Tuesday, October 18, 2011

How to Get More Network Marketing Leads From Classified Ad Sites

Are you looking for a great way to generate leads for your network marketing business? Classified ad sites are a great way to accomplish this. Many have decided to leave classified ads behind, claiming they are not worth it anymore. I believe this is a BIG mistake.

The benefits of placing classified ads online certainly outweigh the "supposed" detriments.

What Are Classified Ad Sites?

Classified advertising sites are essentially sites that allow you to post short classified ads. Some even allow you unlimited posting capabilities and give you the ability to use HTML in your ad.

One of the most well known classified ad sites is Craigslist, which people commonly use to post items for sale, jobs, and opportunities. You can also use this site to post an ad for your business as long as you do not abuse it.

Craigslist allows you to post your ad for free, and you are able to target your ad to a specific geographic area within the United States and other countries also. Craigslist allows you to post as many ads as you want to in as many different cities around the word that you wish.

The trick is to stay on top of your ads and create a system of posting. Your ads will fall off the site quickly due to the massive posting going on. Craigslist is a very busy site.

A word of warning: You may also see ads on Craigslist that will try and sell you automated posting software. I suggest you stay away from these services as Craigslist frowns upon this kind of software.

If you post your ads manually and use Craigslist as it is intended to be used, you will be able to post as many ads as you wish without any problems. At least this has been my experience.

Craigslist may be the most visited classified ad site online, but it is not the only big one. To find other classified ad sites, I suggest you go to Google and simply search for more. You will find thousands of different sites. Of course, you will not be able to use all of them and you also wouldn't want to, as some of them will be a total waste of your time.

To better optimize your postings make sure you research the "usage" statistics of a classified ad site you are thinking of posting an ad on. If the classified ad site only looks to have about 50-100 visitors per day, it is probably not worth your time to post. However, if it draws 100,000 visitors a day, you have a great site on your hands.

You can get traffic estimates for any website through alexa.com or quantcast.com. Just go to either of these sites and put in the URL of the classified ad site you wish to research.

Quantcast is one of my favorite ways to research classified ad sites as they also give you demographic data.

The Benefits of Classified Ad Sites

When I first started out building my business online I did not have very much money to invest in advertising. I could barely afford my autoship for the company I was in! I used classified ads almost exclusively for awhile. I was able to use them because many are free or extremely low cost. This makes for a great and even almost guaranteed ROI.

Additionally, the search engines give respect to many of the larger and more well-known classified ad sites because they are constantly generating new content with each ad being posted. Sometimes this can cause your ad to show up in the top of the search results for certain keywords. Extra traffic is always a plus!

Also, because the search engines give respect to these sites, the links to your site (where you are capturing your leads), are considered to have more authority. You will be building backlinks to your site from sites that are seen as important and authoritative. This is great for SEO purposes and can only benefit your site.

Creating a Classified Ad

Creating a classified ad is fairly easy, but you still need to do some planning. You are going to want to make sure the classified ad site has an audience that is right for your product or service. The best way to do that is to use quantcast.com, as I mentioned above. The demographic data that quantcast provides allows you to write a compelling and persuasive ad which will speak to the specific audience of that site.

Also, make sure you read the Terms of Service of the site so you know what you can and cannot say. Some sites will not allow certain types of work at home ads.

You will need to look at a few of the other classified ads that are already listed too. This will give you a good feel for what your ad will look like when you go to create it.

The Purpose of Your Classified Ad

You need to know what "action" you are seeking your visitor to take when they come to your ad. Yes, I know this sounds redundant, but unless you keep in mind what it is you want your visitor to do at all times, you won't craft an ad that works to your advantage.

Advertising is all about tapping into the conversation your prospect is having with themselves at the time they are reading your ad. You need to enter into that conversation and capture their attention by providing an answer to the questions they have or a solution to their problem. You should be able to do this in less than 100 words. Of course, the answer to their question and the solution to their problem is to opt into your lead capture page.

Before you start a classified ad campaign, it would be a good idea to study ads you find compelling and effective. Save emails you receive that catch your interest, and bookmark sales letters with headlines that pull you in. As you collect these types of ads you will be building for yourself what is known as a "Swipe File." You will be able to go to this swipe file and pull out ideas whenever you are looking to write a new ad.

3 Tips For Maximizing Your Classified Ad Strategy

There are three essential tips you need to know before starting on your classified ad campaign.

1) Make sure you write several ads so you are not always using the same ones on every site. It is best to write a minimum of 10 short ads that you feel will do well, and begin to post them. The main reason you want to do this is not to avoid duplicate content issues (which is mostly a myth) but so that you can see which ads are going to work better for your audience on any given site. This leads us into strategy #2...

2) Make sure you are testing and tracking your ads. To do this you are going to need to have some sort of ad tracking software. Don't only track the amount of clicks to your site from the ad itself, although that is an important first step. What really matters most is how many leads your ad generates from that traffic.

Clicks to your site does not make you any money. They need to opt-in to get your information first. You need to know what your conversion rate from visits to leads is. That is the most important number when you need to know which ad is most effective.

3) This third strategy is a great strategy and takes very little time. Once you create a classified ad and post it, you should get a URL for your ad. Take this URL and submit it to social bookmarking sites. You can create awareness of your offer and reach many more people with your message with the same content.

Classified ads are not new but they still work. If you use them correctly they can be very effective for you and provide a really solid ROI. If you focus on this strategy and follow my suggestions in this article you will see an increase in the number of leads you generate per day.

If you can generate 50 leads per day, and put them through a good follow-up system that markets your business, you should be able to build a full-time income in ANY network marketing company.
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