Marketing Your Engineering Consulting Services On Craigslist
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Marketing Your Engineering Consulting Services On Craigslist - January 13, 2015
Marketing Your
Engineering Consulting Services
On Craigslist
Recommendations for Marketing AUTHORS
Engineering Consulting Services
to Silicon Valley Carl Angotti
President, Angotti Product Development
Chair, Online Ad Marketing Committee,
A White Paper Sponsored by
IEEE-CNSV
the IEEE Consultants’
Past Chair, IEEE Consultants’ Network of
Network of Silicon Valley Silicon Valley
(IEEE-CNSV)
Past Chair, IEEE Technology Management
Council of Silicon Valley
Past Chair, Professional and Technical
Consultants Association (PATCA)
JANUARY 13, 2015 Walt Maclay
President, Voler Systems, Division of
Strawberry Tree
Past Chair, Online Ad Marketing Committee,
IEEE-CNSV
Past President, Professional and Technical
Consultants Association
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EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD
Chris Apple Ed Schultheis, PE
President, Apple Enterprises President, Schultek Eng. & Tech., Inc.
Member IEEE-CNSV Member PATCA
Uses Craigslist Extensively
John Gale
President, Taligo LLC Lee Stein
CEO Carverlon-LDA President, Stein Writes, Inc.
CoFounder, Consulting Practices Program, Member IEEE-CNSV
IEEE-CNSV Past Co-Chair, IEEE-CNSV Marketing Committee
Director, IEEE-CNSV
Kip Brown
Douglas Martin President, CMBJR Consulting, Inc.
President, Doug Martin Technology, Inc. Chair, IEEE-CNSV
Member IEEE-CNSV
Kim Parnell Ph.D. P.E.
President, Parnell Engineering and Consulting
Past Chair, IEEE-CNSV
Past Chair, IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section
Graphic Design by www.ardengraphicdesign.com
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Table of Contents
Introduction 4 Appendices 26
Marketing Vs. Sales 5 Appendix 1 - Example of Keywords
Captured 26
Marketing Overview 6
Appendix 2 - Example of the Output
Marketing Plan Start 7 of a Word Frequency Counter 27
Pull Marketing 9 Appendix 3 - Example of a Completed,
Compressed Set of Keywords. 28
On-Line Ad Basics 10
Appendix 4 - Example Template for a
Craigslist 11 Complete Craigslist Ad 29
Craigslist as an Ad Platform 11 Appendix 5 - Example of a real
Craigslist Ad 30
Characteristics of Craigslist Ads 11
Glossary 33
Market Research 12
Bibliography 33
Generating Your Resume Like Ad 16
Your Business Website 19
Post Your Resume Like Ad On-Line 19
An Ongoing Marketing Process 20 Disclaimer
This white paper provides information that may be useful to
Check your On-Line Listing 22 engineering consultants in performing their marketing activi-
ties. This white paper is for informational purposes only and
Dealing with Spam 23 is not intended to be legal advice or investment advice and
should not be relied on for such purposes. In addition the
An Ongoing Sales Process 24 facts and circumstances of each situation are different and
may be fluid and unpredictable. Thus, advice must be sought
What Success Looks Like 24 on each specific situation from well-informed legal, invest-
ment, tax, financial, management and marketing professionals.
Neither the authors or their companies nor any reviewer is
responsible for or has any liability for any act or omission on
their own part or any other interviewee, author, editor, or
reviewer.
Authorization to CNSV
CNSV is authorized to post on its Website, or to distribute
the complete version of this White Paper.
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Introduction
Craigslist is widely used to sell things and to get This includes direct one-to-one networking with
a job. It was not designed to be used for con- past clients, networking with closer associates and
sultants to get engagements, but it can be a very formal networking within groups relative to your
successful form of consultant marketing. The business area
projects from Craigslist are not necessarily small.
Consultants have closed client engagements that The approach described here assumes that you
were in excess of $100,000. Of course no one is generally have a presence on the web in the form
going to give you a large engagement based on a of a professional Web page or similarly related
resume and an email. Once you have been con- blog that describes your services in depth, and in
tacted, you must follow up by phoning and visiting a marketing and sales effective way.
the prospective client, just as you would if some-
one were referred to you by a friend or from the Your Craigslist ad(s) should be used to attract
CNSV Website. potential clients to one of your on-line presences.
Of course, ideally, it will cause a client to email, or
This paper discusses how to use the online phone you directly from the ad, but this is more
Craigslist listings to get consulting engagements in the exception than the rule. Potential clients often
Silicon Valley in the most effective manner. We want to learn as much as they can about you
have personally used these methods for five years. before contacting you directly. Today they do
Remember that such an approach is not effective this via your website, LinkedIn and other online
in bringing in a stream of steady request for work information they can find about you.
for your services. It should be considered a part
of your overall marketing program to create a This marketing process was designed for use by
portion of your lead generation. engineering consultants in Silicon Valley using
Craigslist. It has not been adapted to other sec-
Many technical consultants, and even some non- tors, geographies, or other marketing environ-
technical consultants, would rather spend time ments.
on their computer to obtain contracts. This is in
contrast to the generally more effective but more
time consuming formal networking approach.
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Marketing Vs. Sales
To begin with, we will discuss the distinction Using Craigslist is a marketing tool; it is not a sales
between Marketing and Sales. tool. It is used to attract prospects to you so you
can initiate a sales cycle and have an effective
Marketing and Sales are two distinct disciplines: sales conversation with them.
