Why should I advertise on Marktplaats?

That was the question the owner of a dealership recently asked me in a meeting. The dealer, mostly offering nice cars in a somewhat higher price segment, didn’t think Marktplaats was the right platform for his store(s) and inventory.

I can answer that question in two ways: as an ambassador of #marktplaats I can say that he should of course advertise on Marktplaats, but then you get a bit of the ‘We from WC-Eend recommend WC-Eend’ story, and that is never my intention. My advice must be based on real data. So what was my answer?

Answers

Firstly, we car entrepreneurs have our own vision, opinion and sometimes gut feeling, but those do not represent the market. If eight million people visit Marktplaats every day to look for anything, then that is the mirror of Dutch society. Your customers are certainly among them. Maybe they are not in the market for your car when they’re looking for a vintage cupboard, but they are browsing the platform to look for something they need or like.

If they are then in the market for a nice BMW X5 from, let’s say 2023, where would they look first? On a platform they perhaps visit once every four years, or on Marktplaats where they searched for something else just yesterday? You can guess the answer…

Research by my Marktplaats colleagues also supports that answer with facts. (Norstat research) About 16% of visitors on Marktplaats look nowhere else but Marktplaats. These are people looking for cheap cars, but also for that BMW X5, because for them Marktplaats is the primary search engine for every search.

Verticals versus horizontals

Where the other portals are so-called verticals, offering only cars for example, Marktplaats is a so-called horizontal. That means the platform sells everything, and also cars, which in more than 80% of the cases are offered by professional car dealerships.

The other portals are all chasing the same customer and competing with each other, without attracting that 16% unique Marktplaats visitor. If you can’t find that BMW X5 on Marktplaats, then you continue your search elsewhere. For us as car companies, it’s a good thing there are four good portals, so prices don’t reach English or German proportions.

Way of communication doesn’t appeal…

However, what the dealer told me was that the way Marktplaats communicates does not suit him. That’s possible of course. But if you want to sell more and faster, then in terms of reach it’s better to stand on the digital A1 than on a digital B-road. You have to be able to adapt to the platform you are active on. Just look at social media. We categorize TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram under social media, but the way of communicating is totally different on all three platforms. What makes you successful on LinkedIn makes you miserable on Instagram.

Leads on Marktplaats are different, informal and fast. It is a Direct Messaging Platform, and that’s how you should communicate there. Don’t be formal as you would in response to an email inquiry. If I get the same request via ViaBOVAG and Marktplaats, my response is not the same. Suppose the customer asks whether the car is still available and what the lowest price is, then the answer via Marktplaats is as follows:

How nice that you’re interested in the Ligier JS60 Dci Sport Ultimate SUN! 😊 The car is currently available, but our inventory changes quickly. The sales price has been carefully determined based on the market value and condition of the car, and we offer a fair and transparent price. When would it suit you to come by for a test drive? 🚗 We’d be happy to schedule the appointment for you!

The same question, answered via ViaBOVAG:

Thank you very much for your interest. The car is currently still available. Just like our partner ViaBOVAG, we operate transparently, so you can be sure that the price is fairly and sharply set — including warranty and a clear maintenance history. The price listed is therefore the price you pay, without surprises afterwards. If you’d like to schedule a test drive or have further questions, I’d be happy to help. Kind regards, Team Experience Store Doesburg

You see that you can easily adapt to the platform you advertise on. If you don’t, then you won’t be successful on Marktplaats with the same follow-up approach. The dealer above responded to my answers as follows: “Yes fine Paul, but the leads are of poor quality.” That is perception, because the real data was not available. In that case, I gladly show our data from the Ligier Store Doesburg – Experience Center.

Then you can see that in my case the leads from Autotrack/Gaspedaal have the best quality. 33.3% convert into a sale. For ViaBOVAG that percentage is 29.4% and on Marktplaats it’s 17.5%. So yes, the leads from Marktplaats are ‘less’, but if you look at the numbers, you see the following:

• 183 Marktplaats leads and 32 cars sold = 17.5%
• 18 Autotrack/Gaspedaal leads and 6 cars sold = 33.3%
• 12 ViaBOVAG leads and 5 cars sold = 29.4%

Then I’d rather sell 32 cars…

So yes, sometimes you think your cars don’t belong on Marktplaats, but I’d say: give it a try. Adjust your way of lead follow-up and look at what you can and perhaps must improve based on the character of the platform you’re active on. Then you’ll see that Marktplaats works for you too!