I started with the local paper and you get the usual kind of response of people calling for more information about the car and more often than not people asking what i would take for the car even before they had seen it!

This used to waste a lot of my time because most of these callers who were normally just time wasters phoning around trying to catch a bite to see if someone out there was so desperate to sell their car they could buy it for next to nothing.

So this went on for the first week - car not sold. Second week even less response - car still not sold.

I tried to work out what might be the reason. Is it the wrong time of year? Holiday time, people spending their money on different things. I'll try again in a month's time. But still the same results.

I check the advert. Everything looks ok compared it to the others in the same price range, same year of car, nice photos, but i'm still stuck with the car.

I try the car on eBay®. Again i do everything i normally do, good description, plenty of good photos nothing wrong there.

But still not sold. I know on eBay® people do expect something for nothing but i thought maybe someone might email me and we could do a deal outside of eBay® and get a better price for the car.

I looked at a few internet forums and the news wasn't that good there either. The general conversation was people were finding it quite difficult to sell their cars that would normally get sold very easily.

The dealers are using the same methods and getting the same results, cars just sitting on forecourts week after week, month after month in some cases.

I have sold a few cars in the past and i can remember all i had to do was have a half decent car clean it up and it was gone sooner rather than later, no problem.

Nowadays you have to work a little smarter even just to get someone interested let alone hand over their money. But this doesn't stop the amount of cars being offered for sale.

I'm sure someone must be getting a good deal somewhere but the overall opinion seems to be that it's not happening for a huge amount of car sellers out there and if one of them is you what next step do you take?

Advertising Problems

I started to look at all the other adverts where i had been advertising and they all looked the same nothing really jumps out at you and says, 'look at me' or gets your attention.

Big bold letters stating the make and model of the car bit of a description and the price in big numbers at the end.

With this in mind, why would someone choose my advert over someone else's? But this is how everyone advertises their car for sale and i thought it's not always in the best interest of the advertiser even though we are paying good money to do it.

The only one it seems to benefit is the paper or magazine or website you or i are using. If it doesn't sell the one losing out is me and you.

Is this the best way of advertising? Err, no! Is the simple answer to that question!

You're just taken a 'shot in the dark' hoping you'll get a bite amongst all the other people fishing for attention as well.

For example, everyone normally places an advert because a publication has a readership of so many thousands of people or a website has so many visitors per week or month.

You might see something like this: 'Get your car seen by 300,000 hungry car buyers!

Then we pay our money. Big mistake.

How many of those readers are looking for your make and model of car? Most of us would say they don't know.

How then can this be the best route to sell your car?

There might be 10,000 out of the 300,000 who are looking for your particular car. But then is yours the same colour the buyer is looking for? Does it have the mileage they want? Air con? Alloys?

By the time all the boxes are ticked you could have less than a 1,000 people interested and then it depends on how far away from you they live. You're not told all this when looking to advertise though are you? That's if they find you among all the other similar adverts!

It's not my car that's the problem; it's the way we advertise that's the biggest problem!

If you don't get to the right people who want to buy your car then you are wasting a large amount of your hard-earned money.

It's like going to the airport and asking for a ticket but not having a destination to fly to.

Why Most Advertising Doesn't Work!

When you or i take out an advert in a magazine or any other publication a lot of the time it doesn't always work to the advertisers advantage.

This is because the advertising people are selling you the space based on what you can normally afford whereas you are advertising because you need your car sold.

So there are 2 different mindsets here. First of all the advertising you may be sold may not necessarily benefit you for the purpose of selling your car. You may think you got a better deal because of the amount of money you pay.

Bigger advert = more exposure, better response. But not so.

Always remember that the person selling you the advert space is working on a set wage or commission so all they are interested in is how much you have to spend! You as an advertiser want to know the response you need to achieve in order to sell your car.

Just because a paper or magazine has a readership of 1,000's of people every week is not a guarantee that your car will sell.

For example, if i took out yellow pages advertising and i was a plumber i need to know how many people look for a plumber in that publication.

It may have 1,000's of readers but if someone is looking for a florist then that's not going to help me is it?

It's the same with selling your car. If you have a Ford for sale then a buyer who wants a Mercedes isn't going to be one bit interested in your advert even though you've been told if you have a bigger advert you'll get a better response. Not true!!

When advertising what a lot of us don't consider is the people or buyers we are trying to reach. It's important to ask yourself questions before taking out any kind of advertising whatsoever. If you don't you'll be throwing away a lot of time and effort and also your money along with it.

Find out what the potential buyers are interested in and looking for before you even write out your advert. Remember back when you were searching for the car you bought.

What was important to you? What research did you do before you bought your car? Put this information in your ad and you'll have a winner! Leave it out and get the same result everyone else is.

Good and bad results happen for a reason, follow a path or pattern that someone else has gone down and you have the same results (good and bad) as them!

So when you're told a bigger ad will generate a better response please keep your money in your pocket!!

Most advertisers when their car doesn't sell they reduce the price of their car. Everyone does this to generate more of a response but the problem is not the price of the car the real problem is you have taken the wrong advice of how to advertise and sell your car!

Don't get me wrong i'm not saying that advertising doesn't work, it does. But the vast majority of the time we don't use that advert we have paid for with our hard earned money to its full advantage.

Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Fryatt