Topic: Craigslist posting

I've had a few communities asking about outsourcing their craigslist postings. I've even heard horror stories of community managers devoting an hour of each day just to keep up with their CL ads.

Does anyone know of a company that would handle posting craigslist ads for apartment communities?

I would talk to Charity Hisle about this. She's a superstar on this site and can probably help. Here's her profile: multifamilyinsiders.com/home/userprofile...profile/CharityHisle

Thanks Brent, for the MFI love! :o)

I post about 5-10 craiglist ads a day. It takes me about 10 minutes max. I use vflyer.com to initially create my ads, then I copy the craigslist code to a word document so I always have it. I just cut and paste my code from the word document. The ads never change, but I'll adjust the headlines.

How many ads are being posted a day where outsourcing is even being considered?

The community I'm thinking of just lost their "craigslist queen." She posted about 5 ads throughout the work day.

Now the community manager is in charge of this task as no one else at the community knows much about craigslist.

So, to your answer your question: 5 ads a day, 7 days a week for a month = 150 ads.

Definitely no reason to outsource only 5 ads a day. It can easily be done in under 10 minutes, probably even 5. The best thing to do is create a template of regular ads. I like vflyer, but there are other sites like postlets. You can get the Craigslist code after you create them. Copy that into a word document and hang onto it. Then you have one place where you can cut and paste your ads. I'd say if you're posting 5 a day, have 10 in your arsenal because Craigslist lets you repost every 48 hours. So rotate 5 one day, 5 the next, then to the original five, so on and so forth. It's super simple and is one of the most effective marketing tools out there, at least it is in my market. Being free is just a bonus! No need to ruin that by paying someone else to post them!

This sounds good. You should make one of those youtube / howto videos. I'll pass this on to CM.

Do you post all 5 ad variations at the same time? There's value in being on the first page of CL. The "CL queen" would post at various times in the day as her ad would typically get buried.

I know the CM was looking for a hands-free solution.

Sure, it's only 10 minutes a day.

Mowing your lawn only takes an hour a week, but I still pay someone do that for me.

I'd check out some tools to make it faster to post to CL and track the incoming leads. It's taking it to the next level where you can actually see which ads on CL are working for you and why. There are several tools out there that are more geared for leasing that would be better than vflyer and simplify the posting to just 2 clicks.

Maybe you can shave it down to 2 mins and actually generate better leads :)

I post CL 6 times a day, 2 at a time. My company provided me with a template and a few various descriptions, all I have to do is to copy the html code from the template to rich text editor, change the pricing to reflect for the day and rotate the descriptions so they won't overlap the 48 hour time period that CL gives us. It takes me about 2-3 minutes to post two in a row.

I strongly believe craigslist is a waste of time for this industry. I am leasing agent and I haven't had a lead from our postings, we post this consistently and it hasn't worked, but my company believes this is a great marketing tool, when all I have seen is a waste of time and effort, my co-worker does all the postings and she has been recognized company wise about this, but I haven't seen any leases from this, she says she has and I have asked how come we work in the same office, almost same days and I haven't even had a phone lead, she is not posting her name or personal e-mail on this adds by the way, recently I toured with a locator they pay someone to post adds on craigslist eight hrs a day, seven days a week how are we going to compete with that?
Please stop being so optimistic about cragislist it doesn't work.

I'm sorry you haven't had a great personal experience with Craigslist yourself, but I can assure you that it does work. I built my locator business on Craigslist 100% on my own, not paying an outside company to do the work for me. I have developed a successful company and continue to grow my locator business through Craigslist ALONE, no other advertising. So I'm proof that it can work. I believe in it so much that I've even adapted my business model to be able to share to communities and now do Craigslist outsourcing. This thread (which started a few months ago) was actually my inspiration! :) So thanks OP!

To the previous poster, there are probably some ways you can improve your efforts on Craigslist if you're not seeing results. Don't give up on it so soon. Research it a bit, learn some tips and tricks and implement them and I bet you'll be surprised. :)

Sandra,

I want to start by saying I COMPLETELY understand your frustration! AND Thank you for being honest, because you're right: craigslist doesn't always work!

