

Make it a habit to write an SEO title and a meta description for every page and post. These are the pieces of information that appear on search engine results pages, so they must be as enticing and relevant as possible.

Backlinks are another important component of SEO. The better other websites link to your content, the higher your rankings will be. This means that creating high-quality content that is relevant to your audience is a must if you want to successfully earn organic backlinks. Another way not only to increase your presence but also to gain some additional backlinks is to list your online platform in relevant online directories. Through your online platform marketing, ensure that you add your platform only to directories that are relevant to your business and that they are not spammy.

SEO takes time to work, but it will definitely pay off in the long run.

Online platforms like Udemy largely rely on SEO.

Affiliate Programs

With an affiliate program, you can encourage your users to attract more users and reward them with a percentage of the purchase price. Affiliate marketing is an effective strategy where partners promote your products through their platforms and receive a commission in return. With a lucrative affiliate program, you can quickly see improvements in your online platform marketing without having to do much yourself.

Use Email Marketing

In online platform marketing, it is not enough to simply send emails. You should consider different email lists that address the specific needs of each individual and can represent a personalized approach for your campaigns. Examine your customers’ purchasing habits closely and use this information to develop your strategy.

Getting Featured in Articles or News Stories

Collaborate with a PR professional on your online platform marketing strategy to get your service featured in articles and news stories related to topics connected to what you do. This will not only help establish your platform as a trusted resource but also make it accessible to an even broader audience.

Write Online Press Releases

When you use online press releases, your information is presented in a formal framework. This allows newspapers, blogs, or other media outlets to view your information and write articles about your company without you having to worry about pitching or connecting a story.

Use PR

PR is still a very powerful weapon in a marketer’s arsenal. Without hiring your own PR agency, there are several steps you can take to implement some PR. After significant news or updates, it is worthwhile to distribute a press release, as you never know who might pick it up.

Optimize Your Sales Funnel

Another important aspect that operators should focus on in online platform marketing is optimizing their sales funnel. By tracking and measuring everything and making consistent improvements, they can earn more money.

Create Incentives

If possible, offer free trials, especially if your online platform is one-sided, meaning you as the platform operator are directly selling the product.

Online platforms like Airbnb offer various incentive programs, such as discounts for their loyal users.

Paid Advertising

Use paid advertising, such as Google Adwords or Facebook, to attract new potential prospects. Although these channels are expensive, when applied correctly, they can multiply your return on investment many times over. Do not neglect this—hire a professional to handle it.

Conclusion

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