Having major problems with Craigslist. Please help!

[yagoparamo]

To rule everything out... check this if you use Comcast:

Comcast IP Change

 

[yagoparamo]

Your ads are being ghosted. You get ghosted for many reasons, not just on number of cars per day. Click this link for some good practices on avoiding being ghosted.

Understanding Craig's List Postings DealerActive Blog

The problem is once you've been ghosted, unless it is something as simple as phone verification, you might need to start over with new CL accounts. It's just more efficient. And if your store has just one IP, most likely that IP has been blocked (at least for now) now so that might not even help. You can find managed posting tools like ours and other vendors too that will handle this for you. Our managed system will show you which ads are ghosted and which are not.

The leads dealers get from CL are great, but ghosting, phone verifications etc. make it very demanding.

sjordan,


I followed your link and it says this:

"So if you post 100 cars in a month, it should generate about 50 leads that month. These leads are about 20% web, 80% phone – but if you have call tracking you can set a designated classifieds # to track the calls".

We want to hire your company inmediatelly if for 100 cars posted we can get 50 leads.

 

[sjordan]

sjordan,


I followed your link and it says this:

"So if you post 100 cars in a month, it should generate about 50 leads that month. These leads are about 20% web, 80% phone – but if you have call tracking you can set a designated classifieds # to track the calls".

We want to hire your company inmediatelly if for 100 cars posted we can get 50 leads.

1 car every 20 minutes?! This would be the first time in all the years I've been posting that Ive heard someone suggest doing this. This seem like an "intermediate level" theory, I'm assuming these postings are being done with very limited resources, either that or you're posting from a commodore 54. if so, I have an old copy of "Oregon Trail" you might be interested in.

Look at the time stamps (all postings same dealer):

seattle cars & trucks - all classifieds "harris ford" - craigslist=

Let's consider the following:

Those are great results that Harris gets. Do you do that for them ? That's great if you do. Our clients get those caliber of successful posting results as well using our tools.

The recommendation to post every 20-40 minutes is for a manual poster/user based on the fact this user has already been ghosted/flagged, thus I would suggest that they need to be twice as careful if they are going to continue to do postings manually. Don't you think Sean would rather be posting 1 car every 20-40 minutes without issues then posting for a month to get ghosted and no results?

The recommendation to post every 20 minutes is for a manual poster without a ghosting/flagging history based upon the fact that we don't want them to get ghosted or flagged and we don't know what their CL knowledge base is unless they tell us, so we have to factor in that this might be being done by someone a dealer just hired that missed training and is more apt to unintentionally violate a rule just as someone at Auto Fair may have.

So yes Jim, this is intermediate advice for Sean and the rest of us, not for someone clearly operating at a level above us all based upon your wit and humor. I am still laughing…it was so funny. The commodore, oregon trial. That was good.

Yago, (I guess your Jim's boss?) with regards to the leads generated, with a managed system like ours it would have shown Sean what ads were ghosted (so he wouldn't have waited a month to find out), supplied all stats and data on each ad posted, and provided him cumulative data that will even break down the clicks/views on craigslist by car make, model, price and stock #. Maybe you have all this too - if so that's great. I wish you the best of luck.

Anyway, since the metrics and our call tracking is easily available to our Dealer Clients our dealers can easily see the lead results themselves. I don't really need to justify our stats to you, only my Clients. But I will go ahead and respond since you put it out there for me to address by questioning the validity of the quote "So if you post 100 cars in a month, it should generate about 50 leads that month"

In this example, I am going to use a small dealer that has a 100 car max cap on our CL posting service every 30 Days, or basically each month.

I'm going to go back to 9:23 Saturday a.m.
Since that time we have posted exactly 86 ads for this dealer, or almost every car 1 time.
Since then to right now the leads are:

- 1 email lead direct from CL
- 6 Phone calls from CL
- 2 request for quote leads from 13 site visits generated on the dealer site from CL
- 1862 clicks/views on CL

That is 9 leads in less than three days on 86 car postings. We will repeat that cycle through 100 of their cars all month. So, if over 3 days they got 9 leads on 86 cars, then over a 30 day cycle this dealer will actually get 90 leads posting those 86 cars should that trend continue.

In fact, in this case they will actually get almost 100 leads on less than 100 cars being posted. However, since those 3 days includes a weekend I'm sure it will average down closer to the 50 leads per the quote in question.

But hey, lets hope for the dealer it doesn't trend down!

I think your confusion over the quote might be that we need to more clearly reflect that this is not just posting 100 cars a single time over a month period, but it is based upon continually cycling through that 100 car inventory over a 30 day period to generate those leads. If that is the case then you are right, and I will get that updated to be more specific and eliminate a possible source of misunderstanding. If that's not how you took it and you aren't generating at least a 50% lead response over a month for every 100 cars then you're right again - you should hire us.

 

[Alex Snyder]

P.S. I love this website

Thank you Sean :thumbup:

And with that said I want to point out that there have been some suggestions made to help you with your problem....BUT....this thread is turning into a vendor pissing match.

Yagode and Stuart - Please give it a break fellas.

 

[sjordan]

Thanks Alex. I agree.

 

[yagoparamo]

Agreed, sorry.

Sorry Stuart.

 

[WillMcG32]

I run a BDC, and worked in the BDC of our sister store prior to running this one. I have done Craigslist posting through Dealer Specialties for some time now (at least a couple years).

For some reason we're suddenly having problems. We'll post cars and we'll check the back-end side of Craigslist (where you log into your account and can see all your posts) and it shows all the cars I've posted. But then when I search for the vehicles I cannot find them anywhere on Craigslist. This is also happening at our sister store now too.

I have double-checked location, asked Dealer Specialties if they can help (and they have no ideas), and done tons of different tests and tried different methods and we just can't figure out why suddenly our posts aren't appearing on Craigslist even though Craigslist says they're on there. It's been going on for about a month now at our sister store, and has been happening here now off and on (its not always every car that won't show, a couple will appear randomly in search results, but 80% of them don't, and there's nothing different about how I post them).

I only do 10 posts a day, so there is no reason I would be black-listed or anything, and everything works the way it used to, I just suddenly cannot find any of my cars when I search for them. We absolutely can't figure it out and neither can Dealer Specialties. Our sister store has even created a brand new account and it's still happening to them.

Is anybody else having this problem? Has anyone else heard of this problem? Any ideas at all? At this point we have no answers and really not even a good theory.

I appreciate the help!

-Sean Woodruff

P.S. I love this website

Hey Sean,

I'm a little late to the party here but I wanted to see if I can help facilitate any support to you in this matter. I am sure you have talked to your rep by now, but if not, I would be glad to get them out there to help. If that doesn't work for you I would be glad to personally help in this matter.

Feel free to give me a call.

direct 513.705.2231