Adding Craiglist.org to your marketing plan could be a really good fit for your business if you are not already using it.  Besides being FREE, Craigslist reaches millions of people a month.  Hundreds of different products and services are sold daily on Craigslist, so this CAN work for your business. As mentioned in previous posts, you want to be where the people are.
Things to remember:

• Be sure to follow Craigslist’s TOS (terms of service). Knowing the rules of what you can post and when you can post is the most important.  One of the main rules is you cannot post the same content within 48 hours.   This means you need to write several ads that you can rotate in and out for posting.
• Who is your target audience. If you have created your business plan you should already know who your target audience is. You now need to identify what will draw people in to read your ads.  Some posting categories have hundreds of listings a day so how the search results are displayed is critical. Results on Craigslist are shown first by date, then by keyword. This makes the text of your ad VITAL.  Be concise using the keywords you know bring people in for the headline and include all your contact info in the ad itself.  Daily testing and tracking of your ads will help you understand which things are a home run, which categories work best and which ones do not.
• Use links for tracking. Be sure to put a link to your website in the ad so you can track how effective your ad is. Be sure that link takes the potential customer to that place on your site where it tells them what you want them to do. Do you want them to call you, fill out a form or order online? Sometimes the homepage of your site is not specific enough to make people take action. Lead them to where the action takes place.
• Other tracking ideas. You can also use dedicated phone numbers, coupon codes, and customized email addresses for tracking these ads. If people contact you using these customized means, you will know exactly where they came from. And may we point out adding additional email addresses is FREE and can be set up in  a matter on minutes.
• Be safe. Yes there are scammers on the internet. And yes they use Craigslist.  If you use your head and gut you can avoid be taken by a scammer. You will know when something does not sound right or does not add up. As we mentioned above, hundreds of legitimate products and services are sold everyday on Craigslist without worry.  Yours can be too.

Contact us if you would like to setup a custom Craigslist campaign or learn more about how to effectively use Craigslist to market your business. Valerie@JDaeDesigns.com or 208-861-9841