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Dealerships are looking for creative ways to make their listings stand out on Craigslist. What better way than using video as a truly distinctive presentation of your vehicles.
Effective merchandising is all about making your vehicles stand out in comparison to your competition. On Craigslist some have turned to using HTML templates which improve the presentation, but even this is becoming commonplace. A truly distinctive approach is to incorporate links to your video walk-arounds into Craigslist ads, leading them to a video enhanced landing page which features the specific car being advertised with an engaging promotion of your dealership.
Craigslist Design Compatibilities
Most Cragslist listings are relatively non-designed – a textual explanation of the vehicle being sold followed by some pictures. Some dealerships are starting to use HTML to spice up their ads. See graphic at right). Craigslist does allow the use of basic HTML to create an HTML (web) designed page that may stand out better than the run-of-the- mill listing. The HTML code is pasted into the description field, linking back to graphics are often pulled from the image file of the dealer website. The basic HTML that Craigslist supports can be found by clicking here.
Adding Video to CraigsList ads
While Craigslist ads don’t support a video player within the ad (it doesn’t accept Flash or Java code), it does support hyperlinks and URLs which can lead the viewer to a video enhanced landing page specially designed around your dealership and the specific car being advertised. The result is a truly distinctive presentation that sets you apart from the competition and drives more leads from your listings.
Adding video to the standard (non-HTML) Cragslist ad requires the following steps:
- Prepare the video – Select the video, have it served in a public location (e.g. outside of your corporate firewall), determine the URL link to the video and create the video landing page to host the video once selected. All of this is dramatically simplified by using Video Campaign Engines such as the one available from UnityWorks! Media.
- Paste the link code into the “Posting Description” field of the Craigslist ad form along with the accompanying text. The format to use is as follows:
Example:
- If link URL is http://www.dealervideos.com/xxx
- And linkable text on the page is “Click Here To See Vehicle Video”
- Then paste the following code into the Craigslist Posting Description field ahead of the normal descriptive text:
<ahref=”http://www.dealervideos.com/xxx”> Click Here To See Vehicle Video</a>
- You can make your UnityWorks! vehicle video link stand out more by using common HTML tags to increase font size, change text color, etc. You can also use the same steps to add a video link in an HTML-designed page.
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