Use Classified Ad Websites to Market Your Business

When you begin advertising your new company, unless you were fortunate enough to receive a large grant or obtain a business loan, your advertising budget is likely minimal.  The unfortunate side of this is without some form of advertising there will be no sales and in turn no revenue, which means you have no business.  While many businesses will come out of pocket and pay fees to advertise on Google or in the newspaper, many start-ups cannot afford to advertise as their capital is focused on production and overhead.

For the unfortunate few without an advertising budget there are some free advertising venues at your disposal that can actually get you some major traffic.  My personal favorite are free classifieds sites like Craigslist.org and more recently Backpage.com.  These sites allow you to place FREE ads (in most areas) with plenty of space for words and pictures, and some even allow you to spice up your ads with large banners or even HTML code and even allow "no-follow" backlinks to your company website.  While many people have discouraged use of these sites, I 100% recommend this avenue for the business owner with no advertising budget.  Without the use of free classified ads websites, Craigslist.com in particular, I never would have done as well as I have thus far designing websites, and would have bombed completely as a used car salesman.

Using classified ad websites allows you to place free ads with pictures and descriptions, including contact information, online where the entire world can see.  You can post detailed ads in your city and state in your niche category and gain customers that many business overlook.  There are many thousands of users on these sites searching for everything from cars to bed sheets so there is an area for every business to showcase their product or service.  By using these sites you can gain great exposure if used properly at no cost to you but the fees to pay the internet company.

Follow these guidelines when promoting your business with classifieds websites:

• Use detailed ad titles.  Don't throw out "I am selling.... For...." Use something descriptive like "Used Chevy 1500 - 50K Miles, $10000"
• Learn to use punctuation and avoid titles and descriptions in all caps
• Put as much descriptive information in the ad as possible, short ads with contact info will be overlooked
• Stick to the point and details only, forgetting that its an ad and writing a life story will annoy the reader and it will be overlooked
• Use images.  Include as many pictures of the product that you can, ads with pictures get a lot more attention than those without
• Include contact information.  Don't include personal phone numbers unless you intend to answer, and be sure to include an email address or store location.
• Create an email address specifically for use on classifieds sites.  There is a significant risk of receiving spam email by posting on these sites, so be sure not to give out your personal address.
• Refresh your ads weekly.  Many sites will restrict you from posting your ad multiple times, but after 2 or 3 days you can delete your ads and - them to get back on the top of the latest listings.
• Post in multiple regions.  If you're selling a product locally, post in cities around you, if a customer likes your product they'll be willing to come get it.
• Link to your website in every ad.  This will increase your traffic immensely and provide follow link-backs to your site which helps with search rankings.

When you decide to start advertising on classified ad websites, you will notice that some will prevent you from making duplicate posts.  This is an effort to eliminate spammers.  The benefit of this is you will get a lot less junk between your ad and the top of the page, but it does mean you will have to do a bit more work to get more ads posted.  While this may seem like a pain, it is a good idea to create multiple different versions of your ad.  It will allow you to advertise multiple different aspects of your business, and won't have you coming off like your spamming when customers see your ad more than once.

Using classified ads can help increase your exposure, often at little or no cost to you, and will let people know you exist.  These sites have been my main source of income for a long time and can assist you in ways that many companies overlook.

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Benheffaf aziz is an avid learner and blog author. He runs Android Aspect and Get Cydia Apps . He started blogging from 2012. He considers the reader comments even more important than his own posts.