C2C Marketplaces: Offering Promotional Code Operations, Good or Bad Idea?

Today's consumers are on the lookout for all the good deals the internet has to offer them.

This economic trend benefits classified ad sites between individuals, which see their number and traffic increase significantly. These platforms on which individual buyers and sellers exchange services and exchange services are modernizing and adopting logics already well established on traditional marketplaces such as payment and delivery. But what about promotional operations?

Marketplaces between individuals are modernizing

Today, large peer-to-peer sales platforms offer features that aim to reduce the user experience gap that consumers may experience when trading on a CtoC platform or a traditional marketplace.

The addition of these different integrated services aims to generate more trust, but also an increase in transactions. However, to make the experience as fluid and establish it as a lasting part of consumption habits, it is necessary to take into account the expectations of Internet users as a whole.

Promotional codes on a marketplace between individuals: expense or investment?

It is legitimate to question the interest or not of offering promotional codes on a peer-to-peer sales site. In fact, individual sellers will not want to finance the marketing operations of the platform, but will recover the fruits of their sales as much as possible, and have no interest in further reducing their earnings for products already sold at a lower price.

On the other hand, the platform owner has every interest in avoiding significant commissions and costs attributable to the seller and the buyer, so that the latter continue to sell and buy with each other without changing ad sites. .

It then appears that the only one able to finance promotional operations allowing reductions to be applied to the purchases of individual buyers is the owner of the marketplace. But the equation seems complex: the margins must be low so as not to scare away users, and promotional codes will further reduce them. It can then be easy to decide in favor of a position stating that promotional codes on peer-to-peer marketplaces are expenses that eat into the margin. This is when it is important to think further.

A virtuous investment to increase transactions, retain users and differentiate yourself from the competition

It is important to keep one word in mind: growth!

Today the individual to individual market is becoming structured and giants are emerging on the market or confirming their positions. To take advantage of this growing market and create traffic, it is essential to invest.

Financing promotional campaigns will indeed reduce margins, if not generate small losses, but the game is worth the effort. Indeed, it is above all a virtuous strategy capable of generating short or medium term gains:

Attract Internet users: For a marketplace between individuals to exist, it needs sellers and buyers. Sellers will post their ads on popular platforms where they have a maximum chance of finding a buyer, and buyers will favor platforms with a wide choice in order to influence prices and ensure they find what they are looking for. . This loop, which undeniably favors the major players in the sector, is however not inevitable for the smaller platforms in place or which are launching into the individual to individual market.

Promotional codes allow you to trigger “test” behavior among Internet users who will try to sell or buy on your platform to the extent that the seller will not change his profit, but the buyer will pay less via the use of your reduction coupon. This strategy will create new opportunities for recruiting potential users.

Retain Internet users: Once a user is recruited, you have to make them stay. This is the hardest part, as supply and demand must balance on a peer-to-peer sales platform. Frustrated sellers who don't sell will be frustrated, and buyers who can't find what they want will look elsewhere.

Promotional codes will create much stronger sales and purchase opportunities, maximizing the “good deals” aspect, to the advantage of buyers and sellers who will benefit from a community hungry for good deals with a feeling of accomplishment in positive consumption.

Offering discounts generates consumer recognition of the platform, promoting attachment and a desire to grow it to continue to benefit from advantages.

Multiply transactions: Even if promotional codes potentially reduce the margin on CtoC marketplace transactions that its owner can receive, the multiplication of transactions has the potential to mitigate the loss, if not to completely compensate or generate it new benefits. Indeed, it seems logical that it is much more interesting to build an active community and generate, for example, 100 transactions with a gain of 3%, than to lead a smaller group generating around ten transactions for a margin of 5%.

The increase in transactions will also automatically lead to the arrival of new users, who will also carry out transactions.

What promotional code strategy should you adopt on a CtoC marketplace?

Two strategies stand out strongly when it comes to offering discounts on a peer-to-peer sales platform :

Multiple-use promotional codes : These codes are offered to the entire community, over a specific period in order to encourage them to make massive transactions. These codes can be used by all users, and distributed in different ways: banners or inserts on the platform, email or SMS campaigns, social networks, etc.

Single-use promotional codes : These codes can only be used once, by a single user. They are stimulation tools, serving broader operations. For example, a single-use promotional code can be considered as a voucher, and be offered as a win in a competition, as a reward after completing a survey, etc. These codes make it possible to energize communities by offering gains or rewards to encourage them to react or carry out actions.

With these two types of promotional codes, it becomes easy to deploy strategies for animation, loyalty and revitalization of communities on marketplaces between individuals.

Promotional codes with Obvy

Obvy offers its clients (marketplaces, e-commerce sites, software solutions, etc.) an all-in-one transactional solution including dozens of integrated services (payment, delivery, dispute management, administration, security, etc.) including the creation of promotional campaigns.

It is possible to create single or multiple use codes, define their validity period, choose maximum budgets, and monitor the overall performance of promotional operations by accessing numerous data such as the number of uses, user profiles who use the codes, etc.

Accelerate the growth of your CtoC marketplace today by integrating the Obvy solution into your marketplace in order to centralize all the services you need through a complete and unique solution, in order to seize new business development opportunities. simple, quick and economical way.