Promoting your business with classified ads

Using classified ads to promote your business isn't anything new.
It's free, it's fast and if done correctly can produce some results often times ending in a sale.

The challenge to promoting your business with classified ads is doing it correctly.

There are literally hundreds of classified ad sites that allow you to post for free. Since these sites offer free ads there may be a lot of competition for what you are selling. The trick is to stand out from the crowd and get noticed.

I started using classified ads a while back and I've learned a thing or two about generating targeted responsive visitors from my efforts.

For the most part there are three main components to a good classified ad that could potentially generate results.

Subject line or title.
Have a catchy subject line that is different from all of the rest.
This is extremely important and this is the key to getting your ad read at all. Because there is usually a lot of competition, you have to spend a great deal of time and effort on this first step.

You have to do some research. Click around and see what other people are promoting and what they're using for catchy subject lines. A tip you may consider using is to think about some of the e-mails you have received that had a really enticing subject line. You want something that's almost irresistible for the reader to click on.

You can try something a little scandalous but be careful, if you use a strategy like this you want to keep it fun and playful.

The ad copy.
This is the section that's going to set the tone and help the reader make a decision on whether they should click on your link. I like to use the same basic strategy that I do in my e-mails, keep it short and interesting and definitely have a call to action.

In the ad copy you also need to follow up with what you mentioned in the subject or title line.
You can continue with something funny or slightly scandalous but make sure that the ad copy ends on a cheery or funny note.

Because your alternate goal is to get your reader to click, you have to give them the instructions to do so in the ad body. If you offer a free e-book or a video, let them know how important this content is and give them several options or opportunities to click on a specific link to get the content.

Again keep in mind some of the e-mails you have received that were extremely compelling and you could not resist to follow through with the instructions the e-mail gave you.


The call to action and the click.
Once the reader has clicked on your link you have to give them the valuable content you promised them in the ad. This is extremely important or they will leave. It's very important to have all of these components correlate. You have to follow along with what the reader is most likely expecting based on what you write in your subject line, your ad copy and the content you give them.

For example, one of my first classified ad campaigns resulted in many clicks and some activity but it was unqualified. What I mean by this is I tried a strategy using a very interesting subject headline.
I was simply trying to draw attention to the subject headline itself which actually worked. I then followed up with the same attention grabbing ad copy but once they clicked on the link to land on my page, the content was entirely different than what they were probably expecting based on my headline.

The result was that I got a lot of traffic to my landing page but since the content on my landing page was not relative to the subject headline in the classified ad, the visitor simply left upon arriving at my landing page. They did not take any action, they did not download anything or watching the videos.

So I had to go back and rethink my strategy. I needed every one of these components to follow through with the previous step. It all starts with the subject line or title and you have to have everything correspond to the content they will ultimately receive.

It does take a lot of work to do this correctly. There is a great deal of competition and you have to distinguish yourself from the rest of the people that are using free classified ads.

I also spend several hours at one time developing at least 15 to 20 different subject title lines that consist of specific keywords that I am targeting. These have to be relative to my market and my product or service that I'm selling.

 

how much for your service?

 

That was a very informative post about a seldom used Internet Marketing method. Having just read this I have the following questions. Are you using The classified ads simply as a direct marketing method or have you noticed an increase in SEO rankings for your Money pages. Have you tried list building classified ads? In your experience what kind of offers have performed the best?:

cpa
affiliate products (physical, information products)
Services

 

I've never used this strategy, do you have a list of the most effective classified ad sites that work internationally and not just in the US (craiglist)?

 

How many clients can we get if we do 50 Classified submission?

Should we do it on daily basis or monthly basis?

 

thank you for the replies and I appreciate your thoughts and feed back.
Tonton, I don't have a service that I sell for classified advertising, I am just another affiliate marketer documenting the methods I use to sell online.
There are a lot of ways to sell, and I got tired of reading about them and started to put some of those ideas into action.

What I noticed is that a lot of the free stuff the gurus offer, really don't work the way they say it will. It's also possible that I could be doing things wrong and that is why I appreciate having a forum like this where I can share what I am doing and then get feed back from other hard working marketers.

IMtaskmaster: I have noticed some improvement in SEO results but I have a more in depth strategy and classified ads is just one component. I notice that if I just work the article marketing strategy by itself, it takes for ever... (or so it seems).
I have about 5 things I try to do every day and classified ads are one of them.
I do use the classified ads to build a list.
I have noticed that some types of head lines work and others don't. I will post a more complete detail analysis of my "little system" that I do every day and the results. I will also post how I optimized each of the components and also... what I eliminated from the plan.