• M
arketing involves the ways to bring prospects Note: You can learn more about topics relating
to you for business that includes Networking to the sales cycle such as Prospects, the Sales
with associates, Newsletters, Articles, Speaking, Cycle, and your Target Market by checking out
a Website, and other non-direct contacts with the companion White Paper on the CNSV web-
potential buyers of your services. site titled “The Professional Consultant: Recom-
mendations for Best Practices in Silicon Valley”.1
• A
sales effort involves closing the deal, (usu- It discusses this subject in more depth.
ally) person to person. Very rarely does a
consulting contract close without such face-
to-face contact. It might be accomplished via
a telephone conversation, or via an on-line
discussion; but usually only directly in person 1 The Professional Consultant: Recommendations for Best Prac-
tices in Silicon Valley by Duane Strong and John Gale is available at
(face-to-face) is effective. http://www.californiaconsultants.org/TheProfessionalConsultant.pdf
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Marketing Overview
There are two types of marketing: Marketing which seeks to attract prospects to
• Push Marketing your website is sometimes called Inbound Mar-
• Pull (Magnet or attracting) Marketing keting. It is less expensive than more traditional
marketing methods.
Push Marketing involves the use of Newsletters,
Journal Articles, Telemarketing, giving Speeches Remember that marketing is a strategy, something
and other broad media that are directed towards one does over and over again. It is not something
qualified potential clients. These potential clients done just once, or a few times. It is an ongoing
are often referred to as prospects. It is used to process spread out over time. There are several
broadcast information to persons that are not good books for learning more about marketing a
necessarily searching for someone at that time. If small business such as a consulting business. There
they just happen to need a service at that time, is a bibliography at the end of this paper that
they may be enticed to contact you for your describes a few that we have found valuable.2
services. This means that one has to broadcast
periodically to a large number of such prospects The balance of this White Paper will focus on the
to land a single engagement. Pull style of marketing using Craigslist Ads.
Pull (Magnet) Marketing is used to connect with
persons that are currently searching for someone.
They have a need for services at that time. Ex-
amples of these are a formal Website, listings on
Craigslist, listings on CNSV, listings on Association
2 Two such books are “Guerilla Marketing” and its derivatives by
groups, and similar venues.
J. Conrad Levinson and “Get Clients Now” by C. J. Hayden. Check
these out online as well.
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Marketing Plan Start
To begin this process, we will start out with a to, where we will provide them, when we will
focus on creating a simple Marketing Plan. A lot provide them and why does a company need
of these ideas are developed and described in our services? If we fail to answer these ques-
the small book “The One Page Business Plan for tions, we will be much less likely to attract
Consultants” by Jim Horan. It is available on-line clients to our business.
and from Amazon. This will set the focus for the
Craigslist Ad you will be creating. These should • W
hat type of service, or services, will you
be clear at the beginning of this process. Take a offer?
blank sheet of paper or open a document file and Be as specific as you can. Start with the general,
answer all of these questions. Don’t worry if you then with time work towards a niche to focus
can’t answer all of these questions at this time. on. General appeals rarely work well.
This is a continuous process of refinement over
time. Get down what you can at this time. Plan Offering too many services can dilute your ap-
on updating, refining, and expanding your Market- peal as well. The “jack of all trades, master of
ing Plan each year. none” also rarely works. What is the real prob-
lem you are trying to solve for your potential
Your Marketing activities are based on your clients? Use your current experience with your
Business Plan. Your Business Plan includes: business as a guide to what works. You can
• Your Business Model also discuss this with your past clients and your
• Your Marketing Plan current associates.
Executing use of your Craigslist Ad includes: • W
hat is different about your services, relative
• Your Craigslist Ad (run over time) to those you will compete with?
• Follow-Up This is critical unless your service has a very
• Refinement over time high demand component. Then, the specific
• Evaluation of metrics service is the differentiator. This means that
• Adjustments you should do a thorough search for your
competitors. Much of this can be done online
Thus your Craigslist Ad is just one piece of your these days. Check out such websites as the
marketing activities. The more energy that you CNSV Website (http://www.californiaconsul-
put into learning to do these well, the better your tants.org), PATCA (www.patca.org), and the
revenue, margins, testimonials, etc. IEEE Consultants Directory (See http://www.
ieeeusa.org/business/consultants/ ) You can also
• What Business are you in? check out any specific website in your field that
The first question we can ask ourselves is to has a directory.
define as specifically as we can the actual busi-
ness that we are in. This sets up what services
we are offering, who we are offering them
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You may wish to understand the “marketplace” Consider the age of your potential clients.
sites such as Odesk.com, Elance.com, etc. They Are they early career, early management, mid
do significant business in California and world- management or upper management? Your ap-
wide generating income for requested services. peal must be quite different for each of these
Even though their rates of payment can be groups.
very low, they do show what services may be
in demand. Some Asian consultants are very • Where will your services be delivered?
low-priced. If this impacts your market sector, Will you serve clients locally, and if so how “lo-
you will need to improve your market differen- cally”. For example how far in time, or distance
tiation. would you find acceptable? Will you work ex-
clusively from your office, or will you go to the
Last of all, you can go to the web search tools client site, or a mixture of both? This is where
and use specific keywords to search for com- work lifestyle is critical. If you like travel, or if
petitors, or near competitors to see what they you are very mobile, you can find more clients
are offering. This will be covered in more detail than if you confine your work to a local area.
later.
