This is a question many first time users of B2B marketplaces ask themselves. A few expect that registration itself will bring them a number of new customers. In some cases this might by true! Especially, if you are a seller of some much coveted items. But for rest of us, things are a little trickier! A large B2B marketplace has a lot of suppliers of similar products, who are vying for attention of potential customers. To establish your company as a favored one among them is not an easy task! However, a little planning and thorough follow up of some basic guidelines improve your chance of getting noticed by buyers significantly.

Below, I outlined some of basic steps that you should take once you seriously decide to market your products using B2B marketplaces. 1 Write a nice profile When a prospective client sees your trade lead ad or your product on marketplace and feels interested, first thing he does is - checks your company profile out. That’s where buyer gets his initial information about your company. If you have a virtually blank profile with a very little information on your company, doubtful that potential client will even bother to make a request for quote. That’s why you should spend a little time on writing a nice company profile. Here are some aspects that you should emphasize on while writing your company profile.

Start your profile with something noteworthy about your company. This could be distinct quality that sets your business apart from your competition.

Describe your present customer base, target market and any new products or projects that you are planning to come up with.

Write a bit about your company history. When company was incorporated? What is business form?

If you have something to boast about, do it! If you feel that your sales figures are impressive, why not mention them.

Be brief! The profile should not be more than five paragraphs. You don’t want your buyers to get bored!

2 Include your logo on your Storefront page If you would like to separate your company from many other similar vendors, you have to think seriously about creating a brand for your company. Brand is distinctive pattern of your business operation. It portrays nature of your service or product, your uniqueness in comparison to others etc. A nice looking logo is a key to branding your company. Customers will remember your company name better if you have a great logo to go with.

As a business you probably understand that in order to stay competitive you must integrate ecommerce to your present business strategy. A little research will show you that there is an extensive array of technology and solutions for enterprise and web store building available in market. You also perceive that ecommerce sites can cost you from a mere couple of hundred bucks to hundreds of thousand of dollars. How to choose something from so many options that will exactly fit your present need?

Although, this might look like a daunting task, a little preparation will definitely help you taking right decision in your quest for an appropriate ecommerce solution. To understand your requirement better and create a proper ecommerce strategy, you have to ask yourself a number of questions. Below I jotted down some of questions that, hopefully, will spur your imagination.

* What should be look of my web store? * Do I need a database for my product catalog? * How should purchase order generate on my web store? * Do I need to handle different pricing system for dealers, wholesalers and end customers? * How do I bill my customers? * How easy can I make my web store to navigate? * How many search options should we have? * Can I show my customers a product comparison table? * What should be my merchant account gateway system? * Finally, how much should I invest to build my web store?

If building an ecommerce site from scratch feels too overwhelming to you and you are a small business, my suggestion is - to build a web store with one of providers similar to Yahoo, Bigstep, Rusbiz etc.

The web stores that you can build directly on Internet have all necessary features like shopping cart, product catalog and payment gateway as any regular ecommerce site. In most of cases, you construct web store online from templates and easy-to-use editor and you hardly need to know html or other script languages.

You can order your Web Store from Rusbiz right now.

The benefits of using a web store that you can build online are enormous.

Quick to build: If you have all materials handy, you can build a web store within a day.

Easy in use: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a fully functional ecommerce site. Step by step procedures of making pages from templates allow anybody to create a professionally looking web store in no time.

Affordable: Although, some of providers charge commissions on your sales, as Yahoo does, in most of cases your expenses are less than US$ 100 a month to have a good web store.