How To Promote Your Product On Craigslist

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Updated: April 26th, 2024

What Is Craigslist?

Craigslist is a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.

Since the mid-1990s, Craigslist is still going strong and has over 60 million U.S. users. Besides, Craigslist attracts 50 billion page views every month.

Based on such statistics, craigslist provides an effective advertising platform for your brand.

In this post, we look at important facts about Craigslist advertising and share some cool examples to inspire you.

Craigslist Key Takeaways

Craigslist gets an estimated 10 million unique visitors per day
To enjoy an excellent exposure on Craigslist follow the applicable rules
Craigslist users comprise buyers and sellers
Many of Craigslist’s daily visitors are qualified buyers, looking to make immediate purchases.
The platform features a very simple interface and several highly targeted sub-sections

How Craigslist Works

Craigslist is an online classified and forum site allowing users to post items for sale or seek out items they are hoping to purchase.

For startups, Craigslist is a great way to reach potential customers.

The user-friendly website features highly targeted sub-sections where businesses can get the word out about a new product or even a job offer. Alternatively, startups can generate website traffic by including links on their Ad descriptions or forum posts.

Craigslist is available globally, offering businesses the opportunity to target a global customer base. Therefore, advertising on Craigslist provides brands a great exposure, which is important in maximizing sales and brand awareness.

The platform charges for ads in selected cities, but no charge is made for any successful sale or contact.

To participate in any forum discussions or to post your own classifieds, you need to create a Craigslist account. Since you interact with strangers on Craigslist, Take precautions to protect yourself from fraud.

Note that illegal and inappropriate Craigslist postings are easily identifiable through the customer flagging system.

What Makes Craigslist Different From Other Marketing Channels?

Here are a handful of ways craigslist is different from other marketing channels:

Posts are hyperlocal making it easier to test new locales
Craigslist posts are seen based on how recent rather than on the keywords
Craigslist is a text-heavy platform rather than feature images like is the case in social media
The short lifespan of posts means you can test different kinds of content
Craigslist features an organic and fast-moving nature

How To Promote Your Ad On Craigslist

When creating Craigslist ads, it is important to spend time putting in the effort that will improve Ad performance. Here are important things to bear in mind when creating a Craigslist listing

Write clear titles that stand out
Use a clear call to action
Ensure shorter lines
Add testimonials
Include relevant keywords/search terms
Add a link to your website
Include images of the product you are advertising
Re-post your Ads every two days
Create multiple Ads

Real-World Examples Of Successful Craigslist Use-Cases

Here are great examples of how to use Craigslist to grow your business.

1. How Gary White Increased His Real Estate Business Using Craigslist

Gary White is a Real estate professional who uses Craigslist to generate leads. One of the secrets behind his success is the ability to ensure professional craigslist listing. Gary includes a link to his website to the Craigslist ads, so that interested buyers copy the link and paste it to the web browser. That way, the interested buyers find the contact details and sends inquiries.

Gary also uses a lead nurturing strategy to increase the conversion rates. Before Craigslist, he had little traffic to his website, but upon using Craigslist, he is now generating over a hundred leads. He insists on consistency when it comes to Craigslist.

2. How Almar Building & Remodeling Uses Craigslist To Generate Leads At Minimal Cost

Allison Guido, the General Manager of Almar Building & Remodeling was looking for a new way to target potential customers at minimum cost. Posting on Craigslist helped her generate leads from the internet.

Of the leads generated from the internet, one-third or more are from Craigslist. Since she started using Craigslist, the lead generation cost has declined significantly. Typically, she creates different ads for the firm's offerings and highlights the features using images and clear descriptions.

Ways to use Craigslist

You can build a strong strategy to use Craigslist for your store. Here are different ideas for you to leverage Craigslist to your advantage:

Go to Craigslist forum and connect with relevant people on the forums
Go to relevant Craigslist forum to research and build audience profiles
Sell directly on Craigslist
Contribute to forums to generate direct website traffic
Test product descriptions to use in different marketplaces

Post on Craigslist

Craigslist is still going strong. Here are some of the numbers:

60M U.S. users
50B page views every month
50M daily queries
100M individual classified ads

Case Study

Just to remind you I had no business sense so I didn’t understand digital marketing or advertising in general. I was talking one day with my boxing coach and explaining to him how I started my dog training business. The only problem was I didn’t know how to get clients. He’s the one who gave me the answer.

He said “just put an ad on Craigslist” very casually. That's exactly what I did and I landed my first customer.

Donald Hutcherson, on starting Fraternity K9 ($5,000/month) full story ➜

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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