• When will you provide your services?
• Who will use your services? What will be your general hours of operation?
What are the demographics of your target Will you work continuous weekends, or will
markets and in more detail your targeted com- you confine your service to a specified period
panies or prospects, and those of your compet- during the day, or days of the week? Will you
itors? Read what your nearest competitors say provide a very rapid response to a client query,
on their websites to attract traffic. Determine or would you prefer a more casual schedule?
the size of these companies? How old are they Will you work at client sites, or in your office,
such as: just beginning startups, initially funded or both?
startups, second round financed startups, later
stage startups, mid sized companies, larger Will you be a contract employee, directed by
companies, or very large companies. What job the employer; or work only on a specific task,
titles typically purchase your services? say a $20,000 engagement to be completed in
X weeks?
Note: There are far more companies under
the size of 300 employees than there are with Many clients today prefer a 24 hour / 7 day
ones over 300, or even over 1,000. There is type of service during critical portions of an
far more work and opportunity in the smaller engagement. Will this work into your lifestyle? If
firms. On the other hand, be cautioned that not, how will you handle this type of situation?
engagements with smaller firms may be differ-
ent from engagements with larger firms in the Do you want to emphasize any of the above in
area of financial risk. your offering?
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•W
hy does the client need your services? 5. No qualified consultant is
There are a number of reasons that a client located near to them
might need your services. These might include: 6. And many others…
1. Lack of expertise inside their Understanding the above will help you to create a
company focus for your ad’s appeal. Which of these will be
2. Overload to compensate for a crisis in a the major appeal of your Ad?
project
3. They have received a new line of funding Note: You can read a great deal more on the
and need to ramp up work on a project. topic of Marketing and Marketing plans by review-
4. They need for an outside ing the white paper on the CNSV website at
opinion while developing a strategy or in http://www.californiaconsultants.org/TheProfes-
choosing a tactical direction. sionalConsultant.pdf . It discusses this subject in
more depth.
Pull Marketing
Now that you have focused on your business use many of the ideas discussed here for “tun-
marketing plan, you are ready to start the “Pull ing” your LinkedIn profile as well, but this is
Marketing” process to help bring clients to your not the subject of this white paper.
consulting practice. This involves a focus on
“Searchers”. These are persons looking for some- • Stand out from the Competitors
one to perform a task right now. Use the ideas from your marketing plan,
and create an Ad that draws as many of the
• Go to Where Searchers Gather searchers you can. Position yourself against
To be effective go where searchers gather. your competitors with your Headlines and
One such place is Craigslist, as are websites your Ad content.
like Dice.com and other “job search” sites.
Generally, persons looking for a consultant do • N
iche Marketing is much more effective
not look on the “Job” or employment web- As was stated earlier, you are looking for a
sites. niche that has enough demand and has less
competition clients are drawn to you. You will
These days, “LinkedIn” is another place where start out with the best you can come up with
these persons gather. This website is much in the short term, and then refine your Ad and
more inflexible for finding clients. Its biggest marketing activities to make them work better
drawback is that you can’t test marketing and better.
hypotheses very well. You can have only one
profile identity at a time. If you wish, you can
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On-Line Ad Basics Ideally, you would like to track persons that
visit your web page, or Ad and find out how
well your Ad might be pulling, even if you
• Most Wanted Response
aren’t receiving calls or emails. This will be
A key concept in on-line advertising is “Most
discussed later.
Wanted Response” (MWR). That is, what
response is do you desire from the Ad? Ideally
• Keywords Provide Differentiation
you want the clients to phone you. Secondly
Key words are the words that you use to at-
you want them to e-mail you. If they are not
tract searchers to your Ad Headline so they
going to contact you, you want them to visit
will click on your headline and read the copy
your web page to find out more about you.
in the body. The copy content, if it works, will
produce the “Most Wanted Response”. We
In today’s world many potential clients will not
will cover how to put good words in the body
directly call you. They will send you an email
and headline later.
introducing themselves, explaining their needs
and asking if you can help them. Whether you
• T
he Headline – Draws user to your Ad
can or not you respond with an email. If you
Content
can, your email reply directly addresses each
The headline is what the user sees when they
their needs. If you can’t, you thank them for
complete a search. It is used to entice the
their interest. You never know when they or
searcher to open your Ad. This is very critical
someone they know will have another project.
for your Ad to be effective. It must contain a
In today’s on-line world, most potential clients
very good set of keywords that are specific
want to ease their way into knowing you. This
and general at the same time to position your-
means that unless they are very motivated,
self against your competition and be opened.
they will not directly call you. Hence it is more
If you aren’t familiar with Craigslist, you might
effective to have your phone number in your
want to quickly try to see how this works
ad. If you don’t, you block this response from
using some test keywords such as consultant,
happening. Usually potential clients will send
or consulting. Be sure to search under “Re-
you an email introducing themselves, and
sumes”, as this is where you will be listing.
explaining their needs. They will then ask if you
think you can help them. If you think you can,
• Related Ad Content
you email them back with your direct contact
Once the potential client opens your Ad,
info. Often, they will then either call you, or
the copy must convince them to either call,
disclose their phone number to you.
email or visit your website. If the copy doesn’t
relate closely enough to the search they are
Most potential clients will visit your website to
doing, they will immediately leave the page.
get more information about you. Then they
If someone is looking for, say an RF Engineer,
might phone or email you.
and your copy doesn’t include at least the top
level concept that you do RF work, you will
This means that your MWRs are:
immediately loose all contact with that pros-
• Phone call
pect, even if you have RF experience. Hence,
• Email to you
the copy should entice them to look at you
• Visit your Webpage, then call or
further, much like a resume. This doesn’t mean
Email you
you have a lengthy amount of copy, covering
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everything you do. Most people won’t read information. Of course, if they are in a hurry,
an endless amount of copy just to get to what they might either email or call you and ask
they are looking for. Most likely, giving de- specifically if you are experienced in the topics
tailed information is done via a well structured they need currently.
