Article provided by Gumtree
In the past ten years, Gumtree has grown to be the largest local online classified, and one of the most visited web pages, with over 5 million unique browsers visiting the site every month. This attracted tens of thousands of local businesses to the site.
However, the site was not originally designed with businesses in mind and it became time-consuming to use the platform, says Barrie Swart, Head of Gumtree for Business: Property, Goods and Jobs. “Small businesses, especially the ones with low traffic to their websites (or with no website at all) rely on Gumtree for leads, so they were constantly having to log in, repost, and then unscramble their email chains to manage their customers. We had to come up with a solution.”
Gumtree for Business: ProTool was developed with SMEs in mind. “ProTool is essentially an intuitive dashboard that allows business owners to manage their Gumtree ads from a single login page. You can bump your ads to the top of the page, manage your stock, manage replies,” says Swart.
“There are three versions of the product – one for Property that is extremely useful for estate agents and landlords, one for Goods that focuses on retail businesses and one for Jobs, that can be used by recruiters or HR companies.”
Thousands of customers have already signed up to the platform and say that it has significantly reduced their admin time spent on Gumtree, while simultaneously increasing their leads.
ProTool customers also gain access to a Success Team, a call center that is solely focused on helping small businesses better manage their marketing efforts.
“We care about small businesses and the diversity and variety they bring to our platform,” says Swart. “There is a lot more investment planned for this product in the near future, all designed to help businesses sell more.”
Gumtree is a proud Partner of the NSBC.