If your customers utilize the classifieds to connect with you, do they use Craigslist? More importantly, do you? Since the service is free to almost everyone, you probably should use this form of Internet advertising even if you turn up your nose at conventional news ads.

What is Craigslist? For the uninformed, Craigslist is a very simplified form of classified ads in dozens of topics, split to cover all fifty states (with breakdowns inside those states) and even various parts of the country. At present, Craigslist charges only for job listings in three cities - New York, LA, and San Francisco - and those charges are minimal (between $25-75). The site receives over 2.5 billion page views. Even broken down among sections, the numbers boggle the mind. Is your business taking advantage of the site?

Craigslist doesn't seem to set a limit on the number of posts, but frowns on duplication. For instance, you couldn't post one ad in the household services section and the same one in the skilled trade section. Nor can you post the same ad every day; site owners want fresh content. How, then, does this jive with the marketing plan to stay repetitive, since repetition builds name recognition and trust?

What we have done with Redd Infinity is write an ad focusing on different aspects of our business each day. We have broken it down into two parts - household and skilled labor - and prepared each ad to focus on that audience. For instance, we assume homeowners are looking for household services, and hope that more businesses might find us under skilled labor (we are toying with the small biz ads section, as well). Thus, on our ad layout changes daily. For the business services:

• Monday we focus on adding new phone lines
• Tuesday we focus on networking
• Wednesday we focus on phone systems
• Thursday we focus on adding a router/switch/hub
• Friday we focus on moving existing phone lines
• Saturday we run an ad for a free 'help your business grow' consultation

We run the same ad every weekday, thus building recognition. We include a link to our web site, including to our blog which was created to help small business owners.

We also run an ad in the 'barter' section. Since we are a small business, we can be very flexible in terms of payment, and often look for item to trade for that might help our home or business to grow. Several other companies offer free advertising or marketing in exchange for things; trading a wiring job for marketing would really help our company grow. We employ our excellent customer service skills for these trades and hand out several business cards, point blankly asking for referrals.

When it comes to creating your ad, the most important part is the headline. Your headline absolutely must stand out, and must let the reader know what is being sold. Don't use headlines that read like junk email - no one will click on the ad. Find a list of marketing 'hot words' and try to implement them.

Once you have the reader inside your ad, make your point quickly and succinctly. Be professional - doublecheck for typos and misspellings. Capitalize words. I can't tell you how many 'business' ads I have steered away from because I don't trust 'we kan help u with ur buisness'. No, thanks, you can't. Make your ad look professional. Remember, even if the ad is free, you are still presenting yourself and your image. First impressions - and fiftieth - still count. Although you won't find it mentioned, you can use HTML within your Craigslist ad, thus using bold, italics, and sizing to make your ad stand out. This gives you the ability to hyperlink your website (or create an 'email me' note) without showing a messy URL. These things will help your ad to stand out from the rest and can really make it shine. You don't need an in-depth knowledge of HTML, just a few basics as mentioned. Most posters don't seem to know about this option, so just a little bit will make your ad really stand out.

Finally, placing the ads on Craigslist actually makes them appear on Google and Yahoo, further increasing your exposure. Because of the size of and frequent updates from Craigslist, the ads are fairly close to the front. If you have included your website in your ad, you will increase the traffic to your site (and hopefully to your wallet) by posting on Craigslist.

Utilizing Craigslist has helped our business to grow. The site itself has developed almost a cult following, with new users stumbling in every day. Estimates project that the site costs newspapers millions in lost revenue. The process of posting costs you nothing but time, most of it spent during the initial creating stage; after that, you need less than five minutes a day to post each ad. What's stopping you from making it part of your business plan?

Nola Redd writes a small business blog for her Atlanta-based low voltage wiring company, Redd Infinity. She is also an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Creative Writing.