9 Reasons Classified Ads Fail

Classified advertising has been around for a long time offline, and it didn’t take it long to hit the online market either. Classified ads are an economical or free way to promote your business on the Internet. There are a variety of websites where classified ads can be placed and there are thousands of other places that offer opportunities to post classified ads next to relevant content.

Your advertising dollars need to be carefully utilized and closely monitored as you unveil and implement your marketing campaign. Your campaign will succeed if you do some homework ahead of time and monitor its effectiveness throughout the life of the ad.

However, there are also many ad campaigns that fail as a result of poor planning, inadequate tracking, or inattention to what is happening. Making some of the mistakes that cause an ad campaign to fail can be avoided by paying attention to some simple guidelines and basic facts.

The reasons that many classified advertising or other types of ad strategies fail include:

Lack of focus on the customer as the most important person in the process. Ads that focus on the company or its owners or founders will turn customers away quickly. People want to know about products and benefits – not your company or your product features.

Not knowing the customer is a major flaw for many advertisements. People will create ads without truly knowing what their customer’s value and they never take time to put themselves in the customer’s place. Potential customers see through this quickly – especially since they’re looking for “what’s in it for me”. If they don’t see that immediately, they’ll ignore your ad and move to someone who knows them better.

It’s all about benefits and not features. As stated above, people aren’t interested in features. They’re looking for something to make their lives simpler, easier, and less complicated. If you can show them how your product can do that, you’ll have a potential customer that becomes engaged and converted.

Placing a single ad and then moving to another site to place the ad and continually hopping around the Internet won’t gain you any customers. People typically need to see, hear, or read something 7 times before it really sinks in. Your ad campaign should run long enough on a single site for readers to take note and take action. You may get some immediate traffic, but odds are that the majority of your traffic will arrive after consistent advertising on the same site.

Not tracking the progress and effectiveness of your campaign can lead to failure every time. If you don’t know how well the campaign is doing, how do you know if you need to make adjustments or changes? No response to your classified ads after the campaign has run for about 6 views to the customer, then maybe your headline is ineffective or your content is confusing. Without tracking, you don’t even know something is not working and you’ve wasted time and possibly money.

Placing ads on classified advertising sites or in Ezines or other publications that are not relevant to the product being promoted is a real killer. You won’t find traffic you want and desire with this strategy – you’ll just waste your time and the website’s space.

Creating ads that promote so many products that it’s hard to discern what’s being sold can cause a campaign to fail. Keep your ads focused and promote a single product (or no more than two) with your ad. The less ‘noise’ you include in your ad, the more likely you are to succeed.

Misleading and deceiving your clients is a sure ringer for failure. Don’t make promises, commitments, or offers that you can’t fulfill. Not being truthful is the quickest way to your demise.

Providing poor customer service after the potential customer reaches your website can turn visitors away quickly – negatively impacting your conversion rates. Make sure you have the technology and resources to provide optimal customer services after the ad runs or you’ll fail miserably.

Planning ahead and preparing for a successful classified advertising campaign is essential your long-term success. Short term gains mean nothing if there are no long term plans to support your campaigns. Keep the above in mind as you prepare your advertising campaign and stay focused on your objectives.