Exposure of used RV classified ads is made up of two components.  First - in order to sell your RV, the ad must be seen.  This requires internet owners to spend money to drive traffic to their website where RV listings classified ads can be viewed.  Second, once potential RV buyers are at the website, the RVs classified ads need to be presented well to maximize the chance that interested buyers will inquire about purchasing the RV.

 

Driving Traffic to the Listing Website.
Potential buyers don't just happen by chance to get to websites; they must be encouraged to go to a website through an effective marketing program.  Like any other marketing program, time and money are required to induce potential customers to check out a product (in this case, the product is the website).

For websites offering free listings, these sites may be free because they (1) don't advertise their listings on Google or other search engines to drive buyers to their site, (2) focus heavily on making money from other advertising on their site, in which case the RV ads can get lost, or (3) the combination of (1) and (2).   By getting other sources of revenue, these sites are able to offer free listings; however, at the same time they may have small or no advertising budgets, and thus may not be able to drive much traffic to their website.

 

Most websites charge for rv classified ad listings, and thus may have a larger marketing budget or are otherwise able to drive more traffic to their website.  Some of these websites charge up to $175 or so for a "list until sold" featured classified ad.

 

What then is the best strategy?  Does it make sense to utilize the free listings websites?   Sure, as long as you comfortable with the their privacy policy and the terms and conditions of use of their website. (See the article What You Absolutely Must Look at Before Listing Your RV on The Internet).   Just remember that the free listing websites tend to have limited budgets; and thus consideration should be given to additionally listing your RV with other websites in order to feature your rv ad to more potential buyers.  Lower traffic means less views (and potentially less people interested in your RV).

 

Maximizing the Exposure of Your Used RV Classified Ad
When considering specific rv classified ad websites, consider how the RV classified ads are displayed.  Are there twenty, thirty or more RV's shown on a single "featured RV" home page?  Are there lots of other ads and links?

These distractions take away from the what you want - to highlight your RV. The more ads, links, and other RVs shown on a page the less attention your RV will receive. 

Additionally, how can users on the site find your RV? Are there search capabilities so that users can easily narrow down the list of RVs meeting their specifications, or must they search through an entire class of RVs?  Remember -  internet users have an extremely low tolerance searching through material they aren't interested in to find what they're looking for.

How much searching needs to be done, and how complicated is it?  Pretend you're looking for an RV exactly like the one that you are selling.  Can you get to a list of RVs meeting your criteria in less than a minute?  Certainly if there's no way to search for RV's other than by class, you're probably better off listing on other websites.

Next, look at the individual rv classified ad pages. Do they allow for multiple pictures of the RV?    Many RV's look similar on the outside; it's often the customization and upgrades on the inside that can account for a wide difference in prices among otherwise similar RV's.

Will your RV classified ad receive sufficient exposure on the main classified ad listing page?  Users searching for RVs spend less time looking at an RV ad if only one picture is displayed on the main listing page than if multiple pictures are displayed, EVEN IF they can click on a "more pictures" link and then see additional pictures.  It's therefore important to have multiple pictures displayed on the MAIN listing page and, of course, in sizes big enough to be easily seen.

 

Lastly, if you've paid for an RV listing, the listing page should be about Your RV, NOT someone else's advertising.  Other advertising takes attention away from potential RV buyers from considering your classified rv ad.  You probably don't want your rv listing competing against the latest discount being offered by a popular market savvy company for the attention of the viewer. 

 

The result of this is that while your rv ad may get plenty of view, it's likely that a lot of these "views" are more of the ads that are on the page than of your rv listing (it's especially troublesome when the viewer clicks on these ads and is taken away from your listing). 

 

 

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