Skip to content

Advertise the side you're short of

Most marketplace social spend goes to buyers because buyers are easier to talk to. If supply is the constraint, every buyer you attract makes the experience worse.

What's different here

The defining discipline in marketplace social is knowing which side is currently the bottleneck and having the restraint to advertise only that one. Demand marketing into a supply shortage produces buyers who search, find nothing, and never return — you have spent money to burn first impressions. It is a genuinely uncomfortable position to hold internally, because demand campaigns look better on every dashboard the company already watches.

+184%qualified supply signupsmarketplaces & platforms averageFrom Digital Squad client accounts. Orientation, not a guarantee — your starting point changes the range.

Marketplaces & Platforms clients

NorthwindLumen LabsHarborlineVerdantAtlas FoodsPoka HealthBrightsideCobalt BankMeridianArdentFoundryKestrel
Vertical-specific tactics

What social media looks like for marketplaces.

These are the plays that wouldn't appear on a generic social media page — they only make sense in marketplaces & platforms.

01

Supply-side recruitment content, built as earnings proof

The person you need is evaluating this as work. What moves them is specific and unglamorous: real earnings ranges, how quickly the first job arrives, what the fees actually are, and existing providers saying so in their own words. Aspirational lifestyle creative performs badly with an audience deciding where to spend their working week.

02

Sequence by geography, not by budget

Marketplaces are liquid or illiquid locally, not nationally. Concentrating spend until one metro reaches genuine liquidity, then moving on, beats spreading the same budget across ten cities where nobody can complete a transaction. This is the single most common structural error we see in marketplace media plans.

03

Measure against fill rate, not signups

A supply campaign that adds providers in a city already saturated has spent money for nothing, while the dashboard shows growth. We tie campaign reporting to the fill or match rate in each market so the media plan responds to where the shortage actually is.

04

Let providers be the channel

Existing supply has direct reach into exactly the audience you want — people doing the same work. A structured referral programme with real incentives generally out-recruits paid social per acquired provider, and the providers it brings in retain better because someone they know is already there.

The constraints

What holds marketplaces back

01

The cold-start problem

Buyers leave because supply is thin; suppliers leave because there's no demand. Both sides churn and neither reaches critical mass.

02

You're spread across too many categories

Marketing eleven categories at once means none reaches liquidity. Concentration feels risky and is almost always the right call.

03

You're measuring GMV, not match rate

GMV can grow while the core experience gets worse. Match rate and time-to-first-match are the health metrics that actually predict retention.

04

Supply-side churn is invisible

Suppliers who receive no requests quietly stop responding. By the time it shows in your numbers, the damage is done.

What's included

The full scope.

Everything in a social media engagement, applied to marketplaces & platforms.

01

Content strategy & pillars

A defined point of view, 4–6 content pillars, and repeatable formats your audience learns to recognize and expect.

02

Full content production

Static graphics, carousels, short-form video, and copy — produced, scheduled, and published for you.

03

Platform-native adaptation

Each platform gets content built for its behavior, not one asset resized five ways.

04

Community management

Comment and DM response within business hours, with escalation paths for support and sales conversations.

05

Creator & influencer partnerships

Sourcing, negotiation, briefing, and performance tracking for creator collaborations.

06

Social listening

Brand mention monitoring, competitor tracking, and trend identification feeding back into the content calendar.

07

Owned-audience funnels

Lead magnets, link-in-bio funnels, and email capture that convert social attention into a list you actually control.

08

Monthly performance reporting

Engagement, growth, and social-attributed revenue — plus what we learned and what changes next month.

The process

How this runs.

  1. Audit & positioning

    Weeks 1–2

    Analyze your current social, your competitors, and your audience. Define the point of view that will make you distinctive.

  2. Build the system

    Weeks 2–3

    Content pillars, format templates, brand kit, and a 90-day calendar mapped to business goals.

  3. Produce & publish

    Ongoing

    Batch production, approval workflow, and consistent publishing across every managed platform.

  4. Engage & grow

    Daily

    Active community management, proactive engagement in your niche, and creator partnerships.

  5. Analyze & double down

    Monthly

    Monthly review of what resonated, then reallocating production toward the formats that are working.

Investment

Scoped like the core service, no surcharge.

Every engagement is quoted from your actual brief. There's no vertical surcharge for this combination — request a quote and we'll scope it properly.

Presence

Brands needing consistent, quality output.

Scoped to your brief

  • 2 platforms managed
  • 16 posts/month
  • Content calendar & scheduling
  • Basic community management
  • Monthly reporting
Request a quote
Most popular

Growth

Brands treating social as a real acquisition channel.

Scoped to your brief

  • 4 platforms managed
  • 40 posts/month incl. short-form video
  • Daily community management
  • Creator partnerships (2/mo)
  • Social listening & trend response
  • Lead magnet & funnel build
  • Dedicated social strategist
Request a quote

Authority

Category leaders and executive brand building.

Scoped to your brief

  • Unlimited platforms
  • Daily publishing cadence
  • Executive / founder brand program
  • Full creator program management
  • Crisis & reputation monitoring
  • Dedicated content squad
Request a quote

All engagements start with a free audit. Prices exclude media spend, which you pay directly to the platforms on accounts you own.

Questions

Marketplaces & Platforms questions, answered straight.

By showing what demand growth costs when supply cannot serve it. Buyers who search and find nothing churn permanently and are far more expensive to re-acquire than to have waited for. The framing that works in a board conversation is that supply spend is the thing making demand spend efficient — and the number to bring is fill rate by market, not signup counts, because that is what turns an argument about priorities into an argument about arithmetic.

Social Media × Marketplaces & Platforms

Let's talk about your growth constraint.

Most marketplace social spend goes to buyers because buyers are easier to talk to. If supply is the constraint, every buyer you attract makes the experience worse.

Our commitment: First month is scoped as a paid pilot. If you're not happy with the content quality, we refund it in full.