Craigslist as an Underutilized Opportunity: Lisa Hartwick explains

When we think social media, we often overlook Craig's List, the online 'classified ad' social network that is extremely local. Lisa Hartwick of the kitchen store Hartwicks shared some great ideas for using Craig's List with us.
Kim: Have you changed your traditional marketing since you’ve started using social media so much?
Lisa Hartwick: No. We’ve just added to check us out on Facebook and add a sign with Twitter. And then Craigslist, we do post stuff on Craigslist when we’re trying to liquidate items.
Kim: I did want to talk about Craigslist because I think that’s an under utilized area for businesses.
Lisa Hartwick: Yes. I think I was the only business that was on there, actually.
Kim: And what was your process in getting that going?
Lisa Hartwick: I just knew that I had some discounted blow-out items I had customers right away off of Craigslist within that first wee k that I posted stuff that specifically came into look at that product. So it was very effective for us. I don’t know exactly what the sales were on that but we had people coming in to specifically look at those items and we’d have to pull them out of the stock room because they were liquidation items or over stocks that we were trying to move.
Kim: Is that what you think Craigslist is best for for those really, really, good deals?
Lisa Hartwick: Yes, I mean my deals weren’t outrageous deals but it was like 30 percent off, 40 percent off. I did a couple of espresso machines. And then I did some very nice German cookware. And so my stuff probably on Craigslist seemed expensive, but for the quality and the deal that was being offered it was a very good deal. But it wasn’t 50, 75 percent off stuff. So it was just here’s overstocks, liquidation. A couple of them I was selling at the cost that I purchased it for. So yes, I think it went well. I haven’t done any Craigslist postings for a while. I need to do one for our big blow-out sale that we have going on right now to let people know but I do like utilizing it. On the inventory side is what it’s used for for us.
Kim And I wonder, do you think you get people in the store (from the Craigslist posting) that wouldn’t normally come in the store?
Lisa Hartwick: I know I did. I know I absolutely did on the people that were looking at the cookware. They had never been in. And there’s probably five people that hadn’t been in that came in to look at that. I thought that was a very good number for a quick little posting.

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