I have had a long association with online car classified advertising ( www.Terrific.ie amongst others) and below are my thoughts in relation to writing a car ad description.
Like any advertisement, a classified listing needs to be engaging as well as informative to appeal to a potential buyer. We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words and we’ll discuss some tips for getting the best pictures of your vehicle elsewhere, but another facet of the advert that is almost as important, and is often overlooked by dealers, is the text that accompanies the ad.
8 Top tips
- Keep your advert concise and informative, avoid text speak and use your spell checker to correct typos. Abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible, we might all be familiar with industry lingo, but not all your potential buyers will be.
- This may be a personal preference of mine, but adverts that are written entirely in capitals just make it look like the seller is shouting, or forgot to turn caps lock off. By all means, use capitals for emphasis, but if the entire ad is written that way, nothing ends up standing out.
- Clichés such as ‘first to see will buy’, ‘one careful lady owner’, ‘only ever driven by a priest’ sound insincere and will undermine the genuine nature of the rest of your ad, so avoid using these.
- Be descriptive. It’s best to highlight the positive features of your vehicle (i.e. the list of extra features, full warranty, car history report etc) instead of less than helpful descriptions such as “runs like a dream”, “looks fantastic”, “best car you’ll ever own!”
- You’re not just selling the car – you’re selling yourself as a professional dealership and it pays to make a good impression.
- Giving some finance examples in the text description is always helpful to a customer who might be wondering how to pay for the vehicle.
- Including the sales person’s name and mobile is also a good idea. Phone Michael on ### ####### for immediate attention etc as people still buy from people a lot of the time.
- Mentioning opening hours (particularly Saturday) and if you are prepared to meet a client by appointment outside of these hours is also helpful in my opinion