WOW! That’s all I could say after I heard the results. Twelve inquiries and 3 sales of a downloadable e-book from a series of classified ads – that was pretty good for just about three hours of work. I had almost forgotten completely about classifed ads until I was speaking with a small business owner who uses them regularly — but now I’m beginning to use them for my own business, and helping more clients plug into this little marketing success secret.
Online classified ads are a very simple, but often overlooked, marketing technique to get your business message out. It is easy, it is inexpensive, and a recent study showed that 47% of all internet users browse at least one classified ad site a week. It takes a little bit of time to register and submit your ad to alot of sites, but if your competitors AREN’T taking full advantage of those potential inquiries, you may want to consider at least testing a few sites to see what happens. Some of the sites offer a paid submission service and it is my understanding that for a winning ad, it pays to use a submission service. But don’t do it until you are convinced the ad will pull in response. No reason to pay to have a non-performing ad mass distributed.
Besides generating sales and inquiries, another great use for classified ads is testing of offers, headlines, and messages. You’d be better off failing to connect with customers with a classified than with a pay-per-click ad. Many of the top internet sellers use classified ads merely as a testing ground before they launch a PPC campaign. Put out several different versions of ads and see which ones garner the most response. Then keep tweaking the ad until you have the best ad you can make. Then transfer it to a pay-per-click campaign, and you’ll likely see better response than if you had started with PPC.
As with all online marketing strategies, you need to use target keywords in your ads. Most classified ad sites are searchable, so make sure you are using words your potential customers are looking for. And yes, major search engines like Google and Yahoo scan the classified ad sites and will note your backlink.
Try to grab attention of your readers. Funny or odd subject lines that cause people to stop and go “Huh?” often work. I recently stopped and read an ad with the headline “If a frog asked you to go to the movies, would you say Yes?” It caught my attention at least.
Here are some of the bigger Free Classified sites that you may want to try:
- http://www.inetgiant.com
- http://www.ecki.com/links/advert.shtml
- http://www.usfreeads.com
- http://www.boconline.com
- http://www.craigslist.com
- http://www.kijiji.com
- http://www.backpage.com
- http://www.sell.com
- http://classifieds.excite.com
- http://classifieds.yahoo.com
Each site has their loyal following, so you have to research a little to find out where your product or service would perform the best, but it’s worth trying.
Good luck and let me know if you have had any classified ad success stories.
Here’s to your success,
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