Craigslist

FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE AND REACHING IT

Before you can promote on Craigslist you must know who you are trying to reach.  Who is in your target audience.  That is really no different than if you were not promoting online.  Finding your audience or target group, is always the beginning point.   In order to do this, you must do some research and find out, not only who these people are, but where they are.

Knowing who your customers are is really a major part of the battle.  You can have the best marketing strategy and plan that has ever been devised, but if you do not know who it is being directed towards then you are wasting your time.  And on Craigslist you can categorize your ads so that they hit that intended group of people.  One of the best things about Craigslist is that a majority of the postings on it are free.  There are some exceptions, however, and those fall into the categories of New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco job listings as well as some housing listings in New York City.  But most of the rest are free.  So, the price is certainly not an obstacle to getting to your intended customers.

If you, for instance, had a moving and storage company in a certain county of Portland, Oregon, you could make use of the free listings on Craigslist to target potential customers in the county or counties in which you do business.  First of all, the listings are free and you are localizing them within the area where your business is most likely to be noticed.

But there are other advantages to Craigslist besides the fact that the listings are free.  Keep in mind that Craigslist pages are viewed approximately four billion times a month.  That accounts for a lot of potential customers.  Your opportunity of visibility far out weighs most other types of promotion.  But again, the key is to be sure that you are categorizing your ads correctly.

USING CRAIGSLIST TO MARKET

You can market very effectively on Craigslist.  And it is not a great deal different than marketing in other types of advertising.  The one thing you want to make a priority is that your copy is well written and that it gets your potential customer headed in the direction that you want him to go.  That direction can be to another website for more information, making a purchase, or getting more information about a product or service.  The best way to accomplish this is the hire a freelance writer to write your ad copy.  A freelancer will be much more likely to put your copy together effectively than if you do it yourself.

Once all of the above is accomplished then you need to get the ad placed in the right spot on Craigslist.  It must be categorized in the most effective method and then it must be placed in the right place to get the attention which you desire.  And now with websites being so popular in business, it will open up your potential locations greatly.