Tweet

Craigslist Marketing

Guest post by: Jeremy Barker

Article Overview: Advertising on Craigslist is a good idea for most companies that have any type of goods or services to sell. Business owners see the financial gains of using Craigslist for advertising, regardless of whether their services are sold online or in brick and mortar stores.

Craigslist Marketing

Advertising on Craigslist is a good idea for most companies that have any type of goods or services to sell. Business owners see the financial gains of using Craigslist for advertising, regardless of whether their services are sold online or in brick and mortar stores. To begin with, Craigslist is different from other advertising venues in that there is minimal risk involved.

Placing advertising on Craigslist also helps you reach more people, hopefully more clients and customers. A study of the Craigslist performance report shows reliable data about the number of visitors the portal gets. Craigslist has ten million users and nearly four billion page hits monthly. When you see these figures, it is apparent that promotionals on Craigslist will be noticed by prospective customers.

There are infinite marketing opportunities with the multitude of visitors on Craigslist each month, although there is no guarantee that your offerings will interest any of the site’s patrons. Craigslist advertisements should reach their market by being eye-catching, accurate, and located logically in your targeted market.

We previously talked about the amount of visitors that use Craigslist monthly but the point to using this amount for your benefits is to have your advertising geared to reach your targeted market rather than the other group of people who are not interested in your items or services. You will benefit more by targeting a small group of people who are very interested in the goods or services you offer than by reaching out to a very large number of people who have no interest in what you offer. Your target audience are those people that are interested in your service or products.

Placing your marketing media in appropriate places is imperative to advertising success on Craigslist. Craigslist has a certain area for companies to be able to advertise their services to potential customers. This segment is subdivided into multiple listing groups. If you are offering computer maintenance and repair services, you should advertise in the computer section. Don’t advertise in the auto section, because people who want assistance with computer problems will naturally look at the computer section. It’s appropriate to put advertisements in multiple sections only if it covers multiple interests. This is okay provided that it does not cross the border and may be viewed as spamming the area.

If there is not a certain category for the goods or services your company is interested in selling, there are options you have. Craigslist allows companies to request other categories. They may be amenable to doing this in the event they feel this category deserves to be added to the listing.

While advertising on Craigslist falls into one category, spamming is a horse of a different color. Posting ads in many Craigslist websites to hit a larger geographic distribution can be considered spam; however, placing the ad in its appropriate section is perfectly valid. There are several reasons why spamming doesn’t work. No one likes to feel they are being spammed as interested customers might if they see the same ad all over the place and that has a negative effect on the business behind the ads.In addition, Craigslist will delete a spammer’s complete presence from the site.

Related Articles
  Yes, Craigslist is Pretty Amazing, But You Might Not Know the Whole Story
  Beyond Excellence: The "Berserk Standard"
  Craigslist Removes Adult Services Ads
  Creating the World’s Most Popular List: Craigslist is Born
  An Easy Way to Make Money With CraigsList
  De-Classifying Craigslist: How Newmark Took the Site to the Top
  Lesson #3: When we see something that could be done better, we do it
  14 Ideas To Earn Extra Money Online
  Lesson #1: “There’s no genius behind it. It’s persistence and listening to people.”
  Lesson #5: “Get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world”
  How to Get a Job on Craigslist
  Ramp Up Your MLM Lead Generation Fast With This Tactic Today...
  Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Three Common Myths
  This Is What A Revenue Generating Company Embodies
  Top Online Business Ideas to Start An Online Business
  How to Make Money Fast
  Creating Free Home Based Business Leads in 7 Days
  Lesson #4: “Treat People Like You Want to Be Treated”
  Lesson #3: Viral Marketing Could Be Vital For Your Business
  Lesson #2: “Getting out of the way is really important”

Article Tags: advertising, craigslist marketing, internet marketing, lead generation
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: New Famous Entrepreneur - Craig Newmark - Craigslist has got both positive and negative feedbacks although I admit I've used Craigslist as also one of my good references for finding listings, jobs, etc that'll benefit my business. Well, Craig has done a great job setting up this website and it was the people around who makes the bad impressions. I hope that won't hurt the whole Craigslist reputation though.
Re: Craigslist/Kijiji Sales - From my understanding, Craigslist is known as more of a place to buy/sell and find deals on products, rather than services. Personally, I would never buy a service from a seller on Craigslist (eg. a tutor, tennis instructor, etc) because there's nothing to measure credibility.
Re: Using Craigslist SEO to Promote Your Website - Hi Trent, I did do some of my own research and a lot of what I found was quite similar to what you said. They do have the no follow on links and flagging has become a problem. Since you've written a book on the subject, have you found an alternative to Craigslist in terms of using it as a tool for promotion? I know Craigslist is hard to top with its SEO-friendliness and traffic, but as entrepreneurs when a door closes we must open another!
Craigslist/Kijiji Sales - Would like to know who on this forum is having any success with generating business through Craigslist or Kijiji by posting ads there? What kind of business do you run and what do your ads state? I've been using the sites to generate leads for Foreclosure properties and I've been having some success. One of my Business Coaching client is a software developer and he's been having a lot of success with Craigslist - almost $7000/month. what's your view on it ?
I think Craigslist is better than Ebay - As a relative novice to selling online, I found that Craigslist is a very effective tool. In less than a month, I've sold over $800 worth of my excess tennis gear (which I was planning on getting rid of) and I haven't really lost much from my original purchase price. The postings on Craigslist are very search engine friendly on Google and I feel it's an easier site to use than Ebay (as a seller). Unlike Ebay there's no seller/posting fees on Craigslist and you're not even limited to selling to "local" consumers. I've had international buyers contact me and pay for the shipping costs. These buyers will pay me first via PayPal, and then I'll simply ship out their product and provide a tracking code (and the parcels are automatically insured for up to $100). Do any of you have any selling experience on either platform you'd like to share?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The five pillars of internet marketing strategy

The OLD Way of Advertising, May Not be so OLD

Top 5 Qualities in an Outsourcing Company

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.