Craigslist advertising

R

Richard Grasa

New member
I was checking out the OCDetails Detailing Blog and found his write up on leverage craigslist very inspiring so I decided to give it a try. This is just a quick template that I put together on use.com and will be adding text a little later when I have more time. I just wanted to share this to give you an idea of how much you can make an ad on craigslist stand out from the rest.



Auto Detailing - Gift Certificates Available!
 
ExplicitDetails said:
I just wanted to share this to give you an idea of how much you can make an ad on craigslist stand out from the rest.
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Agreed. A little HTML injected into a CL ad goes a long way! Looks very nice!
 
Very cool! I'm glad to know that the information is useful out there. :) I would strongly recommend you put some actual text on there too though. Search engines can't read the business card, so you won't get the google hits or Craigslist searches like you would if you put search engine food in there. The graphics are nice, but you need text as well. Great looking ad though! Hopefully that stands out from the others in your area. :)
 
My main concern is the detailers I see advertising on craigslist are bottom feeders. Not sure if that is because others looking there for a detailer are bottom feeder types as well. I know the main reason I look on craigslist is for deals (parts for my bike, etc). Let us know what type of response you get.
 
OCDetails - Yeah I will be adding text and links when I get some spare time. This one was just a test to see how it looked.



Scott - There's vary rarely any detailers advertising in my area on craigslist. In my area anyway, I know that the vast majority of advertisers in the services section on CL are bottom feeder types, undercutting everyone else, not insured, hacks, etc, etc. I also know that the vast majority of people looking for services on craigslist are price shoppers, hagglers, etc. A couple years ago when I was mobile I had a plain text ad and just got these types calling me. I'm hoping that by having the nice looking, higher end template, the few people that may see it that are actually looking for top level service will call and the hagglers will be kind of scared off and not bother calling. Well whatever happens, it's free and takes no time at all to set up the template so I won't be losing anything if it doesn't work out. Even if it gets just one or two jobs and helps spread word of mouth it will be worth it. I'll let you all know what happens.
 
I use Picasa to edit pics/add text for my CL ads. It looks decent, but lately I've had a weak response on CL.



Anyone on yelp here for clients to give reviews?
 
DaVinciAutoSpa said:
I use Picasa to edit pics/add text for my CL ads. It looks decent, but lately I've had a weak response on CL.



Anyone on yelp here for clients to give reviews?
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I'm on Yelp but I think I have only one review after a few hundred details. IME, unless you give some kind of incentive, or email them a link asking for a review it's tough to get people to go online and give you a good review. Unless you do something bad, then they're all over it giving you bad reviews. I always ask people to give me a review on yelp or somewhere else but they never actually follow through with it.
 
Has anyone tried Thumbtack yet? I've gotten a few calls from advertising there. It hasn't been as good as Craigslist or other online classifieds yet, but I only started using it last August. I've gotten three or four calls from it though, which is actually pretty good considering the amount of work I put into my profile. I beefed it up last week in preparation for getting started for next year, so we'll see what happens. Every little bit helps, right? I'll take my business where I can get it.
 
On our thank you letters we ask for referrals or a review on yp.com or kudzu.com. We use to ask for yelp reviews but have since stopped when numerous reviews were deleted. Yelp was under investigation a couple years ago for deleting reviews for non-paying business listings like ours, and whether or not anything came of it we still lose our reviews. This has not happened with the two we currently use. Craigslist has been worth it when we throw an ad on there. Google ad-words is no longer beneficial because we're organically number one. After four years of doing business in this area, word of mouth is more than enough.
 
I use CL a lot and get a fair bit of work from it...mostly interior details and maybe a AIO. I put time into creating nice looking HTML ads and I change them up every couple months to keep them fresh. My pricing is mid-range for my area so I don't discount services for people who want to haggle. I also include "starting from" prices in the ad to avoid getting phone calls from people just looking for a price.
 
DaVinciAutoSpa said:
I'll look into Thumbtack. Anything helps.
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Steer clear of it. I've had 4-5 quote requests sent to me, paid like $4 or something to respond to each of them and have not booked anything.
 
WHen I first started craigslist was huge for me, but the issue I had was people only wanted cheap prices and tons of work to be done. Many people use craigslist and you just never know who you can meet. I need to post an ad now that I think about it. It really helps with google rankings. Im sure know one will bite at the add, but I'll use it for SEO.
 
tssdetailing said:
Steer clear of it. I've had 4-5 quote requests sent to me, paid like $4 or something to respond to each of them and have not booked anything.
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Wow. Thanks for the heads up.



Word of mouth still gets me 90% of my business, I'd just like to expand.
 
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