Are third-party platforms holding you back?

What do Booking.com, Rightmove and Deliveroo all have in common? They each offer genuinely valuable reach.

They make it easier for people to discover, compare and buy, and can put a business in front of customers who may never have found it otherwise.

The problem starts when that visibility boost turns into dependency.

When too much of your demand comes through someone else’s platform, more of the customer journey sits outside your control. The platform shapes how people discover you, how your business is presented, how customers compare you with competitors and, in many cases, how the transaction itself takes place.

Reach is useful, but dependency is expensive

The appeal of a third-party platform is obvious. It can create demand quickly, give businesses access to a much larger audience and reduce some of the effort involved in finding new customers.

For businesses trying to grow, that reach can be extremely valuable. But the economics change when the platform becomes one of your main routes to market.

Commission and acquisition costs reduce the value of each transaction. Access to customer data and direct communication is often limited. And because your business is presented alongside competitors, the customer is often comparing on the platform’s terms rather than engaging with the wider value of your brand.

Suddenly, you’re no longer selling your business but competing within someone else’s experience.

That distinction matters because the value of a strong brand runs much deeper than how it looks. It’s about customers recognising it, understanding what makes it different and having a reason to choose it. Third-party platforms can make that harder to communicate.

Your brand becomes the logo on the listing

Consider a hotel on Booking.com.

A potential guest might see your property next to ten others, compare prices, read reviews and make a decision without ever visiting your website.

The same thing happens on Rightmove. A buyer or renter can compare properties by price, location and features before they have any real sense of the business behind the listing.

On Deliveroo, the experience is even more compressed. Customers are choosing between restaurants inside a platform that controls the interface, search experience, ordering process and much of the communication.

In each case, the customer is discovering your business in someone else’s environment. Your brand becomes the logo on the listing. Your proposition is reduced to a handful of facts. And the experience around the purchase? This mostly belongs to the platform.

This makes it harder to communicate the things that make you different, particularly when competitors are only one click away.

It also makes it harder to build direct preference. If the customer relationship begins and ends with the platform, there’s less opportunity to create recognition that extends beyond that particular transaction.

The platform’s not the issue, it’s the dependency

This is where the conversation can become too simplistic. The answer isn’t necessarily to stop using Booking.com, Rightmove or Deliveroo. For many businesses, these platforms are an important source of demand and will remain part of the marketing mix.

The more useful question is what happens alongside them.

• If a first-time guest discovers your hotel through Booking.com, do they have a reason to book directly next time?
• If someone finds your property through Rightmove, do they have a clear sense of who you are, what you offer and why they should explore further?
• If someone orders from your restaurant through Deliveroo, do they remember the restaurant afterwards, or simply the platform they used to find it?

Every transaction creates an opportunity to build a relationship. But that relationship is difficult to develop when the customer only ever interacts with you through a third party.

Give customers a reason to come direct

So the answer isn’t strictly to stop using third-party platforms. It’s to build enough direct demand that you don’t depend on them.

That starts with giving customers a reason to choose you when they have a choice. A distinctive proposition, a stronger brand, a better experience and a website that gives people somewhere to engage with the business directly all help move the relationship beyond the platform.

Marketing then needs to create demand outside those platforms, through search, content, social, email, PR, partnerships and paid activity.

So don’t aim to replace every third-party booking, enquiry or order. Instead, aim to provide other routes into the business and make sure that third-party platforms remain just one part of your acquisition strategy, not the strategy itself.

Direct demand starts with recognition

The more distinctive your brand and proposition are, the easier it becomes to build demand beyond the platforms that introduced you.

A hotel with a recognisable proposition gives people something to remember beyond the room they booked.

A property business with a clear point of view can become more than the name attached to a listing.

A restaurant with a strong identity gives customers a reason to seek it out rather than simply choosing whatever appears at the top of a delivery app.

This is where brand, website and marketing need to work together. The brand creates recognition and preference. The website helps turn that preference into confidence and action. Marketing keeps the business visible in places where the platform doesn’t control the entire customer journey.

The customer experience then has to deliver on what the brand promised. Without that consistency, it’s difficult to turn one-off platform transactions into direct relationships and repeat demand.

The opportunity is bigger than the transaction

There’s also a risk in thinking about direct demand purely as a booking, enquiry or online order. For many businesses, the commercial value comes from what happens afterwards.

A hotel can build loyalty through the guest experience, email communication and repeat booking.

A property business can develop trust through expertise, useful content and relationships that continue beyond a single listing.

A restaurant can give customers reasons to visit directly, follow the brand, join a mailing list or return to its own website rather than relying on an app every time.

The opportunity is to build a customer relationship that extends beyond the point at which the third-party platform has done its job. That requires the different parts of the business to work together.

The proposition on your website needs to reflect the brand people see elsewhere. Marketing needs to reinforce what makes you different. And the experience needs to give customers a reason to come back.

The goal isn’t to ditch the third-party platforms

Third-party platforms are useful. They can help you reach new audiences, fill capacity and generate demand that would be difficult or expensive to create alone.

The goal is not to remove them from the picture entirely. It is to build the recognition, preference and direct demand that prevents your business from depending on them for every transaction.

Third-party platforms can help you reach new customers. Your brand, website and marketing should give those customers a reason to choose you again.