For used car dealerships, Craigslist can be a powerful tool for advertising inventory. It comes with many benefits, but also a few significant hurdles. One such hurdle is that, if you don’t have the right strategy, your posts can get flagged as spam—meaning your whole Craigslist strategy could collapse.
Fortunately, there are some practical ways to avoid this fate. Here are a few tips from the automotive marketing experts at Get My Auto.
How to Prevent Your Ads from Getting Flagged
Spread them out.
First and foremost, it’s important to spread out your ads, rather than post them all in rapid succession. Set up a schedule wherein you post a few ads per day, spaced out over a few hours, rather than flooding Craigslist all at once. Remember that a single ad will stay live for at least a week, so you don’t need to be too aggressive with your posts.
Only post part of your inventory.
Unless you have an extremely small dealership (100 cars or less), you can’t get away with advertising your entire inventory—so be smart and strategic about only posting the cars you know are “hot” in your market. At the most, you want to advertise 75 to 80 percent of your inventory on Craigslist.
Consider multiple IP addresses.
Craigslist will monitor the posts form any given IP address, and if that address posts too aggressively or too frequently, it could result in the ads getting flagged. For larger dealerships with a more robust Craigslist strategy, it may be wise to post from a few different dealerships.
Post at different times.
Posting at the same time every day will make it far easier for Craigslist to flag you—so try to vary it up, and experiment with posting at different times. Posts either early in the morning or late at night can be especially beneficial.
Use an automated Craigslist service.
The best way to ensure that your ads aren’t flagged—and that they actually get results, generating leads for your dealership—is to work with a comprehensive Craigslist solution, which can help generate stronger ad copy and also provide structure and strategy to your posting schedule. Get My Auto’s Craigslist Wizard tool can automate the entire process, and help your dealership really make good use of Craigslist ads.
Learn More About Our Craigslist Solutions
Get My Auto specializes in marketing services for used car dealerships—including website development, Facebook Ads, Craigslist, and more.
To learn more about advertising your used car inventory effectively—on Craigslist or otherwise—reach out to the Get My Auto team directly.