subject: Craigslist Marketing For Your Online Business [print this page] 48 million people use Craigslist every month48 million people use Craigslist every month. Craigslist is now the seventh-most popular English language Web site in the world, hosting more than 12 million ads.
So, does that sound like a good place to promote your products and/or services?
Although thousands of companies use Craigslist effectively, many are just wasting their time. If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it!
The Market
Before you start posting ads on Craigslist, you need to make sure your type of product or service is even in demand via this classified ad giant.
Analysis of major American cities shows that erotic services consistently has the highest number of individual visitors on Craigslist. In fact, they have almost always twice as many visitors as the next ranking category, averaging 265,000 people per city. Men seeking men enjoys the top 5 status each month. They constituent over 50% more pages and 20 more minutes searching these posts than any others; from apartment rentals to items for baby.
Casual encounters as well as personals for women seeking men score high visitor volume as well.
The next most frequented venue outside of this virtual match making, you might even consider it a prostitution section of Craigslist, is cars for sale.
So, you must figure these statistics into your decision if you want to advertise on Craigslist. Because even though the initial numbers look mind boggling, when you break them down, though still enormously good, they look a little more modes for the average business, unless you are selling cars.
However, there is still plenty of traffic in most of the other categories to make advertising on Craigslist very profitable, particularly if you know what you're doing.
Bellow I am going to teach you the basics of making your Craigslist advertising worth your while.
Re-Post Your Ads Every Two Days (48 Hours)
Ads get pushed down the list as new ads are posted. As with search engines, people only click on the first posts, unless they are searching for something in particular.
You won't always be at the because Craigslist won't allow you to post the same ad repeatedly every few minutes, but they do permit you to place it every 2 days, or 48 hours. Also, beware of the time your post your ads. If you post it at 2 in the morning hardly anybody will see it.
Follow the Rules
Follow the rules. If you try to fool Craigslist, they'll eventually catch up with what you're doing and they'll cancel your account.
1.You can't post the same ad to two different cities
2.You can't post the same ad more often than every 48 hours
3.You can't create multiple accounts to post more often.
Write Titles that Stand Out
Potential customers will see hundreds, if not thousands of listings and will click only a few of them. Make sure your title leaps out at them. Here are a few ideas:
Use headline case.
Use symbols, such as $, oe",%, +, ", #, , /, etc.
Ask a question, such as, "Have You Tried Every Diet and You still don't loose any weight?
Use Keywords
In the example above, I included the keyword "Weight Loss", which is what most people will be search for when looking for a weight loss product or treatment.
Address Your Ads to the Local Community
Note how in the previous example I mentioned that my treatment is available for people who live in Seattle. People like dealing with local businesses better.
Use a Soft Call to Action
Don't ruin everything by asking people to buy your expensive product or hire your expensive services in your ad. Ask for something less, like requesting a free estimate, downloading a free report or video, or whatever else would work for your business. Capture their information and give them something of value, then you can start marketing to them without being pushy.
Try Different Formats
Every product and service is different. Test everything, from headlines to formats to approaches, to calls to action, and figure out what works.
Try Other Classified Sites Too
Although Craigslist is the king of the classifieds, there are other sites that get lots of traffic too. It's always best not to put all your eggs into one basket, so it is best to place the same ads you place on Craigslist on Kijiiji.com, Friendster's OLX (olx.friendster.com), AdlandPro.com, USFreeads.com and Backpage.com as well.