Snowdrop: I will post the list I use in the next post I make on this thread.

Eric: I have seen a different reply rate based on a few factors.
The first one is the title or subject line of the ad. This is huge and I also have to be aware of my competition on the classified ad sites. There are a lot of people using them and when I started off, I was using similar titles, but I stopped that right away and the results where almost twice what I was getting in click through action from the ad.

Generally, if I post to lets say Backpage, with offers classified ads in a most every state and county, that could be about 50 right there. Depending on the subject or title text, the offer I have in the ad, I could expect about 20 to 50 clicks from one day of posting. But.. this changes on the weekends. I seem to get a better response to my ads during the week. It could also just be the type of section I am posting in. Some sections are more busy on the weekends for obvious reasons.

I try to post my ads just about every two to three days.

I will follow up with the list of classified ads sites that I have and also more details of how I work my daily strategy to drive traffic.

 

Choosing a correct category is also important, doing this will get you targeted traffic. Having a good title will attract visitors to your ad for example if you have a car for sale then create a unique title of your ad.

 

Wow. . the information very useful. Thank you for sharing in this forum.

 

This is the first list I started working from, i have another that I will upload. I have been getting quite a bit of traffic from
Backpage.com

http://craigslist.org/
http://www.beatyourprice.com
http://www.zuxxx.com
http://www.usfreeads.com
http://www.bestwayclassifieds.com/
http://www.domesticsale.com/
http://www.classifiedads.com/
http://www.adoos.in/
http://www.inetgiant.com/
http://www.adsinusa.com/
http://www.isell.com/
http://www.ablewise.com/
http://www.freeadlists.com/
http://www.jihoy.com/
http://epage.com/
http://www.kugli.com/
http://www.quikr.com/
http://www.adpost.com/
http://www.redleafads.com/
http://www.ezclassifieds.com/
http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/
http://www.sgfreeclassifieds.com/
http://www.gumtree.com/
http://www.adlandpro.com/
http://www.recycler.com/
http://www.adsglobe.com/
http://www.iabolish.com/
http://www.newfreeclassifieds.com/
http://www.webcosmo.com/
http://classifieds.smashits.com/
http://www.mcslist.com/
http://www.zikbay.com/
http://www.adtoad.com/
http://www.highlandclassifieds.com/
http://www.eclassifieds4u.com/
http://www.freecker.com/
http://www.whynotad.com/
http://www.cliqs.com/
http://www.ileeg.com/
http://www.upillar.com/
http://www.usnetads.com/
http://www.worldstuffer.com/
http://www.50statesclassifieds.com/
http://www.netads24.com/

 

Actually most successful way of promoting business is using online classifieds. The awareness of internet had grown even in remote areas and every literate is using internet to find their requirements. Only online classified services allow to promote the business and no other service like social networking services do allow to promote business I think these are the best option to grow up business.

 

Good information guys.Thanks for enlightening me on the relevance of classified ads in promoting my products.

 

you can go for a promotional video which is more viral than any other media buddy
it makes a different appeal to the customers

 

a promotional video can make things easier and pretty viral with less investment too...that too for once and just promote it through any online video channel

 

i've recently tried classified ads submission, and i'm getting money from it although it's not that huge

 

How exactly are you "getting money from it" - doesn't make much sense?

 

Good post. Thanks also for the comprehensive classified list. I should really think more about doing more classifieds.

 

thank you for your tips!

" different subject title lines" great tip


so this classified list i think help everyone start right now and use your tips every day not only for classified ads)))))))


20 Classified Ads Sites checked and worked

Location for free ads: Australia and Pacific, Canada, Caribbean, India, United Kingdom, United States

Categories: more than 100

Features:

+ Automatic registration
+ Free
+ Post Ads in one click
+ Email verification
+ Upload up to 5 images per Ad
+ Share with Social Media
+ Free Account
+ Full management over your Ads


1000freeads.com
advertisingadsfree.com
bestfreeclassifiedads.com
classifiedadssite.com
classifiedsup.com
freeads-1.com
freeads4.com
freeadweb.com
hereclassifiedads.com
herefreeads.com
hionlineads.com
onlinebestad.com
onlineclassifiedsite.com
onlinepostingads.com
placeadsforfree.com
postadss.com
postadvertisingfree.com
postallads4free.com
webfreead.com
webfreeadvertising.com

 

also undertheclassifieds.com and i usually use sites like backpage.com (look for relevant classified sites)

 

thank you for this list