Why so many agents fail on Craigslist

Post and Send.com
Group Organizer
Aug 10, 2009 12:17:23 PM
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I hear these 2 words alot, "Success and Fail" when I am discussing the benefits classified posting and it doesnt take long to find out why agents fail at craigslist, backpage or any other social maketing websites.

For those agents who fail at classified marketing there is ussually a minimum 4 factors that contribute to their failure. In fact, depending on what you what post, guarantees failure.

Common Failures on Craigslist:

Poor Titles
Poor Ad Copy/Flyer
Actual Time Posting the Ad
Poor Posting Habits
Frequency of Posts
I am going to cover all 5 of the above topics and provide some great tips to turn your "failures' into "success".

Poor Titles:
You can have the best offers, best services best everything, but if the title is terrible or poorly written, no one will click on it. If no one clicks on the the title all your efforts go out the window.

Unfortunately, our societys "online brain" has been programmed to think in under 140 characters or less which makes the "art of story telling" that much more important.

Make an effort to create a min of 3 compelling titles per ad that you create.

Here is 2 examples of a good title versus a bad title for the same home for sale:

Bad Title Sample:
"1987 Home with side and backyard in nice neighborhood"

Good Title Sample:
"Rarely Available Home for Sale in Desireable Neighborhood. Inviting side and backyard is ideal entertaining"

Poor Copy/Flyer
You dont need a fancy flyer to be effective. What makes an ad effective is the content and even more important, the "call to action". With no "call to action" in your advertisment you might as well not even advertise it. Consumers including home buyers need suggesting and persuasion to take take action.

When to Post your Ads?
For real estate, statiscally, before 8 am and after 6 pm is the best time frame. However, with over 8 billion page views per month on Craigslist there is no shortgage of people online looking 24/7

Poor Posting Habits:
You need to keep your posts "dynamic" and "fresh" and never "stale" or "static". With every post you should have a different title. Just like direct mail, it takes a consumer upto 6 times to see the same message before they take action. So if it takes someone to see your ad more than once, make sure it pounds the same message to them with the same call to action.

Also, do not use the same craigslist account over and over. Create more than one and rotate them daily.

Frequency:
Without doubt, the best frequency is to have the ability to post every day. Not once per week, or twice per week but every day. If you dont, you will get lost in the abyss of the thousands of posts daily on craigslist.

These tips are for realtors who want to bulk post on craigslist and not for the casual poster. These tips and techniques are tried and tested and have proven to work.

More tips to follow. I hope this information helps those who are in need of assistance and have no where to turn

For more information visit www.postandsend.com