Craigslist has become a very powerful tool for many real estate professionalsWe typically recommend posting your listings to Craigslist.  It is also a great place to post events like Home Buyer Seminars, general ads like “Receive a FREE Market Analysis of Your Homes Value”, and even for recruiting new agents.

As Real Estate Virtual Assistants, the online marketing efforts that we implement can be pretty extensive.  At RealSupport, we provide package pricing per listing for listing marketing and we are often asked to recommend the best sites for advertising our client’s listing.  I’m a big believer in Craigslist (however, I do realize there are reasons it doesn’t make sense for some agents), so this site is typically part of each of my client’s listing marketing plans. 

Some of our clients spend upwards of $400 for us to market their listings. We want to be certain they are getting the most bang for their marketing dollars.  In search of a tool that would allow us to make sure we have the data to back-up our positive opinion about Craigslist, we have been testing a free tool call http://craigslistadtracker.com/ that can be used to track the activity of each Craigslist ad.  So far we have found this tool to be easy to use, accurate, and consistent in providing us hit reports on each ad. 

With that said, perhaps we find the result to be the opposite and our ads are not being viewed… before you throw out the baby with the bathwater, I recommend tweaking your ad title.  On a similar note, if you are posting your ads with HTML code from some other source (like Postlets), you MUST still upload a photo. Most Craigslist users will not click on an ad that does not have a PIC (which is the notification next to the title indicating there is a picture uploaded to the ad).  I did not like the way the uploaded photo looked with the attractive HTML code from Postlets, so we tricked the system and we upload a blank image… now the ad still looks nice and the ad indicates there are pictures (which of course there is because that is part of the HTML).

Screen shot 2009-10-09 at 3.46.52 PMHow it works

  1. Register an account
  2. Create a tracker
  3. Insert the tracking code on your craigslist ad or webpage
  4. Every page view will be logged for reporting
  5. Analyze the report

Why use this service?

  1. Know the number of page views your ads receive
  2. Know which type of ad gets the most clicks or generate more leads
  3. Know your visitor locations
  4. Up-to-the-minute real-time stats
  5. Email notifications
  6. Track unlimited postings
  7. Several reports and charts to help you analyze your stats
  8. Invisible and seamless tracking
  9. Timezone conversion for reporting
  10. Image hosting and tracking
  11. It works on Craigslist, Oddle, Myspace and other networks that support HTML listings
  12. It is simple and FREE to use

You can’t manage what you don’t measure! Click here to create an account.

If all this sound just a little to complicated, you need a Real Estate Virtual Assistant!  Let a REVA do the work for you… all you should worry about are the results, right?

 

 

Carrie Gable, President
RealSupport Inc.
Phone: 847-705-1655 x200
Email: Carrie@RealSupportInc.com
www.RealSupportInc.com
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RealSupport Inc. - Providing superior Real Estate Virtual Assistant services to Real Estate professionals nationwide since 2000.

 
This post has been included in Illinois Information
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5 Comments on Tracking the Effectiveness of Your Craigslist Ad Just Got Easier

OCT
15

I love to read a great post like this one. Please keep them coming!

9:19am • #1
OCT
20
1 Featured Post

Great post - I've been using StumbleUpon to track how many hits my links receive, but it doesn't show location, etc...  Thanks!

12:00pm • #2
NOV
06
1 Featured Post

Great info. It is so important to be able to track what is effective and what's not in your online marketing, and it's great that you are proactive in doing that for your clients!

3:49pm • #3
NOV
09
1 Featured Post

Hi Everyone,
Betty Cunningham sent me a direct message/question and I thought my response was worth posting as a follow-up:


Betty said: Are you getting good feedback about the tracking on Craig’s list. I seems a little tedious to do. Am I missing something ?

My response:
The Craigslist ad tracker has been great. As you mentioned, it does have a few drawbacks… It does take a little time to set-up and put into your ad. The other drawback we have found is that the system will email you the number of hits daily/weekly but it does not separate them per ad. So, in order to see the hits per ad, you have to log into the system to view, which is not as convenient as email.

I think it is a good system if you are wondering if Craigslist is worth posting your ads to. It will shed some light on whether people are viewing the ad or not so you can make an informed decision to continue using Craigslist. It also may help you determine if your headline is working… less views, tweak your headline before you consider pulling your ads from Craigslist all together.


Hope this helps!!!

Thanks, Carrie

10:29am • #4
JAN
09
Outside Blog

Hello Carrie - Thanks for the tip on the Craigslist Ad Tracker.  I am going to start posting on Craigslist next week and this sounds like a great tool.  Thanks again!

6:06am • #5

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RealSupport Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Palatine, IL

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Address: 1232 West Northwest Highway, Palatine, IL, 60067

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