Small Business Essentials

I found an interesting article on Marketing on Craigslist at Entrepreneur.com which I thought I would add my 2 cents to.

I have found that the biggest problem with marketing on Craigslist is tracking the page views. There really are no easy ways to track the success of your ad with easy tools such as Google Analytics. I have, however, had luck in using a combination of tools:

1. Using Google Analytics on a landing page for your ad. (This is where the web user goes when they click on the link in your ad.) You can also set up traditional marketing methods such as the use of a special phone number or email address to track responses, but the costs involve with a Craigslist ad are so low that most people don’t bother with the expense of a new phone number.
2. Using a true ad instead of plain text. We have made several ads for use on Craigslist, including these: Gherardi Marketing, Catered 4 U, NHG Consulting. I get much better results with a web ad vs just using text.
3. Using the web ad to track page views. If the web ad image resides on your server, you can often use the server stats of how many times that image was downloaded to know how many times your ad has been viewed.
4. Use a list of keywords in the ad, near the bottom, in white text (so it will be invisible). This will send more searchers your way and make up for the ad which is not search-friendly.