Succeed with Online Classifieds

A great ad addressed to the wrong market is going to flop. The greatest single cause of failure in advertising is lack of preparatory thought re customer profile before rushing into ad composition.

You will need to learn to profile your potential customer in terms of age, income, geography, family circumstances, profession, interests, or whatever other variable is relevant to your product.

Having accurately identified who your customer is, you are then in a position to evaluate how they might best be reached and what propositions might prove most compelling.

Having determined which adsites and which ad categories and geographic groups, might be of interest to your custmer profile, you are finally ready to draft headlines and copy to capture their interest.

Market analysis/customer profiling may seem daunting until you get into the swing of it, but I promise you the time spent will be well rewarded in terms of improved advertising effectiveness.

To take advantage of classified advertising you will need to learn to compose ads that capture attention and stimulate response.

Your headline is paramount and must snag the browser's interest immediately. Copy must be brief, benefits oriented and tap into the needs and hot buttons of your audience.

There is a skill in creating good copy - it mainly comes down to an understanding of the target market and human psychology.

It helps to think in terms of identifying groups feeling pain of some kind and then show them a solution to ease that pain - but start from identification and empathy with their discomfort.

The direct response rate for a single ad will be modest. This can be compensated for by placing and renewing the ad on many sites concurrently.

Clipboard tools in conjunction with URL/password catalogs like Roboform can assist here but the superior solution is purpose built Ad Submission software. Suitable software is availble for a one time cost and can be a very good investment.

The submitter that I use has a catalog of thousands of ad sites; search aids to find new ones; plus artificial intelligence software to adapt to all the different and evolving site interfaces. It allows me to add private sites of my own choosing - learning each new site's interface by copying the initial manual submission. For further information see

http://4mostip.com/presents/PowerSubmitter

Alternatively, a more basic submitter at a correspondingly lower price

http://www.4mostip.com/presents/Cyberfetch

Free ads are for a limited duration - typically a week to a month. That or the ad will progressively descend in display priority. In any event, the solution is to renew ads frequently and promptly.

Renewal, like initial placement, is time consuming. Automated aids are the sensible solution.

My own submitter has a diary capability to ease resubmission management.

For those without automated renewal software it may be worth investing a modest sum for paid extended ad dsplay - it comes down to how much you value your time.

Response rate on Free ads will be lower than that achieved with paid "Feature ads". Feature ads are placed in prominent positions and do not slip down the list into obscuriy. They may also benefit form improved display presentation to draw attention.

The improved response from Feature ads can be dramatic (like 10:1) - so if the addional cost is modest it can be a good investment, particularly for those lacking automated aids for mass submission.

Alternatively, you can play the numbers game by submitting a correspondingly greater volume of free ads to compensate for their lower productivity.

However, realisitically, a volume based strategy will require some degree of investment in automated tools to be truly effective.

FURTHER "HOW TO" INFORMATION ON CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

For detailed advice in using Classified Ads effectively visit the author's blog:

Success with Classifieds

OTHER METHODS OF LEAD GENERATION

For alternative methods of Lead Generation see the author's Squidoo lens AllAboutTraffic" at http://squidoo.com/AllAboutTraffic