I'm on a "less is more" campaign on CL. My current experiment is to use CL as a tool to drive traffic to my home site. I've thrown out the sexy HTML templates and gone to ultra simple "teaser" ads and have had success.
My Win-Win Game Plan.
The CL audience LIKES the CL shopping experience. They LIKE the simple text , the small pics and a phone number. Why BREAK the CL brand, why break the CL experience? My strategy is to offer up a classic CL minimalist ad, and present a "link to see more". My thinking is that IF they click the link, the CL shopper knows they are leaving CL and the shopper is more prepared for my "branding message"
I have an intern on summer break posting a variety of ads, all manually, they look like:
'08 Toyota FJ Cruiser 4WD (50 visitors)
08 VW Passat Komfort (38 visitors)
2010 Ford Explorer XLT 4WD (28 visitors)
We're 17 days into June and I have 980 visitors from 7 different CL cities so far. We are in upstate NY, a rather rural population, if your Metro, expect far bigger numbers.
To put things into perspective, 17 days into June, CL outperforms Cars.com and AutoTrader combined by 10:1
--CL 980 visitors
--AT and Cars.com total: 99 visitors
CL has always out performed AT and Cars.com (for me). I am seeing more visits because of the CL push we're putting on (thnx to my College intern). This is NOT an A/B test, this is just a heads up to ya'll. Be brave, strip those sexy templates down to the bone. "Less is more" has value.