I've posted for hundreds of properties, and some properties just don't do well. I could give you a bunch of reasons why that is, or tell you how it could be done better, but the truth is that some locations are less than ideal for the use of craigslist ads.

I, too, have had experiences that are frustrating when trying to gain traction on craigslist. Most recently, I learned that a competitor was removing all of my ads within 2-4 hours of posting! I can honestly say that there are places (Austin and Chicago for instance) that no matter how often you post there are NEVER any calls. However, using similar tactics resulted in 99 phone calls for a property in Atlanta. :)

If you're going to Brainstorming this year, Allison Crabtree, of Bell Partners, and I are doing a session: "Uncover the Secrets to Traffic Generation Using Craigslist and Similar Sites". Please feel free to attend and see if there is anything we can demonstrate that will help you gain some traction on craigslist.

Until then, hang in there!

Craigslist works great for most communities in or near major metros. Yet for some it is not as useful, especially in a more rural area.

At 4 Walls, we will post craigslist listings for our clients:
www.4walls.us/advertise_craigslist.php

This has really taken off for our clients who want craigslist presence but don't have the time to post themselves.

-Jackie

I work for Nessel Development which is a small company to say the least but we have a dedicated marketing team who handles the Craigslist ad's and I think it has really been the best plan of action. Onsite teams have enough to do without learning the in's and out's of craigslist, and yes postlets and v-flyers are easy to use which is why EVERYONE uses them, so all of the ad's look the same which isn't very effective.

A really good plan if you can't have your marketing team handle this is to pay a young college student a small fee to design you some craigslist ad's (these are simple HTML documents and just about every 20 something can create them) Once they are created just save them as word documents and upload them over and over again. It's Simple and effective. More than likely you could find someone to create about 20 of then for about $100.

We generate about 50% of our traffic from Craigslist, and best of all it's a free traffic source.

How do you KNOW for a FACT that craigslist isn't working?

It's easy to ask where the prospect heard about you and get an answer indicating ForRent and Apartment Guide (or.com); but if you also use craigslist and rotate ads as suggested; how do you know SPECiFICALLY which ads work and which don't?

What I do is place a NAME by the phone number, for example:

"For more information; call (phone number), make sure to ask for Cathy!"

Make sure Cathy is NOT a name of any of your staff members, and when you answer you KNOW which ad they are responding to. Train your staff to answer as follows:

" I am sorry, Cathy is not here, but I am sure I can help you.... "

Use different names for each ad.

We have had great success with Craig's List. It has become overwhelming for us to maintain so I am looking into a company called Rentsentinel. They do it all!
They are provoding us a WebEx presentation next week. I'll let you know how it goes.

We too have had great success. We have given each Leasing Specialist their own CallSource number to use in their postings so we can see the traffic generated by each! This gets the team pumped up and competitive with their postings! One community has Craigslist generating over 40% of their total traffic and 53% of their leases! It's like everything else...it works if you work it!

Amy--I really like that idea! A different phone # sounds great.

I'm sorry, Johnny. But when I read that that person wasn't a real person at your office, I was a little put off. If I found out that nobody named Cathy worked there, and it was just a marketing ploy, I might wonder how honest you would be with me on other stuff. Maybe your awesome staff would win me over, and it wouldn't be a big deal at all. :)

It's an old method that my dad used when he was helping clients find people to hire (he is one of the few people in the Human Resources Advertising industry that is considered to be an expert; monster.com was his idea). It was used as a means to tell his client what news media outlet their ad appeared in and gave them a tool to determine what worked and what didn't.

If you are uncomfortable using false names, use middle names; or nicknames.


FYI: I have never even been questioned about it; and I have been able to close leases on leads from this method.....

Morgan,
Where are you located? I'm a locator in St. Louis, MO. We use Craigslist for our private listings quite successfully. Would like to learn more about promoting apartment communities (or giving them the opportunity via thread). Glad you are succeeding!

Hi Kathryn!

I'm in Raleigh, NC. What I've done is created a listing for each of the communities I'm in contract with. I don't know how you're structured, but I'm only paid when the community gets a lease that is attributed to our company. So, I don't use the community's name in the ad. It will say something like "Triangle Apartment Connection is excited to feature a brand new community in RTP. This community..." That way they have interest in a specific property and they have to contact me first to get the info. Then I can introduce them to others if that one doesn't work.

