Automotive Marketing

I was searching this morning to find some information I needed for a conference call about Craigslist today. I will discuss some of the things I learned later. While searching, I happened upon a neat group of sites that I would like to share. It seems that when Craig wrote the Craigslist terms of use, he nailed it.

The terms are so good, in fact, that when some other businesses read his terms, they immediately copy and paste them to their own website without replacing every instance of “craigslist” with their own name.

Websites that stole Craig’s terms of use

• http://www.indiaclassy.com/terms.html
• http://www.curdy.com/terms-of-use.html
• http://www.juliesbarn.com/home/?view=terms&cityid=-55
• http://www.dateilicious.com/Terms.php
• http://www.rockstarrecruiting.com/corp/terms
• http://www.worldpropertyservices.com/terms.cfm
• http://www.aiscolorado.org/termsofuse.htm
• http://www.campusmonster.org/terms/
• http://classifiedtree.com/rptcontentmgmt.aspx?inid=7
• http://www.yokepal.com/terms_of_services.php
• http://www.internationalgcl.com/terms.php
• http://iannouncethis.com/terms-of-use.html
• http://yodoleslist.com/terms.htm

The list goes on and on and on. I am stunned by the amount of half-assed companies that are too lazy to do a simple find and replace after taking someone else’s work.

Friend or Foe?

Craigslist is a game changer. Dealers that have never heard of CL are stunned to hear that it is a free service that can get 1,000 people to view a car classified ad in a single day. However, in its present form, craigslist will not change the automotive industry. Imagine a day where as many dealers that refresh their listings on Autotrader can do the same thing on craigslist. Mayhem. The (lack of) search features on CL prevent thousands of new items in a single day to be properly sorted and consumed by shoppers.

The wall that holds back this onslaught of ads is the terms of service. Dealers rely on third parties to distribute their ads, and craigslist does not permit third parties to create ads. This makes the craigslist terms of service a huge road block for a lot of companies like mine.

I see it differently. The TOU is what enables me to succeed on the site. It protects the listings I create from the onslaught of violators and spammers. If you take the time to read the terms and become a regular user of the site it is not long before you can make the posting process more efficient without violating the mighty posting agent section of the terms.

Take aways

I learned a few things today. First, there is always someone out there with a sloppy written program that gives me clues on how to automate tasks. For example, one of the people in the conference call today mentioned he can combat competitors that relentlessly flag your legit ads to hurt your business. I had not considered a flagging bot until this was said, but a simple search turns up Craig’s Flagger, a program that automates the process of terminating any ad posted by a spammer. It does not work. No surprise. Put a tool like this out in the open that can easily be identified after it starts flagging at the click of a button.

I also learned that keyword stuffing still works to this day. I see ads that have random chunks of other web pages at the bottom. Thomas Jefferson quotes, UNIX user manual sections, you name it and someone has surely used it to trip up the CL filters.

The most exciting thing about today’s conference was I found out that my tactics are still a cut above the rest. I was fairly convinced when I noticed a couple competitors redesigning their ad designs to be 90% copies of mine, but today I was stunned to see one of the most sophisticated craigslist programs I have demoed to date–one capable of completely automatic daily posting without the risk of detection as a single source–struggling with the filters (see previous paragraph).

Is the craigslist terms of use friend or foe? What does that tell you about your commitment to craigslist success?