Website to guide them to the appropriate
Craigslist
Craigslist as an Ad Platform many of the skills hired by high-tech companies.
We will focus on generating Ads to appear in this
One reason, as has been mentioned earlier, that section. A quick search of this resume category
we are using Craigslist.com is that searchers using “consultant” shows the types of persons
gather here looking for persons to help them. that have this term in their resumes. Likely this is
You can create a listing in three places: where you will find others like yourself.
An Important Resume Posting Note
• Resumes
When posting under the Resume category, your
• Services Offered – Small Biz Ads
Ad must be “resume like” and should preferably
• Gigs
appear to come from an individual. Then it will
“fit in” with the other ads in this category. If ads
Services Offered has had very little pay off for
are too garish, or commercial appearing, they will
consulting businesses. A quick look at a search for
eventually be flagged as miscategorized or spam.
“consultant” under this category shows the type
This can prevent you from appearing on the list in
of consulting that produces results in this cat-
this category, or get you banned from advertising
egory. If your service profile is like one of these,
there at all.
then all of the same rules apply as described going
forward, and you can place your ad here.
Characteristics of Craigslist Ads
Gigs are where you can find someone to repair
your computer, but it is not a place to be found if • Uses simple keyword search
you do electronic design, software, project man- Craigslist provides only a simple “String
agement or general management. Search” that uses very little logic. That means
that if you enter a string of words the result
Resumes are where persons, and especially com- selects the following (Boolean result) for three
panies, go to look for potential resources. You words: word1 AND word2 AND word3. If
would expect people would use this category you misspell a word, you get no results for the
to find employees. In fact they are often look- misspelled word. If you put in a plural, and the
ing for consultants. At first, it was thought that it Ad doesn’t have the plural in it, it won’t be
didn’t make sense to post here, but this is where found. If you put in an “exact string” between
the biggest payoff has come for consultants with two quotes, it will search for the exact string,
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in that order. If you place a word with a minus refresh your Ads, or repost them periodically
sign (ie: -Word1) Ads with this exact word will if your skill appears amongst those of many
be eliminated. others.
This means that you will have to have plurals Because of this phenomenon, Craigslist now
and singulars in your listings or keywords, and allows one to “renew” an Ad, up until about a
you need to spell keywords correctly. week or two before it is about to expire. This
causes the Ad to move up the list as if it were
• S earch Results are shown in time order or by posted on the day it is renewed. In the past,
relevance one would have to have several Ads in time
The results in a searched list are shown in sequence to do the same thing.
reverse chronological order. That means later
postings appear on top. This means you must
Market Research
In general, before you begin to build up an Ad, not your words, but rather their words. That
you will have to do considerable Market Re- means you need a method to determine the
search. Market research is the process by which words used by those looking for someone like
you build up your keywords so you can attract yourself. More detail on how to do this will be
clients to your Ad, and at the same time differen- covered later.
tiate you from your competition.
• Who Are Your Competitors?
• Who Might be Searching? You need to put some considerable focus on
By now, you likely have already identified who who are your competitors, even if you believe
will be doing the searching for you as a re- your service is very unique. The person hiring a
source. Sometimes this might be a CEO, VP consultant always has potential options, hiring
of Engineering, Manufacturing or Marketing, someone and training them, or hiring a contract
or another high level manager. Other times, person and training them. In general, you will
it might be someone that is doing the initial likely have some competitors. Probably your
search, but not the one to make the decision biggest competing factors are that the company
to engage you. Often the person searching decides not to start the project at all or they
on Craigslist is either the decision maker, or decide to do the project internally.
a strong influencer on the decision. You need
to define who is searching from your experi- • What is your Competitor’s “Story”
ence or via discussions with others that might You will need to learn everything you can
be better informed, or even interviews with about your competitors so you know their of-
potential clients. fers thoroughly, and how they present them-
selves. Your offering of services must compete
• What search words will they use? effectively with these other firms or persons.
Remember that the search words they use are You should offer a better, if not outstanding,
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offer of your services to differentiate yourself We will start off studying potential clients with
from the others. This includes everything from Craigslist, a critical place to look. Go to Craig-
the search keywords they use to the appear- slist covering the geographical area you might
ance of your Ad, to the appearance and navi- serve and check out who comes up under
gation of your website. “Resumes” with your keyword phrase, and its
different words and groupings.
Check out as many of these as you can. Look
for directories of organizations such as: • Who comes up?
