For All Contractors

How To Advertise On Craigslist and Nextdoor

We believe Craigslist and Nextdoor are both invaluable tools for contractors who want to reach a local audience, but how do you advertise effectively on Nextdoor and Craigslist? What’s the best way to attract attention without looking like a spammer? We’ve prepared some quick and easy Craigslist and Nextdoor marketing tips for you.

If you’re trying to market to a hyperlocal audience, Craigslist and Nextdoor are both powerful tools. As a contractor, it’s likely you have a limited marketing budget, and anyway, you can get free construction leads will be appreciated.

That’s exactly what these local boards can offer you if you use them wisely. The trick for advertising on Craigslist effectively is to learn the site’s culture and be selective with your posts. The same applies to Nextdoor. You’ll attract more business if you’re a valued member of the community.


How To Advertise On Craigslist

Craigslist is, at its core, a site where businesses advertise, and prospective customers come looking for products or services. That should be a dream come true for any contractor you choose your keywords correctly, the people who see your Craigslist ads will be people who are already primed to buy your service.


Try these Craigslist marketing tips to improve your results:

1. Know Your Audience

Before you run any marketing campaign, it’s essential to define who you want to reach. Craigslist uses narrowly defined geographic areas and categories for its boards. If you offer construction services in one specific city and the surrounding areas, make sure you post ads in each of the areas you serve so you reach the biggest possible audience.

If you’re a general contractor, consider posting separate ads for each type of work you’re willing to take on. This helps you reach people who are searching for a specific service, and those searchers are the ones most likely to pick up the phone and hire you.


2. Design Your Ads Thoughtfully

Craigslist ads are text-only, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with just throwing together a quick “please hire me” post. If you want to generate local home improvement leads for your business, you need a well-designed ad.

Make full use of the text formatting options, choose your keywords carefully, and proofread the ad before posting. Treat the ad as a business card and make sure it leaves an excellent first impression.


3. Post At The Right Time

Craigslist is a high-volume platform, particularly in big cities. This means you’ll need to post regularly. Try to time your posts around the periods of the day when your target audience will be most active. So, if you’re aiming for business users, post during working hours. For home services, aim for weekends, early mornings when people are browsing during their commute or evenings.


How To Advertise On Nextdoor

Nextdoor is touted as an app for talking about your neighbors, yet 25% of conversations on the app aren’t about that annoying neighbor’s messy lawn or noisy kids but about businesses.

If you’re wondering how to advertise your business on Nextdoor and get a piece of that action, the good news is it’s pretty simple. Just as forums can generate leads for your business, apps can too. In fact, the ubiquity of smartphones makes apps like Nextdoor even more powerful.


1. Join Nextdoor As a Business

The most important thing to remember if you’re going to use Nextdoor is to join as a business rather than a normal user. As tempting as it can be to post as a user, if you do this, you’ll likely be dismissed as a spammer. Make a business account and do everything above board.


2. Get Recommendations From Customers

Once you’ve set up a business account, contact some past customers and ask them if they’ll leave a recommendation for your business. Don’t bribe customers to do this as that could harm your reputation. Just politely ask them to rate your profile. A highly rated profile can be invaluable for attracting customers.

Remember to reply to posts and comments using your business profile and generally engage with your users in the community. This is one of the most important aspects of reputation management for any business.


3. Run Local Deals Ads On Nextdoor

Local Deals Ads cost money to run, but they’re a powerful marketing tool, so they’re worth using. These ads will reach users who are in the areas you serve and are interested in the service you provide. This means they’re likely to have a much better conversion rate than ads on other social media platforms.

Nextdoor provides powerful tracking tools so you can see the performance of your ads and how often people engage with your profile. You can use these metrics to improve your ads and get even better results.


Be Consistent And Patient

If you follow these Craigslist marketing tips and post regularly on Nextdoor, too, you should see results after a few weeks. With consistent marketing, you’ll build up a reputation for your business and start to get word-of-mouth promotion from happy customers too.

It takes time to build up a strong business as a local contractor, so don’t give up. Use social media alongside other advertising techniques and build a strong foundation for your brand.