Almost all business owners can benefit by advertising on Craigslist, especially when it is free. Only job and housing postings are paid. Craigslist gets huge amounts of traffic, so it is sensible to advertise on it and write good ads. In addition, it is important to find your target audience and post ads in to relevant regions and categories. Finally, you must remember to follow the rules and avoid spamming so that you do not get banned.
How to Advertise on Craigslist
Any business, which offers products or services is lucrative to advertise on Craigslist. No matter if these items are offered via ecommerce web sites or real stores, the entrepreneurs can get financial profit by advertising on Craigslist. First of all, the risk related to posting an ad on Craigslist is minimal compared to other advertising mediums. It is important to notice that advertising is free on Craigslist besides job and housing postings in particular markets. Naturally users are required to agree to the terms of service of this community and they are apprehended to follow certain guidelines when posting ads but those placing ads have no financial obligations. In consequence of this, those who post ads do not have to think whether or not the ad they place will fulfill their expectations as far as generated sales are concerned.
Reaching Prospects on Craigslist
Another cause why posting ads of products and services on Craigslist is profitable, because there is possible to reach a large audience of prospects. Craigslist fact sheet provides essential information on the amount of traffic, which web site gets. According to this data, Craigslist received about twenty billion page views a month and 49.4 million unique visitors a month only in the United States in 2009. As far as these statistics are concerned, it is evident that ads posted on Craigslist receive some attention from prospects. So advertising opportunities are countless with these amount of visitors, butit is not certain that any of these visitors will be keen on your items or services. As every marketing campaign, your ads on Craigslist have to be fascinating, informative and in a city where your customers are.
How to Find Your Target Audience on Craigslist
By now we have discussed the popularity and monthly traffic details of Craigslist, but in order to utilize its traffic it is important to target your advertising campaign in a such a way directed to reach your target audience as opposed to a wide audience of people who have no interest at all in your products or services. It is more important to get a small audience of those who are interested in your products or services than to get a larger audience of those people who are not interested. Your target audience consists of those people who are interested in your products and services. The key to success is to target your advertising campaign in the most relevant regions. There is a certain section for companies to advertise their services on Craigslist. This department is divided into a different categories. For example, businesses of computer repair are sensible to post their ad in the computer section as opposed to the automotive section, because people seeking computer help will naturally navigate to the computer section. Sometimes it is perhaps adequate to post an ad in several sections. This can be done once it is not spamming and violation against the rules of the section. You have some options to choose, if there is not a special section for the products or services offered by you. Entrepreneurs are able to post an ad in the section for small business ads where it might be found by people performing a search in this section. Optionally the entrepreneur can contact Craigslist and propose to add a new category. If they believe that this new category is appropriate, they might do an inclusion.
The Difference Between Advertising and Spamming
Craigslist is designed for advertising but not for spamming. It is allowed to post an ad in a relevant section of Craigslist, but placing the same ad in almost every section of Craigslist web sites in several different areas is regarded as spam. Spam is not effective because of a number or reasons. Prospects who see your ad in several different regions probably recognize the spamming techniques and therefore be less disposed to support this business. If Craigslist detects continuous spamming, they can delete all of the postings and prohibit advertising from the person in the future.