• The IEEE Consultants’ Network of Are these persons true competitors, or
Silicon Valley (IEEE-CSSV) are do they just happen to have some of
(www.CaliforniaConsultants.org) your keywords? What content do the true
• The National IEEE Consultants listings competitors use for their Ad?
http://www.ieeeusa.org/business/consultants/
• PATCA (The Professional and Technical • Competitor’s Headlines
Consultants Assoc.) www.patca.org The Headline is the short phrase that ap-
• Craigslist Listings www.Craigslist.org pears along with the listings in response to
• The Institute of Management Consultants your search. What are your competitors
(if you do management oriented consulting) Headlines? Do they seem on point?
http://www.imcusa.org/search
• Competitor’s websites • D o they appeal to potential users of
Any other place where you competitors your service?
might have an on-line presence • How effective do they seem?
• Online Marketplaces such as • Do they appeal to you or others you
www.Odesk.com, www.elance.com, might know?
www.LinkedIn.com
• Generating Keywords
• Finding Competitors using Keywords Generating the best keywords is one of the
To study competitors, you need to come up biggest tasks one must do in order to attract
with some critical keywords so you can search clients to your Ad. From your initial keywords
for them on the Web, or on directory sites. or phrase, you can come up with a thousand
Start with initial keywords that you think might or more keywords likely to be used by search-
bring up your competitors. ers for your service.
From here on out, throughout this paper we Go somewhere where they are easiest to
will create an example to see how this process obtain.
works in practice. We will use an example
keyword phrase to start the process. This • Best Guess Keywords
phrase will be “Board level Analog electronic In the previous section we discussed using
engineer”. This is an example of what we per- some “seed” keywords for your Craigslist
sonally might put in. One can use all, or a part review. These are the best keywords you
of, your initial set of keywords as a “seed” to have at this time, so start with them.
begin mining for keywords used by competi-
tors.
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• Your potential client’s Keywords • G
o to the website and enter your “seed”
You should note that you are looking for are keywords. This is straightforward.
keywords that your potential clients might
use. What you think are good keywords is • L ocate Job Descriptions that fit your ser-
only a start on the way to finding high quality vice offering and target locations
keywords that attract clients to your Ad.
These are ones that look promising as a
• Use competitor’s words type of service you might offer.
Check out the keywords used by your clos-
est competitors. These can help you refine As a reality check look at the job trends
your “best guess” keywords. for your exact keyword input, both in ab-
solute, and relative terms from 2006 till
• Create High Quality Keywords today. This shows how the demand for
What you want are quality keywords that this type of service, or services, has done
will be used by your potential clients to find in the past, and is doing recently. You
someone like you. These would be a set of can see this by scrolling to the bottom
words they are likely to use in a search for of the screen that has the results of the
someone like you. search and clicking on the “Trends” link.
• Get the most effective Keywords you can After reviewing the trends for this set of
If you have a service that is reasonably in keywords you might want to change the
demand, a good place to get keywords used keywords if demand for this set of services
by persons looking for assistance with their is going down and select one that is rising.
tasks is on a Job Search Service. You can go A recent one we viewed had a peak of
to job posting sites and review what per- use of these terms in 2011, and was now
sons needing your service are using in their going down on a month by month basis.
postings. Here you search, using your “seed”
keywords for jobs that have these words in • G
o into a posted indeed.com listing by
their postings. clicking on the general listing headline in
the search results page.
One of the best sources of keywords we
have found lately is an aggregator job web- ext, open a text editor5 and store the
• N
site such as indeed.com 3 or simplyhired.com critical words in this text file. Try to
4
. The indeed.com site also has some other eliminate the “clutter” and other com-
features that you will find helpful. pany specific phrases. What you want are
requirements such as “job descriptions”,
• Indeed.com Keywords Generation Skills, education, etc. You don’t want in-
• Search for similar requirements that troductory information, addresses, etc.
describe the service you are going to
provide. After this, go back to the headings list,
and click on the next interesting head-
3 www.indeed.com
5 This can be MS Word with an extension .txt or any
4 www.simplyhired.com editor with no hidden formatting characters.
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line and get the critical words from its These are known as “long tail” keywords
associated job posting. You will need that don’t come up often, but differenti-
to get 20 to 50 such listings that are ate you from others.
put together into this single text file.
The more of these you get the better. When in doubt, leave a word in rather
As an example, we have placed one such that remove it. Since Craigslist has a large
page of such a search using the example limit on the size of a listing (over 5,000
keyword phrase. It is shown in Appendix 1. characters). You will have plenty of room
in the Ad to use all of them.
• N
ext, copy and paste these to a word
counting facility6. Go to the link http:// • Next Create a Compressed Text File of
www.textfixer.com/tools/online-word- the Keywords7
counter.php. One nice feature of this tool This is easily done starting with a blank
is that it eliminates “common words” text document and inserting the key-
such as “a” or “the”, etc. words into it. This process strips out all of
the special non-printable characters in the
An example of one page of the output of spreadsheet. Now, copy and paste the
this program is shown in Appendix 2. keywords from this text file into a Word
document. In the word document, do a
Now, take the resulting output list of “Search and Replace” on the non-printing
words and frequency and copy and paste paragraph marker by entering “^p” in the
them into a spreadsheet. An examination find, and replace the find with “, “(comma
of this spreadsheet shows the keywords and a space). Doing this helps the Craig-
that have been captured. Often this can slist translator make a sensible looking set
exceed 1,000 or 1,500. Far more than of keywords.
you could come up with on your own.
