Why Classified Ads Don’t Work

Well in my experience, it depends on who you speak to and who they’ve been speaking to.

If you create a poorly designed ad, submit it into a high-circulation but totally non-targeted publication, don’t expect to suddenly become an expert on "why classified ads don’t work."

Classified ads work, if you use them correctly!

If you place classified ads in highly targeted ezines and newsletters, it’s a quick way to get exposure for your product or service as well as some great backlinks to your website, meaning better search engine rankings.

You can either barter by exchanging products or services as payment for your ad placement with the publisher or, you can pay cash if you prefer.  You can actually go one better than this and give them a quality article which many of the online directories will publish for FREE.  I’ll talk about submitting articles in another post.

Low-cost classified ads can also be placed in offline publications where you can usually demand much higher prices for your products. The craziness of selling "one million ebooks for a penny" does not exist in the offline world.

Pick a publication that target readers who are interested in your product or service, i.e. your niche market.  

This is really important so you don’t get bogged down with circulation numbers whilst completely ignoring who the readers are. 

Circulation numbers must be the number 1 method advertising agents use to get businesses to purchase advertising space but the truth is that if the readers of that publication are not interested in what you have to sell, you won’t be able to sell anything no matter how large the circulation size of that publication is. 

So don’t be fooled by the numbers and where at all possible and, when advertising offline in newspapers and magazines, avoid advertising on the left hand side of the page because you’re more likely to get ignored!  People’s eyes are naturally drawn to the right of the pages as they are turning and this is particularly true for "browsers."  But don’t take my word for it… take note of what you do the next time you pick up a magazine or newspaper to read.

Last, but not least… Test, Test, Test!

One of the biggest reasons advertising does not work for many is because they fail to test.  They have no idea how much money they’re spending on advertising and if they’re a large comglomerate, they usually don’t care either.  But if you’re a small business, you don’t have that luxury so ensure you keep records for your return on investment.

Test your ads by using cheaper publications at first 

When you find a winner that is getting great responses, that’s when you can roll it out with full force, in multiple publications.  The other thing to do, is send your ad to a small sample first, test the results and if successful, you can roll out your campaign on a larger scale. 

To track the responsiveness of your ads from ezines or other publications that you advertise in, simply use a unique web address or a unique email address for each ad in each publication.

If the ad does not seem to work well in a particular ezine or publication, stop advertising until you can find out more information about the readership and the target audience and if this isn’t the issue, maybe your ad needs rewriting in full or needs some tweaking.  It’s amazing what one small change in the headline can do for your response rate, so never underestimate the power of tweaking your ads.

In short, test an ad first before you pay to have it published in multiple ezines or offline publications. Then, test each ad source to see what kind of results they produce.  If it makes you a profit, continue running it. If it doesn’t, pull the ad from that particular publication or make the necessary changes.

Also, keep in mind that you’re not trying to "sell" directly from the ad. You’re only generating leads or driving traffic to your web site.

Now go advertise!