I apologize. This completely slipped my mind. I put together a tutorial video on YouTube for creating effective Craigslist ads, but forgot to put it up on the blog. This video covers most of the points seen in The Ultimate Craigslist Posting Strategy.
Without further adieu:
I’ve been asked this question a few times and finally decided to write a detailed post about it . There’s a lot of power in controlling the images that go into your Craigslist ad. This can work a couple different ways:
A) Your entire ad can be image-based (or a single image) that could look much more appealing than the standard text-based ads that users are used to looking at (stand out!)
B) Your ad can incorporate more than 4 images, and they can be placed Read more…
Given the state of the online market in the current recession, wasting money on website marketing might not seem like a very bright idea. In fact it might seem foolish to spend money when you have little hope of recovering it. Yet even now there is enough money in the market to make a decent living. I am not kidding when I say this.
* Get A Plan
All you need to know is the way to go about making money. Website marketing is very important to this plan. If your website is invisible you are not going to make any money. So you need to spend money to make money. You might now say that you have no money. You don’t need to spend millions, just a few dollars in the right places can Read more…
Life is coming at us much faster than 10 years ago, and the average individual is getting very good at tuning out traditional advertising methods. They’ve got Tivo for TV commercials, Spam filters for unsolicited e-mail, and an RSS news feed instead of a newspaper. These traditional ‘outbound’ marketing mediums are broadcasting a message that is getting filtered before it reaches your target.
A new wave of marketing, called ‘inbound marketing,’ is taking a different approach. Instead of barraging the target with interruptions, inbound campaigns seek to position the company in front of the target when they’re looking for their services. For example, an inbound campaign would focus around coming up at the top of search engine results for their keywords, social networking, and building authority and being a resource in their field. In this way, when a target begins their search for the type of services the company provides, the company appears among the top in their industry. Read more…
Guerrilla marketing is for wimps. Here’s how to generate real publicity for your business:
Extreme Marketing How-To #1) The Road Warrior
These last few days I’ve been out of town on vacation, and have been using Google Maps to help me find my way around. Searching for grocery stores, coffee shops, and free wi-fi reminded me how important it is to list your business with Google Maps and Yahoo Local. In case you’re Read more…
Gone are the days of having your website be a static brochure for your company. You need to be adding and changing content on a daily (or at least weekly) basis to really start to enhance your website.
By building you website on a content management system (CMS) – like Drupal or Joomla – you’ll find it’s very easy to add/change content, additional features and plug-ins that used to take serious development time are now available in easy-to-install packages, and built-in blogging software (which you should be using to regularly add content to your site for SEO) is easy to use and search engine friendly.
In this Web 2.0 world, a CMS is the ultimate tool for Read more…
I keep coming across web designers who say they provide ‘Search Engine Optimization’ by using heading tags, text links, and non-dynamic links, and decided it was time to make some clarifications.
Search Engine ‘Friendly’ involves building the foundation and features of the site in a way that the search engine spiders can comprehend. Having a ‘search engine friendly’ site does not necessarily help you climb the organic rankings, but there’s no reason to intentionally build your website without integrating these concepts.
Search Engine ‘Optimization’ as a service is more related to keywords and organic rankings, and involves both on-site and off-site work to achieve these goals.
Ways to make your website ‘Search Engine Friendly’ (easily read by a Search Engine):
Do you use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software? If not, you could be fighting an uphill battle. There are so many things a good CRM can do for your business that it’s almost detrimental to pass it up.
Many small businesses will admit to having “that spreadsheet with some of their clients’ contact info or order history,” but this is not a scalable, reliable, or useful system compared to what’s available. A good CRM software will be customizable to your sales process (or focused on your niche, like auto sales or medical office) and help facilitate the organization and flow of your business processes.
Here are some of the things a good CRM software will do for you:
Just about every popular blog these days is set up with social bookmarking links to make it easy for the reader to share the article with friends and contacts. After reading a bit on President Obama’s blog (www.barackobama.com – after they ask you to buy the t-shirt 
), I noticed that those buttons are missing from the page.
I think it would be an excellent idea to incorporate a ’share this’ bar or a digg box plug in to make it easy for their visitors to share articles. Read more…
After the large number of views and responses on our past Craigslist posting articles, I thought I would follow up with a few more items and a real example of what we use to achieve great results.
You can see a perma-copy of one of our best performing Craigslist ads here: Vanivo Craigslist Ad. Here are a few things that make this ad effective:
1) Eye-catching, actionable title.
The asterisks (***) draw the attention to the phrase “web design.” We phrased the title as a question because the mental cue for a ‘yes’ answer Read more…
Lately I’ve been studying testing and implementing the best tactics for Craigslist posting. I’ve been experimenting for over 4 months now, and I’ve gotten measurably better responses (ad views and click-throughs to my website) by using the strategies outlined below, and for the first time ever, I’m sharing them with you.
Tip 1) Don’t Blend In.
Your first goal on Craigslist is to not get lost in the crowd. To view your ad, visitors have to find your title in the category page, which is easier said than done these days.
As a relatively new blog, I’m always looking for ways to bring in legitimate traffic and reward contributors for thought-out comments. Now, the opportunity is built in to this blog. I’ll describe how the nofollow process works in my next post…
I had been tossing around the idea for a while, considering the downside of losing my stellar pagerank – this blog is currently not ranked . I read up on the topic and decided to join the growing community of ‘dofollowers.’ There are quite a few reasons, many of which are Read more…
There’s just so much good stuff in this book, I might have to turn this into a multi-part series. Chapter 4, “Direct Response Marketing” (from Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet by Jay Conrad Levinson) really got me thinking about how many sites I’ve come across that don’t do anything for the business. In very few cases, having the simplest of ‘brochure websites’ (strictly informational and usually for credibility purposes) may be appropriate, but there are so many opportunities to get your web site to do more for your business.
The easiest thing any website can do is collect your visitor’s contact information. This can be used as a targeted list for your marketing offers (as long as you have their permission of course). There are many things you can offer your visitors in exchange for their contact info (specifically, e-mail address):
I’ve recently been browsing Jay Conrad Levinson’s latest book: Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet, and have come across quite a few gems that got me thinking. This article is a brain dump for a few of my thoughts while reading the book.
For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Guerrilla Marketing,’ Wikipedia explains, “is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.” These aren’t just strategies, they’re principles to live by.
1. Embrace Web 2.0 and Social Media
There is the old Internet and the new Internet. The old Internet was a one-way flow of information where a company, entity, or individual would put their content on a website. Visitors would view the content, and go on their merry way. The new Internet takes a collaborative, visitor-centric approach where the community creates the content and everyone benefits. Here are a few examples: Read more…