ad posting best practices · posting best pctices. by postengine.com. 5. avoid ad flagging and...

Ad Posting Best Practices | By PostEngine.com

Post Better.

Ad Posting Best Practices A guide to getting the most out of your Craigslist® marketing.

2Ad Posting Best Practices | By PostEngine.com

ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Craigslist Advertising Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4The Business Value of Digital Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9PostEngine Marketing Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11


IntroductionFor the multifamily industry, Craigslist remains one of the best and most cost-effective platforms to maximize awareness of your community’s available units, drive traffic and find new rental prospects.

Craigslist comes with some unique challenges. It is time-consuming and requires manual effort. It also has several quirks when it comes to posting property ads, including: ad renewal restrictions, content requirements and geographical limitations.

This guide is designed to provide marketing and leasing professionals with best practices and tips on how to avoid Craigslist advertising pitfalls. It also includes examples of how digital automation is helping to improve the way we work, increase productivity and achieve better results from marketing investments. Lastly, it highlights how Rooof PostEngine is improving and elevating the ad posting experience on Craigslist through automation.

Rooof PostEngine has enhanced our posting workflow to a more efficient process and helps us to continually post current and engaging advertising for our communities. Since starting with Rooof, our

efforts have seen more return with less work to post. It has been a great tool for us!

Sheri Killingsworth, VP Marketing & Communications Lincoln Property Company

https://www.postengine.com


Craigslist Advertising Best PracticesStaying visible is very important.

Craigslist experiences heavy advertising/posting activity and traffic, especially in busy markets and large metropolitan areas. For this reason, it’s very important to post regularly to ensure your ads are visible and easy to find. In most markets, ads remain on page one for approximately one hour and in exceptionally busy markets, for only 30 minutes. Posting infrequently or sporadically means that over time, your ads will most likely become buried beneath other ads (e.g. your competitor’s) and may never be seen because prospective residents typically only browse the first 1-2 pages of Craigslist.

Pro Tip Post 3x daily and be sure to spread out your posts.

Did You Know?PostEngine auto-renew automatically keeps your ads on page one throughout the day. Learn more here.


https://www.postengine.com/auto-renew


Avoid Ad Flagging and RemovalTo solve the issue of an ad becoming buried or lost on Craigslist, your first impulse may be to post a large volume of ads (or post the same ad) throughout the day. Craigslist doesn’t allow this. In fact, this activity is viewed as “spam” by Craigslist and can result in your ads being flagged and removed.

Wait! What Exactly is Flagging? Having your ad “Flagged” on Craigslist means it has been identified by Craigslist as problematic and removed. This can happen for a few different reasons:

• The Craigslist bot (algorithm): The bot detects ads that are posted too frequently or are too similiar from the same account.

• The Craigslist user community: An ad may have been removed because too many people clicked the “prohibited” button at the top of your ad. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to determine why this happens, but there are some things that you can do to avoid it. See our posting tips on the next page.



Posting Tips + TricksLocationDo not post in more than one city from the same email/account. Craigslist only promotes local community advertisement. In fact, they have a different domain for each city and they require you to post ads locally. For example: If you are posting ads into the Atlanta region from a computer in Dallas, Craigslist will delete your ads.

Marketing TacticsCraigslist maintains a large user community because of its “free marketplace”. Companies that post using traditional marketing tactics should know that these tactics do not work as well in this environment. For example, avoid HTML tagging, such as bolding or underlining and avoid posting an excess of photos. As mentioned above, vary content so the ads do not look too “templated.”Familiarize yourself with all the reasons ads get flagged and how to avoid them.

Did You Know?PostEngine provides in-app alerts to let you know if you’re over or under-posting and automated email alerts to remind you to post. Plus, auto-renew checks for renewable ads, so there’s no need to post more than 3 times a day. Renewed ads get flagged less frequently than new posts.


https://www.postengine.com/posting-best-practices


Avoid Posting Identical ContentWe know advertising frequency is critical to success. If you have a lot of ads to post, it’s obviously easier to simply post the same ad content over and over. Unfortunately, posting ads with identical content on Craigslist can result in ad flagging and removed because Craigslist prohibits posting the same thing more than once.

Pro Tip Vary your ad content with each post. Alter the titles, the order of the images uploaded, and the body copy every time you post an ad.

Did You Know?PostEngine software automatically generates unique ads from the content that exists on your website. Automated content and title variability ensures your ads appeal to a greater number of prospects.



Timing is EverythingA Craigslist search results page that contains many ads with similar content and the same contact information will appear as “spam” to Craigslist.

Pro Tip Allow some time to pass between ad postings. Exactly how much time depends on the individual market as each market allows a different volume of ads to be posted. With active markets, you need only wait half and hour to hour between postings, however less active markets, you will need to limit your postings to one or two per day. The bottom line is, let other ads come on to the site and act as a buffer between your ads.

Did You Know?With PostEngine software, you can set up in-app or email posting reminders to come in at certain times of day to ensure you are sticking to your posting schedule and spreading your ad posting activity throughout the day without missing out!



The Business Value of Digital AutomationAccording to a recent McKinsey report, almost every job has partial automation potential. The research shows that as many as 45 percent of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated through adoption of modern technologies. The report also illustrates that automation of certain activities can enable a business to improve its productivity and performance by reducing errors and improving quality and speed. It can even “achieve outcomes that exceed human capabilities.” 1

There are several business benefits for the multifamily industry that digital automation can provide. Here are a few examples:

• Saves time by eliminating manual tasks and steps.

• Replacing manual repetitive work with automated rules and processes frees up your staff’s time to focus on more important work.

• Reduces costs when you are able to accomplish more with less time and effort.

1 Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation, McKinsey



• Employee satisfaction. This is a less tangible benefit but overall happiness comes from focusing your staff on more varied work instead of mundane, repetitive tasks.

• Increased productivity. Marketing automation enables you to squeeze more out of the available time and finite resources you have.

• Greater tracking and accountability through access to analytics and reporting.

• Scale your marketing cost-effectively. Reach more markets, prospects and clients with far less effort.

• Future-proof your business. As the world shifts to digital, automation of work is no longer nice to have, but is critical in order for organizations to remain competitive and relevant for the long term.



The Benefits of PostEngine AutomationHow much time is your leasing team spending creating, posting and managing Craigslist ads?

PostEngine is software that automates the creation, posting and renewal of apartment ads on Craigslist. Benefits:

Best ExperienceA fully automated posting experience means less time making ads and more time with residents.

Boost ResultsAutomatic ad renewal maximizes visibility, traffic and generates more leads from free classified ads.

Cost EffectiveReach a greater number of prospects and generate leads more cost-effectively than by posting manually or using an ILS.


How It Works• With the simple click of a mouse your ad is automatically

created from the content on your website.

• PostEngine automatically varies the content of every ad to appeal to more prospects and reduce flagging and ad removal.

PostEngine takes content, availability and pricing directly from your website and automatically creates your ad!

12Ad Posting Best Practices | By Postengine.com



PostEngine is The Only Software That...

• Eliminates the most manual steps to automatically create an ad.

• Varies ad content and title to reach a broader audience and reduce the risk of ad flagging or ghosting.

• Verifies your ads for you automatically when required by Craigslist.

• Automatically renews ads so that your property always has an ad on page one.

• Keeps ad pricing current automatically by syncing with your revenue management system.

• Prevents over-posting and duplicate ads.

• See all PostEngine capabilities: postengine.com/product

https://www.postengine.com/features



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ad posting best practices · posting best pctices. by postengine.com. 5. avoid ad flagging and...

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