Now take the resulting grouping of
• Strip out “not useful” words keywords and copy and paste them back
Next, sort the keyword list by Frequency, into the text file previously opened. Save
then alphabetically, with the frequency in this file for later use as a “Master Key-
descending order. Then scan the word word” file. This will provide a text file
list. As you scan the list, you can imme- that contains the words for later use in
diately remove the obvious keywords your Ad in a compact form.
that likely wouldn’t be put in by a person
searching for your service. One page of the result of such a com-
pleted text file is shown in Appendix 3.
Keep the frequently used keywords unless
you don’t provide that type of service. There will be more on the use of these
When this process yields a lot of key- keywords discussed later.
words, you might want to eliminate the
less frequently used words, but be sure
to review these because they are likely 7 Note: There are text editor programs that do word
frequency counts right in the program. The best one we
quite relevant to the service you provide. have found is NoteTab. This is a very fully featured text
editor. It costs something, but can save a lot of time for
6 There are a number of these on the web. You can find routine editing tasks. They have a free version that does
them with search on terms such as “word counter”. not include word frequency counts.
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Generating Your Resume Like Ad
This is where the “rubber meets the road” for the Craigslist editor will automatically remove
your Craigslist Ad. This is the major item that will leading spaces.
attract your potential client to engage in your Should you wish to experiment with a format-
”Most wanted Response”. The approach below ted resume, write it in Microsoft Word and
represents the best procedure that we have then copy and paste into Craigslist. Format-
found to accomplish this goal. ting, such as bullets and paragraph breaks, will
remain in your final listing. Other word pro-
One item of special note is that technical persons cessing programs probably work just as well as
are often very weak in what makes good copy for Word.
an Ad. If you know you have a weakness in this
area, write the first draft of your Ad copy, and • What service do you offer?
give it to an experienced Ad editor8 or the clos- Be clear on the exact service you want to of-
est person that you know with such experience. fer. Most beginners start off with too broad an
Ideally, after you have done this, pass it by a hiring offering. Another thing we have noticed about
manager you might know to critique it further. persons starting to promote their business is
that they want to write a long and detailed
• Your Ad Should be “Resume like” resume describing what they have done. Just
A number of consultants have tried to make like in a good resume, you must tailor what
a “fancy” Craigslist Ad using HTML or image you offer to relate to what you are offering for
conversions of their Ad which Craigslist can a service, and no more.
handle. If you are very creative in this area
you might want to try this approach. One We have found resumes on Craigslist that go
concern is that if the resume looks too much on for ten printed pages. We call these Ads “I
like a commercial brochure it will likely be less dare you to understand what I can do for you”
effective. We found this out through first hand Ads. A person must read considerable infor-
experience. mation, in a dense format, to see if they might
want to use a consultant’s talents. Narrow
Initially, stick to nicely grouped regular text. your offering as much as you can. It is far more
Use capitals and white space to make the Ad effective to be more succinct and make a clear
readable. We often use a small “o” for a bul- offer. The hardest part is determining the exact
let point. Remember that different browsers offer that might be attractive to a potential
handle text differently. Remember also that client. As an option, make several Ads with
different offers. If you have a website, you can
8 You can find these at www.craigslist.org, make the offer a little more general, and have
www.californiaconsultants.org, www.patca. the searcher check out your website for more
org, in depth information.
www.womeninconsulting.org and similar
places
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Backup the Promise of Your descriptions of your skills that use key words.
A bulleted list is a good way to make your re-
Keywords
sume more readable. People tend to look first
at a list, because they are easy to scan for key
• A
void the searcher coming to your Ad only words.
to find your resume not useful
Make sure that your key words are selected • Remember “What’s in it for me?”
carefully to only relate to what you are of- Most technical people seem to dwell on telling
fering. Then make your offering back up the potential clients how smart and experienced
words. Be sure that you have reviewed your they are, but not presenting what benefits
keywords and that you intend to back up these they will receive from engaging you instead of
keywords with material in your Ad to at least someone else.
hint at the fact that you can meet their needs.
Often, it works to have the searcher go to a Here you might want to illustrate how you
special page on your website often referred to have helped others achieve their project goals
in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) terms as with examples of your work. Then relate how
the “landing page”. This page applies directly your experience will allow you to be produc-
to the detailed story or description of what is tive more quickly than a lesser-experienced
offered in the Ad. person. There can be quite an art to doing
this, and this is where outside help can be very
• P
ay Attention to your First Screenful valuable.
Appearance
The first Screenful is the first impact and im- If an individual consultant’s resume says they
pression you will make on your potential client. can do almost everything, the potential client
Keep in mind that people will not read much, may be skeptical. When you use all the key
and they will be looking for specific things. If words that describe what you are best at, your
they do not quickly find what they are looking focus will help people find you. You should
for, they will look elsewhere. Hence, pay par- stay focused whenever you describe what you
ticular attention to how the first one or two do, whether in writing or verbally.
paragraphs appear to the reader. It is the first
sentence and paragraph that will draw your To help focus the reader, have your short list
potential client to read further. Most readers of key words in mind. You should decide what
stop right here if they do not like what they you are best at and then focus on that. It may
see. seem counter-intuitive that offering fewer
services would do a better job of selling your
In this regard, your resume should look a lot skills, but it is well known by people skilled in
like your posting on CNSV, assuming you have marketing, that you have to be as specific as
done a professional job. Also keep in mind possible when trying to sell something.
that every word in your resume is searchable.
