Advice on Craigslist ad posting services

[whitlock]

My first CL listing had my email address
Unreal how much spam that site generates
Will never do that again, I made an email address just for CL

 

[mikemcguire]

We have had good results with cargigi. I like their live market monitor feature. Real easy and track able.

 

[Erin Dresing]

I just left the digital dealer conference where a speaker warned about using a company that offer automated postings for craigslist--said that they violated the terms of use & could result in a lawsuit. Has anyone heard of this?

 

[Patrick80639]

I've heard Craigslist is cracking down. Just had one of my accounts blacklisted last week. Worst part is Craigslist will keep letting you post, but none of your ads actually get online where people can see it. Didn't realize it until I actually did a search for my ads and couldn't find anything, very frustrating. I've never heard anything about lawsuits, though.

 

[joe.pistell]

Here's my CL history.

I used to post to CL via sexy templates. Jealous sellers would blackflag me every chance they get. Overall, CL results were fair, but I wanted more.

Next, I decided to follow the CL tradition. I dropped all templates with graphics, used only 2 car pics, used basic VIN features, added one paragraph of comments, linked to VDP and phone number. It worked! The traffic homesite from this ultra-basic layout was far superior as compared to the polished templates. My manual CL poster was an intern that just went back to college, so I gave CarGigi a try.

The Cargigi platform has a cool traffic analysis tool, but the lead counts are way off and traffic to my site is way off. CarGigi converts all content into an image, then posts it to CL. I dont care for that process.

IMO, cargigi spends so much time trying to outfox the blacklistings, they totally overlook the conversion metrics (lead counts, traffic to dealer sites, etc)

 

[mbmotorsports]

We were also posting with LotVantage and had great success until about 4 months ago when things started really going downhill. Craigslist just really tightened up until we were ghosted and could barely get a car live. So I took Joe's advice and have one of my guys post manually. We post 20 cars (takes about an hour) in the morning , 20 mid day, and 20 at night. This will get our entire inventory (around 120 cars retail ready with pics) on a single CL site in 2 days. Then we'll move onto another CL site. We do this for Central, south & north New Jersey. Takes a week to get all inventory on the 3 sites.

We are getting huge traffic to our vehicle details pages. about 2k visits this month. But like Joe, our bounce rate for CL hits is north of 60%. (avg BR of other traffic is roughly 10%) Page traffic is also down at around 2.2.

Any ideas of what we can do to engage these shoppers and keep them on the site?

Either way, The day of posting tools, in my mind, is winding down. Craigslist is just catching on and making it real hard to get lots of listing up at the same time.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Jesse, I believe you have it right. I see a short lived future for craigslist auto posting services. I give them another 3-4 months before CL lays the smack down. It's coming.

If you want to keep advertising on CL, I would be looking for alternative software/services that will allow you to streamline it inhouse.

 

[yagoparamo]

Autoposting is done, its about time. <the rest of this post was edited out>

 

[joe.pistell]

...

We are getting huge traffic to our vehicle details pages. about 2k visits this month. But like Joe, our bounce rate for CL hits is north of 60%. (avg BR of other traffic is roughly 10%) Page traffic is also down at around 2.2.

Any ideas of what we can do to engage these shoppers and keep them on the site?

Either way, The day of posting tools, in my mind, is winding down. Craigslist is just catching on and making it real hard to get lots of listing up at the same time.

Jesse,

Post a few CL links and I'll give you some fresh eyes to review your bounce rate.

FYI, a low pages p/visit from CL is not a bad thing IF you refer your visitors to the VDP (Vehicle Detail Page). You may want to tinker with sending the CL shopper to the SRP (Search Results Page) instead. Example: Rather than sending the shopper to your Acura RL, send them to ALL your Acura RLs.

 

[joe.pistell]

.

We are getting huge traffic to our vehicle details pages. about 2k visits this month. .

2k a month! NICE!

IDEA: Ask your website builder to create a special pop-up or a special message to CL referrals. Create a special offer that requires an EMAIL ONLY and then soft-sell this audience. Be sure to work the perils of buying FSBOs.

IDEA2: If your request to your website vendor is not a slam dunk, if you have a Chat service, ask them to do the same. Chat services are smaller and can react to custom requests quicker.