This week we had the opportunity to speak with Craig Bittin, Director of Marketing for Boatbound. If you’re not already familiar with Boatbound, it’s a boat rental marketplace for anyone to rent a boat from someone who owns one! Brilliant, right?

Based on our conversation, we’re excited to share with you 6 ways to build your supply.  Don’t see a tip that worked for you? Share it in the comments section!

1. Get to Know Your Customers

A community is essential for a peer-to-peer transaction to exist. When you’re starting off, you need to meet the people who would benefit from your marketplace. Find where they are-meetups, expos, conferences, association meetings, town hall meetings, tweet chats and the like. How do they talk about the product or service? Take note of the language and use it to craft your messaging.

Learn more about Creating a Community in our white paper.

2. Use Grassroots Marketing Techniques

At first, you’ll need to do a lot of “on the ground work” and that’s just the reality of it. Host local events, pass out fliers and be a part of the community. The offline relationships you make will translate online. Send a team with branded t-shirts to industry or community events. Highlight the benefit of listing with you.

3. Create Promotional Material

Don’t forget about fliers, business cards, informative pieces that showcase your marketplace as a professional business. If you’re marketplace website isn’t up yet, create a landing page for those who are interested in participating so that potential users can submit their email and be notified about your launch. This is a great way to start building buzz. Make sure your messaging is consistent but feel free to highlight different benefits depending on the audience.

4. Treat your First Adopters like Gold

It’s important to nurture the relationships with the people who decide to list their item or service with you. They’re trusting your platform without any reason but belief in YOU. Communicate with them often. Create a Facebook group or email list just for them and empower them to share your marketplace with their friends by assisting them with what they need to be successful. Content on how to market your listing or how to photograph your product or best places in town to hire a professional boat cleaner are helpful to someone listing for the first time.  

5. Work on the Experience

Make sure the experience you offer is worth participating in. For example, what keeps someone listing on your marketplace versus seeking out customers on their own? Quality customer service is crucial for retention and increases referrals from your initial userbase. Address the pain point of otherwise not using your marketplaces and highlight how you are the solution--and actually BE the solution.

Learn more about Adding Value Beyond the Transaction in our white paper.

6. Don’t Ignore Content Marketing

Create useful content on social media and on your blog that leaves people wanting more. Be the “expert” in your industry and always provide a call to action for people to engage in your marketplace. Make sure your title tags and SEO is on point so people can find you when searching basic key phrases or words like “rent a boat” on the web. Consider Facebook ads and marketing to people who could list on your site. Infographics and visuals help people understand what you do, build your brand and drive traffic to your website.

Just remember, building supply is part of the process and it will take time. Brands who already have a community might have it easier but that doesn’t mean that you can’t build supply on your own. Tap into your existing network, send email invitations and get out there! You have to start somewhere.  

Watch a webinar on our white paper on “8 Best Practices to Creating a Peer-to-Peer Marketplace”  for more tips or tweet Craig @CSBattin. 

Would you like to add to this list or have a specific questions on building supply? Post a comment below!