Many companies have shifted from traditional business models into the new model of a many-to-many marketplace. With many jumping on board, competition has ramped up. So how can I ensure my marketplace is not falling into a slump leaving room for my competitors? Check out these 3 easy ways you can help ensure marketplace productivity.

Train your employees

Have you ever started at a new job and wondered, what should I be doing? I know I have and it’s a very awkward position to be. While you may have been brought on for your specific talents, not knowing how to implement them into a new workplace is tough. From what the do’s and don’t’s are, the steps you must take to make a change, or simply how to get the attention of your manager for a meeting. Nothing is worse than your employees not knowing what to do and how to do it.

Bigger companies with higher budgets have new employee programs that allow them to learn the culture and get accustomed to their new roles. It may range depending on the scale of your company from a few days to even weeks. The important thing you must do is to train your employees. Educate them on the ins and outs to help bring a sense of comfort within the company.

Identify your workflows

Does your have marketplace workflows in effect? Whether it is from the people, processes, or even production depending on your industry. Is there a defined workflow for your employees to follow in order to keep your clients moving down the sales funnel? For example, if your marketplace received a demo request what steps does your sales team take next? Are there automated emails sent once an inquiry is requested? Or do they reach out via email to gauge what interest they may have. The important thing is that processes are set to help increase your chances of capturing and closing more leads. Customer service is a huge key to success, so make sure your teams are on the same page.

Workflows must be identified across all departments of your marketplace to help increase your productivity. If there are tasks that can be automated through your workflows, go for it. However, I strongly am against automating human interaction. Your initial email or reach out is okay, but once you get a response from a potential customer, that is when your teams step in to take it from there to help personalize their experience.

Capture your data

Are you tracking the data from your customers and all the work you do? Monitoring and creating reports with numbers such as site visits, landing page and blog performance, can help improve your marketplace where needed. Tracking data every month is important to see what is and isn't working. Take larger samples when testing new changes such as a 3 month period rather than just 1 month. This gives a stronger indication of what should be changed moving forward to help your marketplace grow.

For example, if blog views continue to drop month over month, then your content strategy needs to be revisited. Engagement is being lost somewhere so keep track of any changes that have been made in that time period. Ask yourself “What has changed?” Have you changed the template for your blog or changed the frequency of your blogs being published? All these little changes can have a drastic effect on the user interface so keep an eye out for it.

Whether you are a people, places, product, or projects marketplace productivity is essential. Improvements are always needed to help keep working at a top notch level. Ask yourself, have I looked over the importance of these tips and how can I implement them?

If you are looking to improve your marketplace or make enhance to your platform, feel free to tweet us @NearMeCo! We would love to help in any way we can.