Best Classified Advertising Practices
How To Get The Most Contacts And Make The Most Money From Your Classified Advertisements.
Always remember why you are advertising!
You are not advertising to tell people about your product. You are advertising to get people to contact you whether it be by email or telephone.
Everything you do should be done with the purpose of getting people to contact you.
Emphasize the benefits of dealing with you.
In all sales presentations your order of march is to 1) sell yourself, 2) sell your company, and then 3) sell your product.
Do not waste your time on making a long list of the features of your product. Work to get the people to contact you so that you can send them complete information about the product.
Distinguish yourself with a good headline.
Your headline should be crafted to get attention. It may continue features about your product but it should be so worded that people will want to look at the remainder of your advertisement.
Your headline is an attention getter to get people to contact you.
Add pictures.
Use as many pictures as the classified advertising system allows you to use.
The pictures do not necessarily have to be about your product. They can show your office, your production line and your picture. And a picture of yourself with text on it saying call me for complete information.
Add a video
The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube. Make a video and put it on YouTube. Add a link from your advertisement to that YouTube video.
You will get traffic not only from your YouTube video but people will watch the video and improving your video position on YouTube as well as see that you are really interested and professional. The number of contacts that you get will drastically increase.
You can get a professionally done and narrated video at Fivver.com. They start at Five Dollars.
Focus on benefits over features
People want to know why they should use your product, get them to contact you for the features of the product.
Lets us explain this by example:
Instead of saying, "Our snail cream hides scars and reduces the effect of acne."
Say "After using our snail cream for a month your skin will be clear, with reduced effects of aging, scars will disappear, and your skin will have a moist, fresh, youthful appearance. Contact us to learn how it does it."
Use An Image Ad
Many advertising services will automatically ban advertisements with certain words.
Get around that by using an image ad.
You can make one large image and put out a lot of information in it. And then all you have to do is post that image.
If you do not know how to make an image ad, make up your text and pictures and contact someone at Fiverr and have them put it together for you. It only cost five dollars. Is the link to Fiverr
Tell the reader what to do
Remember why you are advertising. You want the people to send you email or call you.
Don't assume that they will regardless of how good your advertisement is.
Add words such as "Call me at this number." "Email me to get complete information." "Click here for more details."
There is no reason you cannot add three or four such calls to action in any one advertisement.
Use a picture and words such as "Call me at this number and I will give you personal help." People want to know with whom they will be talking.
Use your own domain name
Serious companies have their own domain name. People want to deal with serious companies. You don't look very serious if you use one of the free email services.
Start selling the reliability of your company by having your own domain name.
With which company would you rather deal? One with an email address 1279!@qq.com or one with email address officesupport@companyname.com?
In the first case ( 1279!@qq.com) you're not sure with whom you might be dealing. In the second case ( officesupport@companyname.com ) you know you are dealing with an established companyA domain only cost about $10. ( Here ) And you can get a complete hosting service with a free domain for about five dollars per month. (Here)
Just one customer can pay for all the services you need for more than a year.
Write your ad and review it before you post it
Advertising is important. The customer either calls you or does not. You do not have a second chance.
Take your time and write your advertisement. Then compare it to the tips in this page. Make changes as necessary.
Only after you do that, post it.
Use bullet points
Do not use long, rambling paragraphs.
Use bullet points that emphasize the benefits and work towards getting people to contact you for complete details, catalog, or other information.
Things that you should not do
Do not use all capital letters. That is shouting, impolite, and unprofessional.
Do not use URL redirection services. Such services you get your classified ads banned.
Do not use affiliate links. Such links will get your classified ads banned.
Do not post in unrelated categories. Post only in the category or categories that is specific to your product or service. Posting in unrelated categories will get those particular advertisements banned and if you do this in multiple cases, you will be totally banned.
What should you do now