w hat ’ s the B u z z ?
Gumtree Automotive launches new management tool for motor industry
Gumtree Automotive has announced the launch of a
new inventory and ad management system that will
“change the game” for car dealerships in the country.
stock, with tiered access levels which mean that
corporate management, dealer principals and
even individual salespeople can tap into the
system and use it during their day-to-day
operations.
The system known as the Gumtree Automotive
Inventory Tool (GAIT) is modelled on what proved
to be a highly successful platform for Canadian
classifieds giant Kijiji.ca and is known to significantly
bolster online car sales for dealerships and brokers.
“A corporate sales manager may want to have
a holistic view of the stock levels across branches
to extract data and purchasing decisions,” Osborne
explains.
According to Jeff Osborne, head of Gumtree Automotive and
former CEO of the Retail Motor Industry Association (RMI), that
far from being a mere ad management tool on Gumtree, the
product has the potential to resolve numerous issues that has
plagued the car market for years.
“If he notices that certain models or brands perform better
in one province than the other, he can adjust their tactics or
redistribute stock.
A dealer principal may use it to drive a special promotion
home with exciting graphic design overlays, bump-ups
and eventually, videos. Information can also be exported or
imported from any format for presentation purposes.”
“The implications of signing on go far beyond merely selling more
cars on Gumtree. We wanted to give dealerships access to a tool
that would be useful on a day-to-day basis,” says Osborne.
“We believe that it speaks to issues as such staff and customer
service management, national and regional store management
in terms of stock control and even in-store marketing efforts as
well.”
However sales do remain at the heart of the product. “This is
the first true online sales tool for dealerships in South Africa.
They are able to upload their photos as per usual, but also
overlay logos and text professionally to enhance brand
visibility...A/B testing has already shown that this small
change can impact online sales significantly,” says Osborne.
Dealerships can now use intuitive dashboards to gain a
comprehensive snapshot of their en tire inventory and manage
“They can also view leads in real-time and plug into their
existing lead management tools to see how effective their
ads (or their sales people!) are, and adjust their budgets
accordingly.
Best of all, everything is controlled via a central online
dashboard, granting visibility and control over the entire
process and allowing dealerships to access their portal from
anywhere in the world.”
Osborne also says that it removes human error and the
painstaking process of typing out individual ads through
built-in access to information such as vehicle specs.
“There is an extensive list of pre-populated fields to select
and use to your advantage.
Effectively, Gumtree becomes another salesperson on the
floor.” Although the platform is monetised, Osborne says the
pricing compares quite favourably to dashboards on other car
sites that have much less functionality and significantly less
traffic than Gumtree.co.za.
“A common complaint with dashboard systems that have
been launched in the past is that it becomes difficult to
manage spend or measure effectiveness, which is why we’ve
built GAIT to do both.
There is no contract, no commitment to a fixed monthly
spend and dealerships have full control over the ads in terms
of content and visuals.
The entire process is transparent: they can see how effective
their ads are, and make informed decisions based on that
information.”
| words in action
14
october 2014