Let's try this again. Craigslist, who's using it, how are you using it, if not, why not.

Mark and Ralph have kissed and made up, so let's get this thread started again. How are you using Craigslist and what are your results, is it worth the effort?

PS: Ralph before you turn me into a Rat Bastard, disown me, and tell me I am an all around piece of sh*t, I wanted to give you a heads up, I posted it on David's site too. :) but I expect to see a lot more response from ADM.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Bruce on June 7, 2009 at 7:45am: All –
Bottom line all free sites have lots of rules (CRAIGSLIST TERMS OF USE), do yourself a favor read them. At MotorTrends Online we used free sites like craigslist primarily for vehicles under $10K and it worked great! I believe now that free listing sites are gaining more traction and are becoming more main stream so you can most likely post higher price listings.

3 best practices for using listing / free sites:

1.Think beyond the listing – this is for any listing site really they are traffic generators not sites that convert at a high percentage (they get a respondents interest). Keep your listing short and sweet, Lots of pictures. Nothing sells a car more than pictures, in fact if you’re going to list your inventory anywhere without pictures DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME! It will not be effective and you’ll just give up. Most all of these sites limit the number of pictures you can place on them so combine your pictures into a collage with a link back to a Microsite giving the respondent the ability to see higher resolution pictures and more detail on the car.
Think of listing sites as gateways for traffic not as the lead generators themselves. Microsites are in my opinion the best way to give more detail to respondents that want it, and track the effectiveness of each post.
2. Don’t use just one. Put your listings on many free listing sites. Each has a following and certain vehicles will sell better than others on each site so keep track of the sale ratio (listing vs. sell) for each site and the time each vehicle took to sell. Below is a listing of the top free sites.
a. Craigslist
b. Backpage
c. Kijiji
d. Oodle
e. Google
f. Ebay Local
3.Test…test…test – the one thing I can tell you for sure is there is no magic bullet, no one best way. Test everything you do online from listings to paid search to your website. Everything works just some better than other for your store and your market. Let your respondents tell you what they want, that’s the best way.
Hope this helps!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Kost on June 7, 2009 at 8:19am: I am using Craigslist. I have 90% of my used cars on there. (go to Dallas Craigslist and Search Park Cities Ford). I am receiving 350+ Phone calls, and selling cars off of it left and right. I have been posting my cash cars on there for over 2 years now, and selling almost 100% (no kidding), of those cars I post under 5k. I'm not sure exactly how many I'm closing now because this new system, and the guy I have helping me with it are new. But I know this much... It is FREE, and the time spent is minimal.

I think allot of it has to do with your location. I know Dallas has one of the largest craigslist markets, so I am lucky.

I will probably sell 35+ Cars from Craigslist this month, and think I can get that number up to 50.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 7, 2009 at 1:13pm: LOL... Jon, hopefully you are joking around and understand that I ALSO POST CONTENT ON MULTIPLE SITES ALL THE TIME...That is every author's prerogative and something I personally consider to be a best practice. My adverse reaction to what Mark Boyd did was when he deleted something after I had sent the link to over 2,800 people... Which resulted in a dead link within the email message/invitation I had sent. What infuriated me is that the timing made it look intentional, when the reality was that Mark made a mistake which happened to have incredible timing with an invitation that David Kain sent out. The long and short of it is that now I know why I should only promote forum posts and blog articles that I have personally created, or which the authors have asked me to promote. My mistake was being such an enthusiastic fan of Mark Boyd that I thought his post on ADM was actually sincere and that he wanted feedback from as many people as possible, so I was trying to generate that feedback by inviting everyone on my ADM mailing list, which includes over 500 visitors that are not members. Never did I imagine that mark would inadvertently delete his article without warning me or asking me if it was OK after I had invited so many people, including Mark Boyd, which is what drew his attention to it.

LOL... OK, maybe my use of certain terms was excessive, but if you want transparency and sincerity of expression, THEN DO NOT COMPLAIN WHEN YOU GET IT!!!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Groenig on June 7, 2009 at 1:41pm: Ralph, this just goes to show the true power of social networks, who knew making a simple mistake could have such big repercussions and gain momentum that quickly?

I thought the original post posed a good question, I know some people have absolutely no luck with Craigslist, while for others it is one of their best sources of business. With such a big difference in results I thought it would be interesting to see what separates the successful dealers from the others. Yes, I was joking around, didn't you see the little smiley face?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 7, 2009 at 2:23pm: What smiley face? I think I use too many different browser applications... Anyways, I am sure that Craigslist has some regional variations in users and car buyers who visit it. But, I am even more certain that most of the variations in success by different dealers is based on how they execute their strategies, including the vehicles they select to place on Craigslist.

