Digital marketplaces are evolving to be the dominant sales channel for brands, especially for small, agile manufacturers. These brands are capitalizing on the droves of people who are shopping on these sites. But this disruptive model requires manufacturers to transform from the top down in order to have the same agility to succeed. This is unchartered territory for manufacturers. They need new capabilities to manage business performance and brand experience at the product level—and across countless marketplaces. With consumer demand heating up and agile competitors closing in, building a strong digital marketplace strategy is not optional.

Many companies have responded to the marketplace's fragmentation by managing each one separately, delivering basic content to each, and crafting brand experiences based on gut instinct or readily available content. But superhero players will take a holistic approach. They'll transform their organizations into cross-functional teams that manage across marketplaces, customize content to differentiate products and brands, use data-driven experimentation and automation to optimize performance at scale, and tap into these marketplaces for insights that can fuel growth. By doing so, they will harness their superpowers for superior performance in the next wave of brand experiences.