Online marketplace company seeks to increase its footprint in Finland

Challenge

An international online marketplace company had a strong presence in international markets. However, their footprint in Finland was limited.

Brave the future

Classifieds market is divided into different verticals according to the listed product. Our work focused on the three main ones (i.e. real estate, motor and jobs). There were distinctive assessment areas:

• Underlying market trends impacting the classifieds business and its future growth trajectory
• Deep dives into the selected classifieds verticals and players
• Value creation opportunities of the most interesting marketplaces

In the first two assessment areas, there were two critical information sources for gathering data which was not publicly available: interviews of the marketplace customers (e.g. companies listing the ads) and market experts, and the web traffic and brand related analytics tools, such as SimilarWeb, ComScore and Penetrace. Both methods revealed insightful details about the marketplaces, customers, and end-customers. In the last phase, the limelight shifted from ‘fact pack’ crafting to identifying the growth opportunities and shortcomings of the most interesting marketplaces.

Impact

Increased knowledge about the Finnish market, marketplaces in each of the key verticals, and customer insights gave the company a valuable head start compared to its competitors, when a Finnish media house suddenly decided to divest its marketplace.