Like most marketers, your life is probably consumed with managing your local search marketing strategy in tandem with your dwindling marketing budget. Between finding the best ROAS, pulling your hair out, and managing your local presence through IP-targeted PPC, localized SEO, Internet Yellow Pages, and Local Business Listings, you probably have missed out on a great opportunity. FREE ADVERTISING! Ok, now that I have your mind off all of your previous marketing worries, we can delve into the element of local search marketing that you conveniently overlooked.

Free online classified networks are expanding at alarming rates. Besides killing revenue for local print newspapers, the potential for reaching large local audiences looking for related products and services is presented. In a country enduring rapid inflation increases and painful gas prices, consumers seek savings a click away through free online classified networks such as Craigslist, Backpage, Kijiji, and Oodle. Where once there were only local print newspaper classified ads and Ebay, now there are several portals which have become increasingly popular due to their localized focus and free advertising opportunities.

The comScore data above shows that for these four classified sites, year-over-year for the month of July, have experienced increases in terms of unique visitors and total page views by 14,007,000 and 145,030,000,000, respectively. Craigslist continues to remain the industry leader and currently reports an impressive 11 minute average per site visitor. Backpage has not experienced the exploding growth that sites like Kijiji have reported, whose year-over-year unique visitors have grown by almost 400%. In recent news, Wal-Mart joined with Oodle.com to provide classified ads on the www.walmart.com site. This collaboration has helped Oodle enjoy year-over-year unique visitor growth of 55% in the month of July. I know with all this data spinning in your head it is probably hard to believe that you have not added free online classified advertising into your local marketing mix. Big business is catching on, it is time you did as well!

While listing placement is free there are still items to take into consideration. Time investment is key since all listing creative must be manually constructed. Time plays another factor as you or an allocated resource will have to manage calls and emails from customers. While this may not be your strongest performing local marketing element, it is free and worth considering. Yes, time will be spent on ad creation and answering customer’s questions, but your ad spend is a big fat zero. Ultimately, similar to the development of any marketing strategy, testing is imperative to determine your best conversion potential with the least amount of time invested. Testing title and description creative will determine which targeted keywords and offers perform the best. Call tracking and link referral analysis will help to assess which sites provide the greatest conversions.

I imagine you are chomping at the bit to take your ads to these sites, but before you do, make sure you have read the eight quick tips below.

Quick Tips for Online Classified Advertising:

1. Stick with the major players. Granted, you are only investing your time, but you should concentrate your efforts on online classified sites such as Craiglist, BackPage, Kijiji, and Oodle. There is an exhaustive list of free classified sites out there, but your strategy should balance between market reach and time invested. Simply put, don’t place ads on sites with minimal visitors.

2. Place advertisements on sites which offer localized sub-domains. National ads won’t benefit your local marketing efforts.

3. Place advertisements on sites within specific and relevant categories. The gold-rush for listing online has created a plethora of chaff that searchers must wade through. Your category must be specific and relevant if you are to convert searchers.

4. Listing titles must contain a keyword-rich call to action. As described above, there are way too many listings out there for “Dale’s Plumbing Service” to convert searchers. “Chicago Plumbing Services 20% Off This Week” will work a lot better. Keyword targeting within titles will also potentially provide additional listings within search engine results for localized queries.

5. Your product or service description within your listing needs to mimic the listing title’s keyword-rich call to action as well.

6. Classified sites such as Craigslist provide a ranking algorithm based primarily on listing date. Once listings have aged and fell in site search results further than desired, edit the listing with a current offer or call to action and re-post the ad.

7. Add photos where available, these will help to inform and entice potential customers.

8. Consider call tracking as a metric for measuring leads. Place separate numbers on separate classified sites to gauge individual site success.

9. Make sure to include a link to your site on all listings. Links should direct to the specific page or site section of your product or service. This will provide additional site traffic as well as to provide a gateway to other products or services that you offer.