Written by Zach Hansen
If you’ve ever thought about marketing your business through Craigslist or next door, but are unsure of how to get started, you’ve come to the right place! You may be asking yourself, where do I start? What’s the best way to get my customers’ attention? Or perhaps you have wondered, how can I avoid looking like a scammer?
Below, we’ve compiled a list of simple marketing tips for selling on Craigslist and Nextdoor. We hope these will help you bring your online marketing strategy to the next level!
Craigslist
Know Your Audience – Every entrepreneur will tell you that understanding your audience is the key to building a successful business. This is essential when creating your advertisements. Let’s say you are a business that can perform both residential and commercial jobs, you will want to build your craigslist ads for each one of these target groups.
Posting separate ads is particularly critical for Craigslist because it utilizes narrow categories and geographical locations for its posts. If your business serves different locations, make sure you make ads for each of these areas as well.
Design Ads Purposefully – Before you start writing your post, do a quick keyword search. Buyers commonly search for ads by using specific terms. You can search for keywords on websites such as wordtracker.com. Once you have identified these words, use them in your title and sprinkle them in text, without overdoing it. Also, be sure to keep it simple and clean by using proper language and utilizing the text formatting options. If done properly, this can be one of the most reliable ways to generate leads.
Post Often and Strategically – With thousands of ads circulating on Craigslist, you’ll need to post often to get noticed. Another important factor is posting at the right time. For instance, if you are marketing to a business, you should aim to upload your posts during regular business hours. For others, you may want to post after business hours when people are winding down or on weekends when home projects and other errands are typically being done.
Link to Your Website – Of all the craigslist ad tips, this one is the simplest, yet easiest to overlook. Make sure you place a working link in every single post you make. You will want customers to be able to find your website quickly and easily.
Nextdoor
Create Your Business Account – When you join the app, you will have the option to join as either a Nextdoor Business or a Nextdoor User. So, be sure you sign up for the right option. If you make the mistake of signing up as a normal user, uploading marketing ads will very quickly get you flagged as a spammer. When setting up the account, be sure to include attractive images, a friendly greeting message, and, of course, current contact information.
Get Recommendations – Once you’ve set up your Nextdoor business account, you will have a chance to build trust with the customers, advertise, post updates, and get recommendations. Recommendations are positive reviews your neighbors have given you. We cannot stress enough how critical these are! People typically trust their neighbors, so they are likely to take their word seriously.
Engage With Your Community – To take your Nextdoor advertising to new heights, become fully engaged with your community and make a connection with your neighbors. To do this, you can do things such as uploading a regular post to your community feed, creating a group or events. Just remember, BE GENUINE! You don’t want to make every single post sound like an ad. Instead, you can ask questions or start a poll to stimulate discussion. To take it one step further, you can engage in person and participate in local fairs and events.
Run Local Deals – Nextdoor local deals provide businesses a way to offer their neighbors services custom offers and promotions. These are super simple to set up. All you need is a simple description of the offer, an image, and the boundary of the desired location. Finally, you will have to set a timeframe for the duration of the promotion.
We hope that you have learned something useful in this post about Craigslist and Nextdoor business advertising. And remember, good marketing requires a bit of risk-taking. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and try something new.