Free classified advertising - don't be fooled. Is it really free? When you think of the hours you can spend putting your ad out across the net, and calculate what an hour of your time is worth, AND if you see no results for your free classified advetising campaign, then it certainly has NOT been free!

On the other hand, free classified advertising can be very effective if done properly. It is amazing though when browsing classified ads how ineffective many of them are. How do you know? Because you don't see those ads again if you check back some days or weeks later. Ads that remain unchanged month after month are there because they are working. Why? Because they are working.

Do you know the single biggest mistake advertisers make when using free classified advertising? Isolating this major flaw can make a huge difference to the success you can expect with online classified ads.

Here it is:

The single most important mistake advertisers make is:

****Trying to use a free classified ad to SELL!****

Am I crazy? If it's not to sell, why would advertisers do free classified advertising? Let's elaborate. How many words can you use in a free classified ad? How many lines are you allowed? With the majority of classified sites there are strict limitations and this applies even more to newspaper classifieds.

Really, can you explain enough or convince the prospect within a few words in a classified ad to make a sale? Of course not. Often to close a sale you need to give a convincing sales pitch. You need to highlight benefits, benefits and benefits to the potential customer for the product or service you are offering. You cannot possibly do that in a few words.

Yet time and again you see higher priced items for sale simply stating item and price. How many people are going to respond to ads like that?

So how should you approach a free classified advertising campaign? By using your classified ad as bait, not as a sales pitch. The whole purpose of your ad should revolve around this one factor, capturing the interest, anticipation, even enthusiasm of your prospect and motivating them to take the next step.

What is the next step? That's up to you. You could use your classified ad to increase your mailing list subscribers. So you simply offer a free gift or resource in your classified ad headline and put a signup form on the landing page.

Or you may want the prospect to click through to your sales page which has plenty of copy to motivate them to buy.

Whichever option you decide on, make sure you use free classified advertising to simply hook the prospect, not sell them. This means sitting down and thinking about the headline. Every word counts in a headline. Craft it, sweat a little over it, and test it.

Remember, people act on emotions. In your headline, can you touch the prospect's hot button and get them emotionally involved so they actually want to click through to the next step? Be sure you clearly differentiate in your mind the difference between features and benefits when it comes to the product or service you are offering.

It is very easy to forget this and make the headline revolve around a feature. Every feature has a corresponding benefit. Center the headline around the benefit, not the feature. What's in it for the customer? Just make that message scream out loud and clear and you should have no problem with free classified advertising.

At the same time not all benefits are equal. Make a list of the features with the corresponding benefit shown alongside. Now look over that list and isolate what to you is the strongest possible benefit to the customer. Don't allow minor issues and side benefits get you sidetracked. You want to magnify the number 1 bar none benefit if the customer buys your product or service! So choose a few emotionally charged keywords that emphasize it and that becomes your headline.

A final word, make sure you tell the prospect what they have to do. Statistics show there is a higher click through rate when you tell the client to 'Click Here for . . .' or in some other way indicate what they need to do. Don't assume they will anyway. Words such as 'Click Here' or even more emphatically with a sense of urgency, 'Click Here Now!' are almost guaranteed to get you a better response.

Make the focus of your free classified advertising capturing not selling your potential clients, emphasize the number 1 major benefit to them, and then tell them what to do. You may be amazed at the results!

Copyright (c) 2009 Michael A Jones