Marketing & Advertising IMPACT Clients using Craigslist

Have you ever considered using Craigslist’s as a way to market and advertise your company?

According to Alexa.com, Craigslist is the 10^th most visited site, with over 60 million people utilizing it every month. Due to the amount of visits that they receive, it makes a great opportunity for small businesses to promote their services.  You might not know that your small business ads on Craigslist give you free backlinks, helping your website rank higher, helping your company and information display in search results.

Craigslist is a great tool that we started implementing for our client Ahlgren Landscaping, a local landscaping company that provides a number of services such as:

• snow removal

• landscape design

• fall leaf clean up

• paver patio and walk way installation

• brush clearing

• overseeding, and much more

Interested in learning more about marketing your brand using Craiglist and other resources? Contact IMPACT and learn how we can help!

Service Ads

Service ads are ideal for small businesses because they are local, targeted, searchable and easy to read.  As a small business, you are able to promote your service(s) to specific areas. In regards to Ahlgren Landscaping, they are looking for business owners and homeowners located in the New Britain and Newington Connecticut area. By targeting that specific area you are able to reach those prospective clients that looking for the services you provide, that are located in the same city or county.

Small business service ads are a great way for your company to briefly explain your service and grab their attention and bring them back to your site where they can contact your or fill out a form. With the first storm that hit Connecticut last week and the winter months quickly approaching, Ahlgren Landscaping wants to promote their commercial and residential snow removal services. A recent ad posted was aimed towards residential snow removal in New Britain, explaining the importance and benefits of hiring a professional snow removal company.

Another benefit to using Craigslist is that you are able to edit your ad immediately. Unlike other local search sites like yahoo local or Google + Local you have to verify that changes made either by phone or mail, with Craigslist you can log into your account and make any necessary changes.

How to Promote your Small Business Ad

When creating ads for your business it is important to spend time putting in the effort that will help improve your results when using Craigslist. According to their terms of use, posting on Craigslist is regulated to three times every 48 hours. It is important to keep in mind that Craigslist has a ghost feature that keeps your companies ads from posting if you post to frequently. Since you are able to post so frequently, it is important to create different listings. If you post the same listing over and over people will stop clicking on the ad because they won’t want to read the same ad. When writing your listing make sure you include the following:

• Keep text aligned to the left

• Keep each line short

• Add testimonials

• Include relevant keywords

• Add a link to your website

• Use photos

Utilizing those elements in your listing is key because it will help more prospects visit your site. Adding a link to your website, specifically a page where they can learn more about your service and fill out a form for a free quote or assessment, will help you gain more information about where they are located and their needs. Adding a testimonial is a great way for your current clients to talk about your service, 71% of people are more likely to purchase a service based on a referral.

Utilizing Craigslist for Ahlgren has been highly successful. Looking at the results in HubSpot, Craigslist has helped increase their website traffic by 23.1%, generating marketing qualified leads. Since implementing the small business listings Ahlgrens referrals have also increased by 84.7%.

Knowing all of this information about how a small business ad can help advertise your business, would you start utilizing Craigslist to generate more leads and awareness around your company?

Looking to more effectively marketing and advertise your company or product/service? Contact IMPACT and learn how we can help!