From your daily needs to your business strategies, from renting a house to finding a perfect group to socialize, Craigslist serves you in every aspect possible. You just have to register to yourself in order to fulfill your needs and Craigslist acts as a boon to you.
Craigslist is a web which is a network of community or in a simple way; you can say that it is like an ongoing classifieds community resource center.
Craigslist gets a huge amount of traffic because of its usability and incredibility. If we take here only a single feature of craigslist i.e. craigslist real estate, many agents try to take advantage of its usability and insane traffic load by posting irrelevant and repeatedly ineffective ads and when they don’t get expected response, they conclude that craigslist is an unreliable source for lead generation and website traffic.
There is four challenging task for any real estate agent in order to get expected result.
- Generate Leads
- Engage Leads
- Convert Leads
- Continue Relationship
And these entire tasks should follow or should work in a cycle.
It is very well understood that for any business to grow, the first and foremost thing to do is to know your consumer, your users. For the better understanding of user, a small research would work well. for e.g. In terms of Craigslist Real Estate, the agent must know what a consumer is looking for before applying for any real estate property.
In today’s fast paced internet era, a consumer mostly rely on the internet, like they look for pictures online before buying property, they want details about the neighbourhood, about the school and other needs available in the proximity. They go through different websites to check the rate or value of the property, and they want that if there required any paperwork it should be easy and quick. All these small research can help an agent to post the ad successfully to fulfil his expectations.
Now, to maximum utilization and to effectively use the benefits provided by craigslist, the Agent must follow some strategies.
These strategies consist of rules which are both technical as well as non-technical.
Craigslist Ad Marketing Technical Strategies:
Consumer Oriented Ads: The ad should be created keeping the consumer’s perspective in mind and the perspective of the ad should be providing the consumer maximum detail in simple clear understandable words.
Attractive Headline: The headline should be compelling so that it can get the consumer’s attention at the very first sight.
Unique Ads: you should use template to learn from it but do not copy paste, your your own wordings. Take your time and look for simple things you can mention to make it unique, which helps your ad to stand out from others. The more the ad looks different on craigslist, the more traffic you get.
Short and Concise Message: As an agent, you know every bit of your property but you don’t need to mumble all the details in your ads on craigslist, because for a consumer’s perspective it's time-consuming, you just need to focus on the unique features which can help to grab the attention of consumer.
Track your ads: This feature plays a vital role in marketing. As an agent, you need to keep the track on your ads whether its working or not. You can track your ads views by pretty link lite as Craigslist does block the URL through which you can check your ad views. Tracking an ad is important for improving your ad.
For more information please text: Craigslist does not allow to ad hyperlinks in real estate ads so to start with ask customer "For more information please text". This the customer can easily text you a message and you can send then the property link. Rest is the routine Real Estate Procedure.
Image / Banner ads: As they say, the first impression is the last impression. So, why don’t we make the first impression, the best impression, Once the consumer opens your real estate ads on craigslist, the only thing that can grab his attention is an image and banner ad with a strong call to action. The image should be something that can directly speak up to the customer and force them to click on the opt page.
Craigslist Ad Marketing Non-Technical Strategies:
Service Oriented: Though the main aim of any agent is to grow his business but being an agent you should be able to provide the best services to the consumers, rather than focusing on sales completely.
Peak hours, best hours: To reach the maximum number of audience, Agent should post the ads during the peak hours. Peak hours refer to time in which there is the maximum availability of consumer on craigslist.
Reposting or Removing Ads: Being an agent you should wait at least 48 hours before removing or reposting any ad from craigslist because till that time you can guess the scope of your ads and there should be a fair amount of time given to the consumer to explore through the ads on craigslist.
Satisfaction level: the ad should provide the instant gratification to the consumer. So the understanding level of the real estate ads on craigslist should be high.
Market Research: Before posting any ads on craigslist, the agent must go though the market value of the property and should propose the terms accordingly.
lead Capture: the generation of leads depends on many factors like, knowing the requirement of consumer, market value of the property and providing the best service in minimum amount of effort. So, before posting the real estate ads on craigslist, an agent should go through above mention points and many more.
Contact Availability: The ads on craigslist should have the call to action. It should provide an easy way to reach out the agent on a single click.
The most important thing in any marketing strategy is to generate the leads, engage the leads and then converting them into clients. Same is the case with Craigslist Real estate strategy; first the focus should be on generating the lead, then keeping them in touch and by offering exceptional services, converting them into client. This is known as the three pillar marketing strategy.
So, by following the above discussed strategies an agent can rule the Craigslist Real Estate Ads, but the aim should be Consumer Satisfaction.
I hope this blog will help you to generate real estate leads for you real quick.
I hope this blog will help you to generate real estate leads for you real quick.
