Hello OC-friends,
In our previous blog post we talked about evaluating your competitive strengths in order to determine how your classifieds website could become successful in the market. Next step is to develop a strategy for your business. In this post we will discuss four strategies that can be used, applying your company’s unique strengths.
Traffic Sponsorship.
In this strategy you create partnerships with other leading classified sites in order to generate traffic, using their already existing buyers and sellers. This is a strategy that doesn’t involve a lot of risk. Media companies often use this strategy in co-operation with the bigger online classified websites on the market. This strategy provides the online classified company access to the traffic of the media company that is posting news. The online classifieds site almost always pays for the generated traffic and maybe an extra bonus if certain goals are achieved.
Sales and Marketing Partnership with Online Classified Sites.
Using this strategy you as a company expands the partnership with an online classifieds site, not only focusing on traffic. You use your current sales and marketing capabilities to promote the online classifieds partner and to sell advertisers on the classifieds website. This strategy involves more participation from both sides, but can bring huge benefits. An example of such a partnership is the New York Times that decided to partner up with Monster, the global job classifieds website.
Build Your Own Online Classified Site.
Choosing this option as your ultimate strategy, you decide to create your own independent online classifieds website. With Open Classifieds a site like this can be easily developed. If a company doesn’t have the technical know how, it can also choose for Yclas, which is a hosted solution for creating a classifieds website. This option doesn’t require any experience in building websites. Launching your own classifieds website offers of course major benefits, as you are completely independent and not necessarily have to work together with partners.
Build a Network for Your Online Classified Site.
Last but not least there is the option to build a network for your online classified site. Together with different other companies you will set up a classifieds website. This of course has advantages as costs can be shared over multiple companies. Next to that the website will have more power as the database of customers from the different companies can be used. This will lead to more generated traffic to the classifieds website and with that more sales.
Conclusion
Each strategy has its own different ways of putting yourself in the market. Based on the strengths of your company you should decide which strategy will suit you most and will be most beneficial. As new strengths are created and competition will respond to your actions, you should always continue to review and evolve your strategy for your classifieds website in order to remain competitive.
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