Back to Basics: Response Rate and Time
Written by Kelsey Phillips, Account Manager
Responding to your customers’ inquiries - and quickly - is crucial to having a successful OfferUp campaign. If messages go unanswered, you’re leaving leads, and potentially money, on the table. Here are a few quick stats to consider highlighting the importance of responding to messages quickly on OfferUp:
79%: Amount of customers in an online poll were satisfied with live chat/messaging, purely due to response speed.
62%: The likelihood a potential OfferUp customer responds back to you if you reply in less than 2 minutes.
35%: The likelihood of a potential OfferUp customer responding back to you if you take 3 or more hours to respond.
Make sure you and your sales team are prepared to capture and respond to those leads! Here are three tips to help improve your team’s response time:
Turn on push notifications so you can receive alerts for every new message.
If possible, give multiple employees account access who can monitor leads. There is no limit to how many devices can be logged in with one OfferUp account - utilize the app on multiple devices and your desktop computer.
Determine each week or month who on your team is the designated “first responder” to respond to your leads on OfferUp. This will allow your dealership to quickly respond to those inquiries and give the customer the sense they are chatting with a person in real time each time they reach out.
Marketing News: Market Share and Share of Voice (SOV)
Written by John Chris Horne, Senior Account Manager
What is Market Share?
Simply put, market share is a key indicator of a company’s competitiveness. It’s calculated by dividing your company sales by industry sales - or your sales by your total local market’s sales, if you want to calculate your “local” market share.
Market Share = Total Company Sales / Total Industry Sales
How is Share of Voice (SOV) different?
The two metrics are similar in concept, as each calculates how well you do versus your competitors. But while market share refers to the percentage you earn with regard to sales, share of voice (SOV) refers to the percentage of the discussion you earn across various marketing channels. It can be applied to social mentions, organic searches, and as we’ll discuss here, a brand’s share of paid advertising in a competitive marketplace.
Share of voice helps you measure the success of your marketing campaigns. It tells you how well your ads, social media mentions, and even website traffic compare to your competition. It’s important because it can correlate with market share and revenue - the more you dominate the conversation online, the more market share you typically have.
Do you know your SOV?
Here’s a simple breakdown. Let’s say there are only 100 ads available in your entire city. Your business made the decision to own the market and you purchased 65 of the 100 ads available. Now your SOV in your city is 65%!
This means:
More of your vehicles are shown on the ads shown in your city than any other dealership in the city, and
You’ve limited the advertising exposure your competitors can have in your city
How are you increasing your SOV?
Schedule some time with OfferUp to make sure your business gets ahead of the competition and is constantly looking for ways to increase your SOV.
Best Practices for the Slow Season
Written by Omar Diaz, Account Manager
It’s coming! The days are getting shorter and the weather is a little cooler. As we approach the fall and winter seasons, dealers understand it’s the time of the year when lead traffic tends to slow down. Account Managers at OfferUp speak to dealers every day and understand some of the challenges these months bring.
Our recommendation for approaching the slow season is to consider the best practices laid out in this article. These tips can help your business stay relevant during the winter months and help cultivate a strategic advantage over the competition.
Program Review:
Use this time to take “inventory” of your OfferUp Motors marketing program:
Meet with your OfferUp Account Manager and review your account. Inventory evolves and so should the strategy and marketing program.
Review what’s working and what is not. Talk with your Account Manager regularly - they can provide you with recommendations that could help your marketing program as it involves OfferUp Motors.
Maximize Your Inventory Exposure:
Having the right amount of exposure can make a difference. A dealer with more cars on the lot could benefit from using Promoted Placements to better highlight their inventory.
Utilize your Promoted Placements on the right inventory. Dealers have the option of selecting 1 of 4 categories to promote.
Re-think the Importance of Engagements:
Respond to every message. Following the old saying, “people buy from people,” treat every prospect that comes through the app like gold and start cultivating that relationship.
Reduce your response time. The most successful dealers respond in 5 minutes. A car shopper is not going to wait hours to hear from you. Keep in mind, they’ve probably also sent other dealers a message as well.
Your Account Manager is your partner, and they want to see you succeed as much as you want to sell cars! Let us help assess your current marketing program so you can utilize OfferUp Motors to benefit your business.
“I’d like to discuss financing options….”
We all want to make it easy for vehicle shoppers to connect with dealers. More importantly, we want to encourage better conversations to help you identify the most interested (and serious) buyers.
To that end, in early October, we’ll start prompting a portion of OfferUp car shoppers with the following suggested message options when they click to chat about a dealer-listed vehicle:
“I’d like to set up a time to test drive”
“I’d like to see more photos of the vehicle”
“I’d like to discuss financing options for this vehicle”
This means you may start receiving more of these specific chat phrases in the next few weeks, as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more quality leads to your showroom door. If all goes as planned, we’ll roll it out to all users in the very near future. Feel free to reach out to your Account Manager if you have any questions, and happy selling!
Have You Checked Out OfferUp’s Concierge Chat?
Are you interested in selling more vehicles with less work? Did you know that a recent consumer survey revealed that 41% of consumers prefer live chat over phone and that 79% of customers in an online poll were satisfied with live chat/messaging, purely due to how fast they got a response?
OfferUp’s Concierge Chat takes chats off your to-do list with a guaranteed response time of less than 2-minutes. Our trained Concierge agents will respond to all of your messages, ask the right questions, and get qualified buyers for you. With Concierge Chat, you tell us what you want from user inquiries via chat, and we take care of the rest.
A quick response time is a critical first step in closing a sale, and with Concierge Chat you can sit back and concentrate on selling your cars instead of worrying about quickly responding to all of your messages coming in. For more information on our Concierge Chat service, reach out to your Account Manager.