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Who Does Craigslist at your Dealership? Do you pay for someone to do it? Or do you not use it at all

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kcar

Boss
Jun 14, 2011
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#1
I love and hate CL, but I use it.. What are you all doing with it? Are you posting each ad by hand, using a posting tool, or paying a company to post them for you? At one point I was doing over 1400/ads a month (Part-auto software I built), but it was to time consuming to update, so I stopped. Back posting ads with a straight photoshoped image template, and conversions are pretty nice. About 200 clicks to the dealer site, maybe 2-4 sales a month, plus a ton of brand exposure.. Not many leads, most are spam so I can't really follow them too well..

Might go with Cargigi? Does the some of the heavy lifting for $400/month, but that's pretty expensive.. At least for me, I like to save everywhere I can..

But it has me wondering, these dealers that post the same template and 50 ads a day, over and over.. They have to be paying a company to do this, no dealer has someone doing CL fulltime.. Even with posting tools, you still entering in some data..

So back to my question, how do you do it?
 
#2
Most of the dealers I am working with are only putting their "C" (cash) cars on Craig's List. Yes, it can be a bit pricey and C cars seems to be the only thing getting results.

Generally, a good listing and merchandising tool should be able to send CL a feed. I do not recommend auto posting as I have seen a few guys get black listed.
 
#4
Every Craigslist posting for our dealership emanates from my desk using eBizAutos' copy-and-paste Craigslist postings (with some light massaging by yours truly). We figure it's the cleanest way to keep Craigslist managed (especially with how price changes and sold cars go) and comply with their TOU (which, I notice, was just updated overnight).

Posting every car with photos* and renewing religiously brings us enough traffic that it's often duking it out with Yahoo for #4 source of traffic (#5 if you count direct traffic).

*Edit: We've had runs on Craigslist on everything from high-mileage as-is units to low-mileage certified GMCs and Cadillacs. We can't figure out the science on it, so we take the advice of my grandfather Col. Leverette** and post everything.

**As a booklet of "Colonelisms" my aunt compiled is titled, "'Ya can't catch a possum with your dogs tied."
 
#7
kcar said:
I love and hate CL, but I use it.. What are you all doing with it? Are you posting each ad by hand, using a posting tool, or paying a company to post them for you? At one point I was doing over 1400/ads a month (Part-auto software I built), but it was to time consuming to update, so I stopped. Back posting ads with a straight photoshoped image template, and conversions are pretty nice. About 200 clicks to the dealer site, maybe 2-4 sales a month, plus a ton of brand exposure.. Not many leads, most are spam so I can't really follow them too well..

Might go with Cargigi? Does the some of the heavy lifting for $400/month, but that's pretty expensive.. At least for me, I like to save everywhere I can..

But it has me wondering, these dealers that post the same template and 50 ads a day, over and over.. They have to be paying a company to do this, no dealer has someone doing CL fulltime.. Even with posting tools, you still entering in some data..

So back to my question, how do you do it?
Click to expand...


Some things don't make sense here,

On one end you recognize that this is no small task "but it was to time consuming to update"

Then you complain about price. I understand saving, I run a business, but $400! "$400/month, but that's pretty expensive"

Most advertising products that are $400 or less will not make a major impact on your business with a few exceptions like for example if perhaps you include chat as advertising.

This is a good breakdown of CL:


Full image (no text to search) with a few key words at the bottom of the ad:

***2008 Ford F250 4x4 Powerstroke Diesel Crew Cab

Same, different company:

2004 Chevrolet Cavalier/CC5500 **WE CAN FINANCE YOU**

Full image, not even key words. Some random text trying to deceive CL:

2009 Pontiac G6 GIVE US A CALL

Full image. That's it:

☆¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸☆1996 BMW 7 series 740iL WHITE ☆¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸&#9

Cargigi ad. Full image BUT it has tiny text in beige color between the top of the ad and the CL heather. You can find it by looking at the HTML code of the page. Most of the time you won;t even get that text so you are left with just image non-searchable ads spread on a 24 hour cycle (who searches at 3 am).

## 06 Hyundai Sonata ##

What we do is this:

And what you should ask your company to offer.

Full add with HTML tags, text (so it is searchable), email form, link to dealer's website, custom banner:

2007 Volkswagen Passat 3.6L 4Motion
2009 Nissan Cube 4DR WGN S CVT

You need to post less and get same results because customers can find the ads just fine. Posting 100% image and flooding CL is a bad strategy.
 
#8
Eh.. I'll prob just put these ad's online all myself, 200~. Then save the source code in text files, and repost in seconds. The problem is just making the code to put inside (I do custom designs).. I think that should work out better this time, last time I'd end up re-coding the ad 10 times.
 
#9
kcar said:
Eh.. I'll prob just put these ad's online all myself, 200~. Then save the source code in text files, and repost in seconds. The problem is just making the code to put inside (I do custom designs).. I think that should work out better this time, last time I'd end up re-coding the ad 10 times.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the biz is just running by itself and you got too much time to kill.
 
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