By Mike Akerly of Village Confidential
After reading Melissa Mckinney's post this morning regarding the inclusion of Craigslist in marketing plans, I thought that there were a number of techniques that others might find helpful. In New York City, Craigslist is widely used, but mostly for the rental market. In fact, NYC real estate is one of the few pay-to-advertise mediums on Craigslist (they charge $10 per real estate ad posting for this region). Brokers here have become quite adept at this type of marketing.
First of all, I have to disagree with the advice that was given to Melissa regarding the use of simple ads. I would highly encourage you to develop the best designed marketing possible. To facilitate that, you can take advantage of services that will create HTML based ads that look more like a website than the Craigslist ads you see, in say, the “appliances for sale” section. Here is one of my team's current exclusive rental listings in SoHo that I used HTML to design. As you can see, the HTML ad allows for the inclusion of much more detailed data including numerous photographs as well as other branding.
I use a service called VFlyer that is based in San Francisco to create all of my HTML ads. 
They offer pricing packages based on the number of listings your anticipate creating monthly, or you can design custom payment plans with them. Packages start at about $13 per month. Basically, I use their template online filling out pertinent listing information, upload photos, write a description, and “publish” the post. This generates HTML code that I copy and paste into the description section of a Craigslist ad. It’s that simple. Vflyer has the additional benefit of syndicating my listing to numerous other sites such as Trulia, Zillow, and Ebay Classifieds.
One of the biggest inconveniences of Craigslist marketing relates to the way that listings are displayed. Craigslist displays the most recent post at the top. In a market like Manhattan, thousands of ads are placed daily which can result in your listing becoming “stale” within 48 hours. If you are posting lots of ads because you have many exclusives, or because you are responsible for this task for an entire firm, or perhaps because you are marketing open listing rentals, you would become overwhelmed manually reposting your ads to keep them near the top of the list. This is where Repost123 comes in. Their service allows you to create your ad on Repost and schedule “future posts” when your ad will automatically be republished at future dates and times you designate. They also offer basic HTML generation comparable to Vflyer, but I much prefer the latter’s design capabilities. I have heard of other similar providers such as Craigslist Poster, but I have not tried them for myself.
Lastly, don’t forget to incorporate other mediums in your Craigslist ads. If you are using video, make sure to embed it in your HTML ads. If you are using audio for your listings, do the same. Just because you’re advertising on Craigslist, you shouldn’t throw all of your more sophisticated marketing tools out the door. Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions regarding Craigslist marketing. Likewise, if you or your client are looking for a home or investment property in the NYC market, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
Comments(2)