How to Advertise an Online Business on Craigslist
Running an online company requires marketing your skills in unconventional ways. Online businesses range from transcription to accounting to advertising services and product sales. One way to advertise an online business is through the Internet classified ad service Craigslist. Advertise on Craigslist by focusing on your target customer and reaching out to him.
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Instructions
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1
Determine your customer and the product or service you want to advertise. Determine who your target customer is by looking at the gender, age, geographic location and income level of the average person who would be interested in your product or service. Write a description of your product or service in 10 words or less. Find something about your offering that sets your online business apart from others and write down that information. Write a sentence about your online business that sells your offerings to your target customer.
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2
Create an account by providing your email address and clicking "Create Account." Log in to your email account, click on the link to the email sent to you by Craigslist and click on the internal link for account activation. Enter a password for your Craigslist account and click "Submit."
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3
List your ad in the correct city and category. Click on the state and city in which your target customer lives. Find the category that best describes the product or service your online business is selling. If you are selling an accounting service, click on the "Financial" link in the "Services" section. If you are selling computers online, click on the "Computer" link in the "For Sale" section. Click on "Post" in the upper right corner of the Craigslist site and click on the category in which you want to advertise.
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4
Draw in your target customer with an ad title. The title should be something that customers want to click on to find out more. Make this compelling by considering your target customer and his needs. Type the title in the "Posting Title" form field. Type a price for your product or service in the "Price" field and the location of your target customer in the "Specific Location" field.
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5
Write a short ad in the "Posting Description" form field. Include the sentence you created in Step 1 describing the product or service you are selling and the sentence that sells the offering to your target customer. Only write necessary information in your ad, as Craigslist surfers have a lot of ads to look at and you don't want to bog them down. Draw them in to call you. Grab their attention quickly and list your business phone number in the description. It is against Craigslist rules to list business website links in your ad; provide customers with your website address when they call you.
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6
Re-post your Craigslist ad every two days. Craigslist rules prohibit the posting of the same ad in the same city more frequently than once every 48 hours. Re-post your ad every 48 hours by repeating Steps 2 through 5.
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7
Monitor your success and change your ad, if necessary. If you aren't getting the number of phone calls you desire from your Craigslist ad after posting it two or three times, change your ad to a title that might be more compelling to Web surfers. Use different words in the content that appeal to your target audience. If you are writing an ad for an online accounting service, pose a question as the first sentence: "Stressed out during tax time? Do not fear." If you are happy with the success of your ad, don't change anything.
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