How To Write “Craigslist Real Estate For Sale” Ads Online
Truly great marketers understand the importance of diversifying their efforts. At the very least, real estate is a numbers game; one that is typically won by those with the ability to increase their exposure in the most efficient and inexpensive manner as possible. That said, there is one marketing funnel with a particularly attractive return on investment (ROI): Craigslist real estate ads. To truly get the best out of online ads, investors need to optimize their Craigslist marketing efforts. Instead of reinventing the wheel, however, take a page from Craigslist real estate ad templates that already work.
Fill out the provided template, making sure to fill in all the green fields (which are required). For a better idea of what to include in the template, feel free to use the example we proved further down this page. Click continue at the bottom right to proceed.
Craigslist Real Estate Ads That Work: 5 Tips For Success
Creating Craigslist real estate ads is a great way to generate seller leads, but there’s no doubt that it’s easy to get in over year head if you don’t know what you are doing. That said, it pays to educate yourself on the process—literally. Only those that know how to navigate the Craigslist page and cater to a specific audience will realize success.
Fortunately, you won’t have to learn through trial and error. In fact, there are several tips we can recommend to get the ball rolling for you right off the bat. My colleagues and I have been running real estate ads on Craigslist for years and have already tested what works and—perhaps more importantly—what doesn’t. If you want to post ads on Craigslist with a higher degree of success, here are five tips you need to consider:
Attention-Grabber Title
Regardless of how great the content in your post is, it’ll never get read if the title doesn’t bring in prospects. You need to write a title that people will want to click on. When posting ads, nothing is more important than a captivating title. I recommend hitting on “pain points,” or those topics that elicit an emotional response from the reader. Try something along the lines of “Having A Hard Time Selling Your Property?” Whatever you decide to title your post, make sure it triggers an emotional response while simultaneously driving your point home.
Call To Action
As its name suggests, a “call to action” is a sentence or two requesting the reader to act. Your call to action should prompt the reader to get a hold of you either by phone, email or website, and should tell the reader directly what to do. “Pick up the phone and call now” is a perfect example, but be sure to leave your contact information.
Quality Images
Nothing grabs someone’s attention on Craigslist quite like a good image (or map). Consequently, a bad image can divert traffic away in the blink of an eye. Make sure the images you post upload correctly and are of the highest quality. You may even want to consider hiring a professional photographer to appeal to a wider viewership. It’s true what they say: a picture really is worth 1,000 words—if not more.
Persistence
Most classified ads will run for about a week until they are taken down. As a result, you will need to click the option to repost and renew (which is made available after the first few days pass). If you don’t repost and renew, your post will disappear without letting you know.
Results Oriented
Tracking your results is just as important as the post itself; it’s the only way you will be able to determine a post’s effectiveness. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, it’s safe to assume your results will increase while your time investment decreases.
How Can I Place a Craigslist Post in Multiple Cities/Boards
First of all remember there are certain rules about posting to Craigslist, unfortunately one of them is posting one advert only to one city board. However although this is the one we need to break it’s important to stick to all the others in order to maximize our chances of success.
- Careful with the content in Your Ad – don’t make your advert look like spam. Don’t fill the description with urls or over the top punctuation marks. Filling your advert with hashes and exclamation marks may make your advert stand out but it will also trigger spam filters and detectors.
- Maintain a good history – the effectiveness of each Craigslist account will largely depend on how trustworthy it is. Keep your most valued accounts in good standing and don’t risk anything controversial or spam like.
- Keep multiple accounts separate – they should be used from different IP addresses and browsers if possible. Use multilogin techniques, incognito mode or automated software loaded with proxies.
- Keep things tidy – delete old adverts after they’ve been posted. Ensure your account is active and the website tidy by removing deleted addresses.
- Spread your postings – don’t bombard the site with multiple adverts at the same time. Your goal is to make each account look like a regular individual is posting simple adverts.
Much of this is common sense however the crucial factor involved in keeping these accounts and adverts separate is to use proxy servers to hide your real IP address. If you don’t do this you will be effectively limiting yourself to a single advert per day in your actual location. Indeed if you’re outside your target geographic region then you’ll be unable to post anything.
Use Proxies to Post in Multiple Craigslist City Boards
In order to really leverage the power of Craigslist across multiple cities and even countries, then you need access to multiple IP addresses in different locations. In fact you’ll need to obtain IP addresses which are located in roughly the same location as your target board. So a US based IP address is unfortunately not enough, you’ll need a New York IP address for the New York Craiglist, one from LA for the Los Angeles board and so on.
Ideally you should ensure that each account is used in it’s ‘home location’ posting adverts on that specific board. There are automated programs which can take care of a lot of this for you although it’s perfectly possible to do it manually as well. However you must ensure that you have the ability to switch the IP addresses as well.
The final complication specific to Craigslist proxies is that you must also use ‘residential proxies’ that is proxy servers that have residential IP addresses. These are addresses which resolve to home internet connections, if you use standard proxy servers with commercial IP addresses they’re going to get flagged and blocked very quickly. Many users suggest that you can use commercial or datacenter proxies if you are very careful but it’s not something that I’ve had much success with. There are however many more datacenter proxy providers who can supply IP addresses whcih you can specify at a ‘city level’.
It does hugely reduce the possibilities unfortunately because most residential proxy providers aren’t able to supply IP addresses which match these criteria. The vast majority either are ‘rotating’ which means that they are likely to switch while you’re posting an advert or simply can’t be geo-located to this level. Indeed most proxy providers will supply IP addresses registered to a specific country but not to state or city.
If you want to test, it’s probably best to find a quality provider of datacenter proxies rather than relax some of the other criteria. However for the best results there are a couple of proxy providers who can provide proxy servers with all the criteria met.
Our recommendation is IPBurger who can supply static IP addresses with residential addresses from real users. Crucially they also allow ISP, country, state or city level targeting throughout the US and worldwide.
Source:
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/craigslist-real-estate-ads/
https://residentialip.net/place-a-craigslist-post-in-multiple-cities/
https://www.constantcontact.com/blog/craigslist-advertising/