Craigslist
Posted on January 20, 2008 - Filed Under General |
Do you market on Craigslist?
I was talking to a friend of mine who has been using it as a way to market herself more effectively. I have not tried it. I am wondering if anyone has and if so, how successful you have been?
I mean, Craigslist is free. It gets a lot of traffic so you have a lot of potential people to see your ad.
However, is it a place people looking for your services would go to search for you?
My friend said a lot of people in her area were using it. She was seeing a lot of advertisements that were offering half price visits or a free initial visit.
That type of marketing may bring in people, but is it going to bring in the patients you want to bring in? The people who respond to that are more concerned about dollars than their health. Do you really want to cater your business to them?
These are just some initial thoughts. I’d love to hear from people who have used Craigslist. What type of referrals are you getting from them? Is it working?
Comments
3 Responses to “Craigslist”
Leave a Reply
I have used Craigslist to market but only did this for a short time. In my area (SFO) I found that it was flooded with a few locations that were advertising “Asian” services. Our ads would get lost among these ads. I think we had a few inquiries, but don’t remember getting any clients. Maybe we didn’t try for long enough, but we are a respectable clinic and I couldn’t see us advertising with those that seemed more gimmicky and risque.
CL definitely has potential to bring in a number of new patients. I know of an acupuncturist who gets new patients every month this way!
I had experiences where I would agree with you that many were “too” concerned about the dollar, but discount ads no matter where they are placed have the potential of attracting that type of patient… and not all of them were like that.
There are also many practitioners with different types of practices and benefit greatly by advertising on CL.
Another marketing tool is always worth a try and if it works for you then even better. I say go for it…and then let us know what happened
I have to admit, when I first moved up here I used it once. I don’t think I got any patients. I think you’d have to post regularly to really get any significant numbers of patients.
Also, I do suspect it will vary from area to area what types of response you get–and whether you get lost in the crowd.
In Vancouver, I never got people from running ads in the Columbian or with any of the small area papers. In North Bend, I get one almost every time I run a newspaper ad. I suspect that Craigslist is much the same way–it depends upon whether the community you are in is interested in using this for advertising.