When someone is looking for a consultant, • Must have Resume Words
they will probably enter key words to find Be sure to include the key words “consul-
the skills they need. Make your resume rich tant” or “consulting”, as most resumes are for
in key words. Therefore, the best resume is people looking for a job, not consultants. As
short (no more than one page), and has brief was pointed our earlier, since the Craigslist
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search engine is not very smart, use all forms bit less motivated to purchase your services.
of “consultant”, such as “consultants”. The two If you provide a prominent website URL,
words are different to Craigslist. phone number and email address, along with a
physical address on your website, you will set
Easy to Find Contact Info yourself apart from those that are doing only
temporary or moonlighting consultants. This
• Show a link to your target “Landing Page” makes you seem much more professional to
your potential customers.
Be sure you include your Website link in your
Ad. Remember that your web link to your • Add your Keywords to your Ad
website should point to your preferred special- These are ones you entered into the final
ly designed Landing Page that focuses on your merged version of your Master Keyword
offering. It has been found to be most produc- search. They are the basic reason that an Ad
tive to use a special Landing Page for visitors is opened, if the Headline entices the potential
from Craigslist instead of your index, or front, client to do so. These keywords are entered
page. at the bottom of the Ad, into a section called
something like “Special Keywords”. See an
This is the best way to get your client to read example of this in Appendix 4.
more detail about your offering. If you don’t
have a web page, or blog, or some other web • Template for a Basic Ad
presence, this will likely be much less effective Review these ideas together in the template
because you have to depend entirely on your for a complete Ad that appears in Appendix
Ad to create your ”Most Wanted Response”. 4. Tune this by checking out potential client
responses as time goes on. As an example of
• Use an individual phone number and email an Ad similar to one actually used on-line see
Especially if you don’t have a formal web Appendix 5 for reference. The name and com-
presence, be sure to have an easy link to your pany are fictitious, but the rest of the Ad isn’t.
email and a clear, business oriented, phone
number. Make sure that you review this email
address and phone voice mail frequently. Ide-
ally, you should answer the phone immediately.
If a person calls by phone, they definitely are
motivated. If they send an email, they are just a
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Your Business Website
You have a Website, don’t you? If not get one Your Website presence must follow the same
right away, before posting on Craigslist. The first advice that is suggested for your Ad, but here
thing a potential client will do to confirm you are you can have more information, such as examples
the right choice is to go to your Website. of your work and comments by satisfied clients.
Once prospects have seen your Website, a per-
A lack of web presence also appears as though centage of them will call you or send an email.
you are a less stable or less experienced busi-
ness than those that have a formal presence. One
can get by without a formal web presence, but
we believe that this weakens your offering and
results.
Post Your Resume Like Ad
On-Line
Once you have created a Resume-Like Ad, you • Learn to Use Craigslist Postings
are ready to make it available for everyone to find Now it has come time to post your Ad on-
you. line. If you have never used Craigslist for a
posting, you should become familiar with the
• Merge all copy into a single text file process. Posting a resume on Craigslist is quite
Before you place your Ad into Craigslist, cre- straightforward. Use your browser to go to
ate a single text file containing your entire www.craigslist.org.
Ad prepared as shown in Appendix 4. If you
create several Ads with different Headlines or We highly recommend that you open a
Ad copy, be sure to save the separate versions Craigslist account. Go to the area homepage
with different file names so you can keep track for Craigslist in your main geographic area of
of them, and for reposting. interest, and click on “My Account”. Create an
Account, then from within the account, click
You should also give each different Ad a sepa- on “New Posting In” and select a region. This
rate Headline tracking identity (See “An Ongo- will begin the process of creating your Ad. Be
ing Marketing Process >> “Add a Method to sure to post in “Resumes”.
Track Responses”), so you can check its “click
on” effectiveness. You can then later compare You must specify a location. In the Bay Area
to see if headlines or copy are improving your of California, you must specify South Bay, East
responses. Bay, San Francisco, etc. You may optionally
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specify a city within the region if you choose. As was covered earlier, the most important
Unless you only want to work for clients in part of your resume is the Posting Title or
one city, click on the selection “bypass this Headline, which you will be asked for on the
step”. You may then specify a “Specific Loca- same screen as the Specific Location.
tion” that will appear in the heading of your
resume. You may want to enter Bay Area, You will have an opportunity to edit the
California, or United States. You should not be resume after entering it. Even if you pasted it
too specific or too general, just as with speci- from Word, make sure it still looks right. Be on
fying your skills. Focus on a region you can the lookout for format changes, and excessive
service well. white spaces added by the Craigslist editor.
You may post in more than one geographical Once you have posted, you will get an email
area. Craigslist asks that you not post the same confirmation. Check the link in this email to
resume in more than one location, so you make sure your posting is truly posted and
should make the new resume different. If you looks right. You may edit your posting at any
violate Craigslist rules, you may get flagged and time.
eventually banished from posting. It is a good
idea to follow the rules and behave as a good
citizen, since you want to have a good reputa-
tion.
