Do You Use Craigslist?

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.