If you have a car to sell, you may find it helpful to place a classified ad in your local newspaper or automotive publication. Placing a classified ad can help you reach many more potential buyers – the more potential buyers you reach, the greater the likelihood that you’ll find the right one for your car.
But what kind of information should you include in your ad? You want to include enough information about your car to help the potential buyer reach a decision about whether or not the car is right for him or her. For example, some drivers are only interested in an automatic transmission – therefore, including the information that your car has a manual transmission in your ad would automatically remove your car from this potential buyer’s consideration. What you don’t want is to put so little information in your ad that buyers either ignore your ad altogether or call you for lots of information – wasting your time and theirs.
On the other hand, most places that run ads charge based on the length of your ad. Obviously, you don’t want to spend more on your ad than you need to, so brevity is important. Abbreviations are fairly standard in ads – look at other ads to get an idea of what the standard abbreviations are. However, don’t use abbreviations at the expense of clarity – a confused buyer isn’t going to call you for clarification.
The following are the three things that are absolutely essential to your classified car ad:
The make, model and year of your car
How many miles the car has on it
The type of transmission your car has
Of course, there’s additional information you can include that’s not strictly essential, but desirable. These are generally things that set your car apart and would entice a buyer to choose your car over a similar one. Include these kinds of things in your ad:
Amenities like a 6-disk CD changer or built in GPS system appeal to buyers.
If the car has had only one owner, include that information. Knowing the car’s entire history can be a big selling point with potential buyers.
If you don’t smoke, be sure to include that. Some people only want cars that have been owned by non-smokers.
If the majority of miles on the car are highway miles rather than city driving, be sure to mention that as well.
If the car has been regularly maintained and you have service records, make sure you include that information.
Finally, you need to include the price of the car and your contact information. There are those who would argue that if you don’t include the price, interested persons will have to call you, giving you the opportunity to try to persuade them to look at and buy your car. However, this strategy can back-fire for more than one reason. First, you’ll have more phone calls to answer and some buyers simply won’t call, either because they fear a sales pitch or because they expect the price to be high. This will also eliminate buyers who aren’t willing to pay what you’re asking. Most people will expect you to be willing to negotiate somewhat on price, so if that isn’t the case, be sure to include that information. And, in terms of contact information, it’s better to use a cell phone than your home telephone number to help preserve your privacy and safety.
