A strong marketing strategy includes a mix of different tactics and locations for your advertising. Auto dealers should diversify their listings in a variety of places, from Google to Facebook. Dealers should also consider incorporating a tried and true advertising method – classified ads!
Like all newspaper content, classified ads have transitioned online. As the internet began to boom, sites like Craigslist popped up in the mid-1990s to fill the digital needs of buyers seeking specific items, like furniture, baby stuff, and yes, cars!
Why Classified Ads?
The biggest reason to run classified ads is to diversify your marketing. Spreading your inventory across multiple sites generates low-funnel (i.e. ready-to-buy) leads and adds value to your marketing strategy with lower cost-per-lead averages.
Listing your inventory on classified websites is a good strategy for selling, but you need to be aware of the pros and cons.
Benefits include:
- Attracting more low-funnel, ready-to-buy leads
- Targeting price-sensitive shoppers to drive sales of budget-friendly inventory
- Easy to automate
- Ideal for listing budget vehicles or niche hard-to-find models
Some drawbacks to consider with classified listings:
- It can be a relatively limited and unpredictable lead-generation source
- You’ll have to weed through some “tire clickers” and very price-sensitive shoppers
- It can be challenging to manage multiple listing platforms
- Not every listing site is right for every market
Classified Ad Best Practices for Dealerships
- Use easily clickable, trackable short links (like a bit.ly link) to link your vehicle description pages (VDPs) and finance pages that way you can see how many people came to your site through the listing.
- Include image overlays on the listing photos to include your branding. Including your phone number on the image also works well as a sort of call to action for the listing.
- Use trackable phone numbers in your listings to know where you get the most calls. That way you’ll know which channels to invest more in.
Now, Let’s take a look at the major players in classified listings...
Craigslist
With billions of pageviews a month, Craigslist is the biggest market for classified ads on the internet.
Now in its third decade, Craigslist is still a solid place to list cars. You may not see a huge volume of leads from Craigslist as you do other sites because people head there with the intent to buy, not browse.
However, this means the site is a source of low-funnel leads, with serious buyers making inquiries into your listings – a very good thing.
Craigslist’s localized nature means that it’s a stronger platform in some cities than others. Craigslist reports that its top five most popular cities are San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Chicago.
That means if you’re a dealer in Harrisburg, Penn., (the second lowest city on their rankings) you may not see as much success with this platform as a dealer in Seattle. It may be worth using another site or tactic.
Craigslist is also highly affordable. For $5 a listing, your post will stay up for a month.
OfferUp
OfferUp is another classified listing site that dealers with pre-owned vehicles should check out. Craigslist can be heavily used in some markets. But, that can also mean it’s saturated with other vehicle listings.
Diversifying your postings on another classified site like OfferUp can be a solid lead strategy. It still has a significant number of users and can be much less competitive than Craigslist.
AutoSweet recommended this strategy for one of our mid-sized independent dealership clients in the Pacific Northwest.
Because Craigslist is incredibly popular in this dealer’s neck of the woods, they were looking for another quality site to get low-funnel leads.
- For the modest investment of $500, they received 50 promoted placements on OfferUp each month.
- They got more than 500 leads for an average cost per lead of just over $11.
- This was 1/5 of what they needed to invest for a lead on Craigslist.
That’s a great success! At AutoSweet, we work for dealers to bring the overall average cost per lead to about $15.
Other Classified Platforms
There are many other classified sites that may work well in your local market. Sites like eBay Motors, KSL, Microsoft Start Autos, or Recycler can perform well in some areas and may be good places to start trying classified ads.
Remember to Measure!
After 90 days, measure your results. Analyze which listing platforms perform best in your market. Sometimes you don’t know which ones work best until you try each!
Classified listings are a great way to diversify your overall marketing strategy with quality low-funnel leads at an affordable cost per lead.
Do you need help figuring out where to list in your market? AutoSweet has experience with dealers all over the country and can help you find the top platform in your area.
Set up a quick strategy session with a consultant today and discover the top classified listing sites in your area by completing the form below!
