As online marketplaces have re-shaped the retail landscape over the past few decades, fostering previously unimaginable connectivity between producers and consumers, it has become easier than ever to sell goods online.
This has led to a blurring of the lines between customers and vendors, as anyone with an Internet connection can become a salesperson, and every article of clothing, piece of furniture, or set of dishes you no longer need can become a secondary source of income. Instead of taking out costly classified ads in newspapers that may never be read or responded to, people can advertise anything from a used car to a vintage bowtie to an almost limitless audience for free.
The results have been remarkable. Some estimates have pegged what is being called Canada’s “second-hand economy” at $29 billion in profits in 2016 alone, an improvement of $1 billion over 2015. Clearly, this is not a segment of the market that can be ignored. But even as Internet classifieds have opened up new possibilities, the sheer volume of business that is now done online means it can be easy for your own listing to get lost in the feed. So how do you make sure that your listing gets noticed, without having to manually re-post it every few days? Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to boost your listing available, if you know where to look.
One of the most popular online classified sites in Canada, Kijiji, offers a range of options that allows users who are posting classifieds to make sure their listing continues to draw attention. Because browsers are far more likely to be drawn to results at the top of the page, you can, for example, choose to have your listing promoted to the top spots, so it will consistently come up as one of the first searches for as long as the promotion lasts (typically three days, a week, or a month).
You may also opt to bump up your ad so it doesn’t get buried in the constant new listings coming in from other sellers. Bumping your ad means you don’t have to creating the same ad over and over again just to keep it closer to the top of the feed, and it is often available at more competitively priced rates than promoted ads.
One of the benefits of advertising online, and one of the reasons the migration from print to the web has been so effective, is that listings can be posted far more quickly — and taken down just as quickly once an agreement has been reached. This is why advertisers can now opt to flag their listings as urgent if they want to communicate that the item needs to be sold ASAP. Flagging a listing will brand it with a brightly coloured banner to help it catch the eye of browsers who are looking to buy fast.
As more and more users start to realize the power of these sorts of listing enhancement tools, failing to take advantage of them will jeopardize the effectiveness of your advertisement. Already, data has been released suggesting that promoted listings get as many as 10 times the views unpromoted listings on average. So don’t get lost in the feed; make sure your post gets noticed!