An Ongoing Marketing Process
Add a Method to Track Responses Unfortunately, Craigslist has recently banned
You will need a method to track the responses web applications that track openings directly
to your Ad. This includes adding a special piece via “img” (image) links. Now, all images that
of code to your Ad, and finally a method to track appear in an Ad must be directly uploaded to
response to your web presence from your Ad. Craigslist and links to external images are not
This Ad tracking method is optional in that you permitted.
do not need this feature in your Ad, but you will
not know as much about how effective it is if you Note that the approach that follows here is
do not use a tracking method. as yet untested, but it is a viable technique
used on other sites featuring Ads. This next
• Check the “Hits” your Ad is getting best on-line approach to track openings utilizes
If you do not have a method to track your Ad very old techniques that originated in the
openings, you will not know the effectiveness direct mail marketing area. The best source of
of your Headlines. In the past, there had been information we have found on this approach
direct methods to track Ad openings. This gave is outlined in the legendary book “Tested
a direct measure of Headline effectiveness. Advertising Techniques by John Caples (See
Bibliography).
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In this process, you would create a very attrac- also work placing script code into your web
tive enticement to get the potential prospect page source code. This code snippet is placed
to respond to a clickable target link on your at the bottom of any web page that you have
website so that it may be counted. Since the used as a clickable target “landing page” from
user must click on a link, this indirect method your Craigslist Ad.
will yield a much lower number of counts
than a pure image counter would. By contrast, Blog based websites can utilize the excellent
pure images count every opening because the “StatCounter” 9 to check on visits. For HTML
prospect doesn’t have to do anything but view based Websites, the common tracking tool is
the Ad to generate a count. On the other “Google Analytics” 10. The simple versions of
hand, this alternate approach does allow the these are free. Just follow the instructions as to
comparing of the openings between two, or how to install the code on your webpage or
more, ads. This comparison then becomes blog. You should study how these work, and
the method of testing Headline effectiveness. learn to use them. They provide a very large
Be sure to keep the “offer” identical in each amount of information.
Ad, so it won’t be a variable in the number of
counts you get. These facilities will let you know if persons
have read your Ad, and then that they want
Creating linkable enticements often involves to learn more about your services. Very often,
skills most consultants, especially technical and if your website is effective, such persons
ones, don’t posses, it would make sense to are very qualified leads when they call or
seek some assistance from good copywrit- email. They are the most likely to give you a
ers to make this work. If not, study books like call directly. My experience has been that such
“Tested Advertising Techniques” to learn how persons invariably call.
these are written.
If you do not get contacted by these web visi-
An example of such an approach would be to tors, then likely your landing page is not good
offer a free checklist or white paper of interest enough to back up what your Ad states. This
to the person doing the searching of the ads. lets you know that your Ad needs work.
Here you will need to be very creative, and
likely experiment a bit. Generate a Headline
If all of this seems daunting, you can just skip Even though all areas of your Ad are important,
this measurement technique, and rely on the the very most important one is your Ad head-
much smaller number of responses the basic line. This is a summary of your carefully written
Ad will elicit via links to your website, email or resume. It should use the most important key
phone calls, and compare the measurement of words from your resume. This is the first thing
results from them. people will read at the top of your resume. They
may not look further if it is too broad, too nar-
• U
se a Web Statistics Page to Check on the row, or not very descriptive.
sources of clicks
The next tracking method that is recom-
mended is that you use is a web page tracking 9 www.statcounter.com
service for your Website or blog site. These
10 www.google.com/analytics/
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Someone doing a search using keywords will be tors are selected by the search engine. You
exposed to all of the headlines that are a result of might get some important clues as to how to
using the Craigslist search function. At this time, improve your Headlines.
you are going head to head with your competi-
tors and others that use the search keyword in Check your On-Line Listing
their Ad to be opened by your potential client.
You must be at least equally competitive, or even
Now begins the time that you see how your Ad
better, or more competitive than the others that
appears.
the searchers encounter.
• Use Competitive Analysis • Check On-Line Listing
Again, do a search on your primary keywords Check to see if your Ad is indexed using any
on Craigslist and see which Ads come up. Try critical keyword in your Ad. It will appear and
all of the combinations of Keywords you think show how you appear against your competi-
might be used by someone looking for some- tive Ads.
one like you.
After this, try several of your critical test key-
• What would make you stand out? words and see how you appear against others
Now, you can review the kinds of Headlines on-line.
used by your competitors. Be sure to avoid
anything that might give a “trashy” appearance • Tune the Ad and Headline
such as using lots of odd characters to make Now you begin the process of making your
the Headline stand out such as with sequences Ad as effective as possible. This is a continuous
like “!!!!!” or “@@@@”, etc. We have experi- process. Periodically, you will want to review
mented with a few of these and they don’t your Craigslist headlines against those used by
seem to work. They also make your Ad appear others by going to Craigslist and trying your
unprofessional. critical keywords.
• Keep it succinct and on point After this, you will want to review your Head-
Keep your Headlines as economical in terms line Tracking and Analytic results to see how
of word count as possible, but use ones that effective your Headline is in attracting open-
describe what you do well. This is where your ings. Then you will review the web analytics
creativity comes into play. to see how often visitors to your Ad sought
In general, you will be doing considerable ex- out additional information. Of course, as you
perimenting with your Headline to see which receive calls, and emails, you will get further
ones have good opening rates. You can try information as to who opened your Ad and
different ones, and see how well they work. By their interest. Be sure to ask them where they
doing two or three ads with the same body, heard about you within your sales process.
and different headlines, you can see which cre-
ate more attention. An Ongoing Process
• Keep looking at the competitors Now that you have completed the initial process,
As time goes on, you should regularly put in you will want to refine your headlines and body
you major keywords, and see what competi- to attract clients. Ideally, you would do this on a
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