Winning at Scale: Practical Tactics to Grow and Differentiate Your Marketplace

If there’s a single thread that binds the most successful marketplaces together, it’s their ability to evolve—quickly, wisely, and always with customer value at the core. As digital commerce accelerates, customers expect more choice, greater flexibility, and frictionless experiences.

For marketplace operators, catalog expansion isn’t just about more—it’s about the right more: unlocking new revenue streams, increasing customer stickiness, and building partnerships that create meaningful results.

As you scale your marketplace, here’s how to think strategically about catalog expansion, and why a deliberate approach is the best lever for sustainable growth. Let’s go!

Why catalog growth matters more than ever

Catalog expansion has become one of the most reliable drivers of marketplace growth. Every new solution or integration—be it a first-party offer developed in-house, a third-party app, or a product from distributors like Ingram Micro or TD Synnex—opens another pathway for customers to explore and purchase. A thoughtfully curated catalog not only diversifies your revenue, but also improves the customer experience and positions your marketplace as central to your buyers’ operations.

This need for a dynamic, comprehensive catalog is heightened by the changing expectations of today’s buyer. In fact, 51% of B2B buyers are now millennials—digital natives who prefer seamless, self-serve digital experiences and increasingly choose to buy through marketplaces over traditional channels (Canalys). These buyers aren’t just looking for products; they want a platform that offers robust ecosystems, access to expert guidance, and the ability to discover, compare, and purchase with ease. As technology priorities shift toward cybersecurity, AI, and digital transformation, keeping your catalog fresh, relevant, and expansive isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s essential for scaling your business and staying ahead of market expectations.

But real growth comes from understanding:

• Which additions will truly enhance your offer?

• How will new offers impact cross-sell and upsell opportunities?

• What processes ensure both partners and customers have a seamless, consistent experience?

Let’s look at how successful operators approach these questions.

Lessons from leading marketplace operators

Top marketplace operators understand that catalog growth isn’t about sheer quantity. It’s about value, cohesion, and operational excellence. These leading brands go beyond adding products indiscriminately; they dig into customer purchasing data and feedback to identify true gaps—then fill them with solutions that solve real problems. The strongest marketplaces gather ongoing input from top customers, pairing it with internal analytics to build a pipeline of additions rooted in genuine demand.

Build a well-rounded catalog

Achieving staying power in a competitive market takes a blended approach:

• First-party solutions offer more control and higher margins.

• Third-party apps bring in new expertise and use cases.

• Distributors like Ingram Micro and TD Synnex allow for rapid catalog scale, letting operators address niche or fast-emerging needs without reinventing the wheel.

Mapping out which solution types best fit your users’ workflows is an ongoing process—and the key to maintaining relevance as needs evolve.

Streamline integration and operations

Bringing new offers into your marketplace shouldn’t introduce friction—for your team, for your customers, or for your partners. Centralized platforms like AppDirect allow you to automate onboarding, compliance, and pricing updates, whether you’re welcoming a single ISV or bringing on entire distributor catalogs. Fast, accurate integrations ensure products are easy to find, purchase, and support, no matter the source.

Empower your vendor and developer partners

A healthy ecosystem depends on its participants. The marketplaces that scale best provide vendors and developers with clear onboarding, rich analytics, and up-to-date self-service tools. Making it easier for partners to launch and improve their offerings translates into a stickier, more vibrant catalog—and a better overall customer experience.

ACP Group: Proof that strategic expansion delivers

ACP Group, a leading IT service provider, is a standout example of how a well-executed, strategic approach to catalog growth can transform marketplace performance and customer value.

ACP’s strategic goals for catalog growth

For ACP, expanding the catalog wasn’t just about quantity—it was about building deeper customer connections and driving real platform engagement. A key priority was finding a solution capable of streamlining the resale of complex products, like Microsoft’s cloud suite, and ensuring seamless compliance with programs such as Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE).

Their core goals included:

• Increasing the overall offering and encouraging customers to spend more time on the platform.

• Creating cross-sell and upsell opportunities across their customer base.

• Using each new vendor integration as a way to broaden customers’ understanding of their full portfolio and solutions.

• Strengthening supplier relationships while giving those suppliers an additional promotional channel for key campaigns.

How ACP Group put strategy into action—and saw results

ACP recognized early that growing the catalog would only deliver true value if relationships, contracts, and services were managed with care and precision. Constant monitoring and analysis became critical—ensuring integrations weren’t just added, but optimized for both the customer and the business.

Each third-party integration combined the technical capabilities of vendors, AppDirect’s orchestration tools, and ACP’s strategic oversight to unlock better results and maximize cross-sell potential. ACP’s approach also emphasized the importance of ongoing lifecycle management—continually cleansing and updating both customer and vendor data to ensure accuracy and performance at every stage.

The impact has been significant: by managing these processes rigorously, ACP successfully increased both customer platform engagement and revenues, utilizing their expanded catalog as a key lever for growth.

ACP’s tips for every marketplace operator

• Enable vendor and topic filtering in the catalog (e.g., filters for “security” solutions), which simplifies the discovery process for customers.

• Incorporate timely vendor news and offer self-service tools so customers can act on opportunities without external intervention.

• Actively monitor APIs and perform regular consistency checks; monthly reporting on key performance indicators is essential to track progress and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

ACP’s experience demonstrates that strategic catalog expansion is about more than numbers—it’s about carefully crafted additions, operational excellence, and a relentless focus on both the supplier and customer experience.

Want to learn more about how ACP Group is driving growth through catalog expansion? Watch this webinar on demand.

Unlock revenue and customer loyalty

When it comes to scaling your marketplace, the payoff is twofold. Thoughtful catalog expansion opens up new lines of revenue and supports cross-sell and upsell opportunities. And with every relevant solution added, your marketplace becomes more ingrained in your customers’ daily operations, making it harder for them to look elsewhere.

Learn, connect, and scale at Thrive 2025

If you’re looking to future-proof your marketplace and accelerate sustainable growth, join us for the Thrive 2025 breakout session, “Scaling your marketplace: strategies for catalog expansion.” You’ll hear battle-tested advice from marketplace operators, explore the details of integrating with top distributors, and see how AppDirect lets you move faster—while keeping your marketplace cohesive, relevant, and profitable.

Build a marketplace that isn’t just growing—one that’s scaling with purpose.

Register for Thrive 2025 today and take your marketplace to the next level: www.appdirect.com/thrive