In that respect, Craigslist reminds me of Ebay Motors in that the vehicles you select, and the way you list them has a lot to do with a dealer's likelihood of success. In both cases, it seems that vehicles we previously would wholesale, do a lot better on Craigslist (and Ebay) than if we had wholesaled them.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on June 7, 2009 at 1:23pm: Regarding use of Craigslist; I have seen many variations and lots of software that supposedly "tricks" Craigslist into letting dealers get away with violating the Craigslist Terms of Use (that Larry Bruce so adroitly references). However, I have seen several dealerships where they have been quite successful with Craigslist without violating the terms of use.

These are dealerships that assign several vehicles to individuals who are either sales people, ISM's or BDC customer service reps. These vehicles are individually listed by the assigned resource, using that individual's email and cell phone number. The dealership is identified so as not to be deceptive, but the individual takes ownership over selling their assigned vehicle on Craigslist. BDC's use their direct phone line and other stores use the salesperson's direct store phone line. Several of the stores I have seen do this adapted what they had previously been doing with Ebay Motors auction vehicles, which had been assigned to individuals as well. Most of the stores I see using this strategy are independent used car dealers, but I have seen a few franchised stores as well. LeSueur Motor Company in Tempe, AZ uses this strategy and they sell between 250 and 350 used cars each month... Many of which come from this approach and strategy.

Some dealerships let the salesperson, ISM or BDC rep select from available inventory after one of their assigned vehicles is sold or removed from craigslist. This keeps things a little competitive since the salesperson needs to sell something before they get to pick from new inventory. I have even seen stores where the salespeople, ISM's or BDC reps will swap and trade inventory with each other because they think they know better how to write an ad ior list the vehicle on Craigslist or Ebay Motors to generate more action.

I am not suggesting that software like the excellent tools such as Liquid Motors and Autobase Vehicle Inventory Tools are not valuable, because they are. I am simply stating that there are many dealers making both Craigslist and Ebay Motors work for them by using a strategy of individually assigned vehicles that are then listed by sales, ISM and BDC resources.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Armando R Yanez on June 9, 2009 at 8:02am: Craigslist is a valid vehicle marketing portal in just about any market, however your success on craigslist hinges greatly on its popularity in your local area. Your best bet is to actually visit the metro area you will be posting your vehicles to, and take a look at the total number of vehicles posted. Are they being posted by your direct competitors, are they independents or franchise dealers primarily, what's the average price of a vehicle in your area, and finally are the posting being done manually or through a thrid party software.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Kost on June 12, 2009 at 4:12pm

Just a little more data on the subject.... I host some of my pictures that I put on CL oh Photobucket. There is one pic that has a name/tele # that I pust on all of my ad's. Well I was look at the usage of this Pic, and the stats made my jaw drop. I'm getting 1400-1600 Views A DAY!!!!!!! on CL. Wow. No wonder I'm having so many phone calls. Here is the graph I was looking at today. I'm also going to upload a "you tube template" that I made. Its a dummy overlay that I put over a pic of a car, and then link it to a you tube video on CL. It works reallly well. Take a look......

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Permalink Reply by David T. Gould on June 12, 2009 at 8:48pm: David... thorough and effective. (As usual) Supporting Photobucket analytic is jaw dropping... was there any other contributing factor (type of car / day of the week / price of car / number of listings) that may have assisted here? Digital is great for reporting stats... Dig a bit deeper and you may strike gold. Good Selling, DTG; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Kost on June 13, 2009 at 8:28am: I don’t think there was any contributing factor. I really think the dallas market has a HUGE CL following that is growing by the day. I have every single pre-owned car on there along with at least 1 of each make/model of new cars on there. I think my next step is going to be use a different service that designs a different type of template, and post them twice. Not the same day, but like alternating days. I'm almost sure this will double my traffic. One contribing factor I have notice helps tremendously = Keywords. This work GREAT on Cl.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Groenig on June 12, 2009 at 8:58pm: Hey David, thanks for the tip on Photobucket stats, I didn't realize they were there until you pointed it out. I use Photobucket for all my photos on CL and Backpage, now I can see which sites are getting the traffic and how much. Track ability has been my biggest pet peeve with CL, now I can finally track and adjust my ads to improve my results. So where exactly are you putting the pic that is generating all the traffic?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Kost on June 13, 2009 at 8:35am

I have a guy that works for me named Freddie. He helps me with all of my CL stuff. I made him a very simple .jpg that has his name and number. Its huge, and at the top of all of his ads. he just copies the link to this pic into all of his template cars that he posts. I'll upload it so that you can see it.

I have a second guy that does most of my cash cars. And he is the guy we do the youtube with. Both are having a great sucess with it. This is what both ads look like:

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/ctd/1219500266.html

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/ctd/1219554295.html

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cl-WHOLESALE copy.jpg, 135 KB

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