The end of the year is fast approaching, but that doesn’t mean that agents should taper off on their marketing efforts. We still have a good two and a half months before we say goodbye to 2010, and that provides ample time for agents to market themselves and, possibly, snag an end-of-the-year sales boost.

One of the best (and easiest) ways to do this is to post your ads on Craigslist. Craigslist is the leading classified service in both print and online media. It lists 30 million new classified ads each month, and is, therefore, a great way for agents to snag more attention for listings! The Post to Craigslist feature in the AgentAdvantage Control Panel makes it that much easier to get ads out to the masses. However, it’s not enough to simply post an ad and wait for the leads to start pouring in. Posting ads on Craigslist requires much more strategy than that.

It’s all in the timing.

Believe it or not, the time you post your ad can have a significant impact on lead generation. This is because when you post your ads, they are placed at the top of search results. Some agents may elect to post their ads first thing in the morning to avoid forgetting about it later. As helpful as that can be, it can actually be harmful for ad visibility if no one is conducting searches when you post. If you post your ad in the wee hours of the morning when hardly anyone is online, more ads will be posted and will push your ads to the bottom of search results.

Even though people have varying schedules and lifestyles, try posting your ads at certain points throughout the day when your target audience theoretically has more downtime. For example, try posting around lunch time (between 11:30 AM and 1:00 PM) and just after dinner time (between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM.) That will provide you with a pretty decent starting off point to gauge the best time to post. The key is to experiment with different times to see what does and doesn’t work for your audience, and when you find something that works, go for it!