It's a great way to target my marketing efforts towards a specific product too. If I'm in a slump with unqualified traffic, I can only post ads for my luxury, high end communities and will likely get those types of clients as prospects that week.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to let me know!

OK, I delved into a bit of this over on the Craigslist poll, but here's some more in-depth info on Craigslist.

Note: I have been using ONLY craigslist and window signs as advertising since June of 2005, as my company refuses to authorize a marketing budget of any kind.

Also: I have rented about 150 apartments a year this way, alone. I have no assistants, I have no photographers, I have no writers. I do the ads, the leases, the showings, the background checks and the floorplan drafting.

However: I am in a major metropolitan area. My dad tried it in a more suburban area and it didn't work.

However however: I am a coder with 10 years of experience, so I can write my own code. There is no better investment of time if you're going to be advertising on craigslist. You don't need to go beyond flat HTML.

Here's what I do. First of all, I watch craigslist postings. If I see a trend, I leap on it, but in my own way. For example, people started using Google maps in their ads. I started using walkscore.com and everyblock.com instead. Now I'm starting to see walkscores pop up in many other local ads, so I'm planning my next big move.

Secondly, I diversify my templates as much as I can. I have about 15 templates in use at once. They're all drastically different styles. Some are grungy and take a super-honest type of text. Others are professional and glossy with high design values. I take my cues from websites that are popular with my target clients. The hipster types get designs based on twitter or threadless.com. The home decor types get a design based on etsy. Pack rats get ads done with lots and lots of whitespace so they can make notes on the printout.

Third, I pack in the info, but only if the target market responds well to it. Lower income communities don't need floorplans, don't have any idea of square footage, don't care how the grounds look, but links to youtube walkthroughs are very helpful. The younger kids don't care if there's a washer/dryer - they can do laundry at their folks place - but they do need to know that there's upgraded wiring and a wall big enough for their TV.

Fourth, I devote a lot of time to it throughout the day. I post 5 ads every 2-3 hours, six days a week. I take replies through phone, email, youtube, and now twitter.

Fifth, and this is crucial, I automate everything I can. Every template has a form on my private server where I can just pick my photos, type in my gloss text and it spits out the final code. Just like postlets, but I control the look and the feel. It requires about a 2 day investment of time twice a year to design and change out a few templates. The rest of the time it's just point and click. Once I've written an ad, I save the code to a database so that when a similar floorplan comes up I can reuse it.

Like any form of advertising, you get out of craigslist what you put into it. With the classifieds, you paid money - that was your investment. More money = bigger ad = more eyeballs. With craigslist, there's no cost (except for a few places), but the time investment required replaces the old monetary investment.

Fantastic Ideas Kay, question about the HTML code, did you create it yourself, or did you create a design (aka Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) and copy the HTML code from that?

Craigslist has been and will continue to be our number one source of traffic for our buildings. The beauty of Craigslist is that it's FREE and it happens to be one of the most trafficked websites in the United States. Also, it happens to be the largest site for apartment listings. (I don't have the article links for these claims, but a simple google search will produce them for you)

When I first joined my company, the Craigslist ads were being posted via Vflyer in a VERY manual and time consuming process. We were posting about 20-25 ads per day (residential and commercial), and this could take about 1-2 hours. While this took a long time, it was definitely worth it as our daily traffic reports from leasing agents showed the majority of tours were from Craigslist.

I discovered another company for making our Craiglist and other ILS postings more efficient and less time consuming. That company/program is www.rentsentinel.com . Vflyer is great if you have one or two openings--actually it's more geared towards Condos than apartment buildings. We have many properties and RentSentinel has made our postings MUCH easier and we are able to track the views and leads off each ad.

Rent Sentinel has templates, like Vflyer, but if you know your own HTML, you can really customize the ad with hosted graphics, etc.

By the way, this is my first post, and I would like to say this site is incredible, and I hope to collaborate with other users on this site for helpful tips/tricks. I haven't been able to find a forum subcategory for Internet/Online Marketing, but I feel there should be one, as this is the future of MFH.

Thanks for the www.rentsentinel.com tip. I had head of them but hadn't had time to dive in and see what they were all about. I'll check them out right now. Cheers!