Can you get leads via Craigslist? 
Maximize exposure for your listings, get buyer leads, get seller leads; using Craigslist .. the results:
After doing many measurements in the SF Bay Area, observe that a "good" Craigslist ad may attract about 100+ visitors to your ad in the first day and about 200+ in the first three days, rapidly tapering off after day three. You can post the same info every 48+ hours (at least two days apart.)
Of those 200+ visitors to each of your Craigslist ads, if the ad is properly designed, you may attract 10% or more to visit your website, on the average, via click-thru from your well-labeled, prominent link (call to action) in the ad.
So, each well designed ad could bring in 20 or more new visitors for you. (For a well-designed ad.) Of those visitors, about 10~20% may like what they see and sign up for your automated listing search updates, yielding several active buyer leads per ad, or more.
So, each well designed ad could bring in 20 or more new visitors for you. (For a well-designed ad.) Of those visitors, about 10~20% may like what they see and sign up for your automated listing search updates, yielding several active buyer leads per ad, or more.
(Stats on over 100 ads for over 10 listings and many open houses, over 12-months, using specialized techniques.)
Here are some quick tips:
How to design ads for maximum response?
Plan your campaign(s).
Each title must be a grabber, target your audience well.
The ad should be informative but brief, with only a few photos, and contain a link to your custom landing page for more details (as appropriate for each campaign, such as for each single property listing.) The link's anchor text must be a grabber, too. Think of your ad as a teaser with a call-to-action to capture leads. If you develop the call-to-action, you will win leads, if anybody is interested.
On your landing page, you can measure your hits. You won't get SEO benefit, because all Craigslist links are NOFOLLOW, but you should get good leads in the first few days... and a spike in your web traffic.
Prep a few different ads (20% or more difference in text) and rotate them if you want to post more than one ad every 48 hours per listing or per campaign. You could post one or two ads per property per day if you design them well enough. You can also design generic ads (but if they are not property-specfic they are more likely to get flagged off by your competitors or community.)
How are you capturing your leads?
Make sure you have a website (or landing page URL for a specific target campaign or listing) that offers a very simple, lightweight signup process for potential buyers. If you require them to enter too much info, they will enter bogus info, or abandon your signup process. Provide optional fields for phone, name, etc. but require their email address, to opt-in ... for email alerts on new listings matching the buyer's search criteria, or home value alerts for owners looking to sell.
What's the best time of day and day of week to post, how often to post on Craigslist?
Try randomizing a bit, but here are some rules-of-thumb:
Post weekend open houses on Thursday afternoon (catch the early birds going online to plan weekend tours.)
Post a similar ad on Saturday morning, and another different ad on Sunday morning.
Post another one early in the week... yes, you're on MLS but the more exposure the better. Got a pocket listing (not on MLS?) promote it via Craigslist, while capturing leads in your neighborhood.
Blacklisting and Flagging-Off?
If you put too many links into Craigslist, or break other unwritten rules, you may be blacklisted for awhile, a few days perhaps. Your ads will seem to post into your account, but they won't show up in the public search. There are a few other caveats, such as blacklisted servers for your hosted images, but with trial-and-error you may find out what works and what doesn't work... always check the public index, about a half hour after posting. If you ad does not appear within 20 ~ 40 minutes, you may be blacklisted.
If your competitors or your community doesn't like your ad, it can get flagged off. It takes more than a few different IP addresses to make that happen. After your get flagged off, your threshold may decrease for awhile. Don't worry too much about getting flagged off. If you ad is legit, you can re-post immediately, and you go back to the top. But, if you get flagged off repeatedly, it becomes easier to get flagged off, due to thresholds. (You'll get an email immediately if your ad is flagged off. Check to see if it's still there or not, and if it's gone from the public index, you can re-post the same ad immediately. Better wait 20 minutes for the flaggers to get busy somewhere else.)
Follow-ups?
Be sure you have an email drip campaign to reinforce the call-to-action, and keep them coming back to your website... measure activity, and follow up, espeically with your most active contacts, adding the human touch to your marketing campaigns.
Measurement and Contiuous Improvement?
It's been said, "If you cannot afford to measure your marketing results, you cannot afford to market." How are you measuring your results?
Want help, or more info?
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