Enhancing Your Craigslist Posts
2011-07-22 04:36pm
Author: Rentping Staff
Topic: Web Engagement
Since we are in the business of internet apartment marketing, we talk a lot about Craigslist with our clients. In virtually every market, Craigslist is a necessity for renting apartments-neglect it at your own peril.
But how do you increase your effectiveness on Craigslist? The only solution I ever seem to hear from clients is that they work at increasing the frequency of their posts. Certainly, frequency is important. If you post less often than weekly, you probably won't get much traffic from Craigslist.
In this article, however, we want to talk about other undervalued methods for increasing your effectiveness on Craigslist. At Rentping, our whole company philosophy on internet marketing revolves around the idea that traffic is only part of the equation for generating cost-effective leads and leases-user engagement is just as important as traffic.
Also, by creating more engaging Craigslist posts, you will find more success on Craigslist without worrying about all the problems potentially caused by posting too frequently: green ghosting, flagging, and blocked accounts.
So, here are some ideas on how to increase the effectiveness of your Craigslist posts:
- Use photographs. The never-ending sea of text-only ads on Craigslist are horrifically boring. Photographs are your best weapon at standing out in the midst of that grey ocean.
- Use high quality photographs. Do not use dull, fuzzy, grainy photographs, and invest some money in getting professional photography to showcase your apartments. When you cut corners on photographs, you convey the message that you will cut corners on more important issues-like a resident's maintenance requests.
- Make your posts action oriented. The longer they click through ads on Craigslist, the less chance you stand at being remembered. Your goal should be a phone call or an email inquiry before they click to the next post, and your post should be designed to accomplish that goal.
- Give a compelling reason for people to leave Craigslist and come to your website. But think about this from a consumer's perspective-Craigslist offers the widest volume of selection, so why would they leave? If your website has HD walkthrough video tours that allows a renter to tour your apartments instantly, then you offer a prospective tenant what Craigslist can't: the highest level of engaging content and information.
What have you done to make your Craigslist posts effective through better consumer engagement?