The Advantages of Online Advertising

*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a small business story that you'd like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.

I'm an "old school" landlord whose idea of advertising a rental unit used to be an eye-catching ad in the local paper and an attractive sign in the front yard. While this type of marketing was effective in the past, today's young adults are more inclined to search for rental properties through online postings and social networking sites.

When one of my rentals came up vacant last week, my son suggested I advertise online using Craigslist instead of the newspaper. Craigslist is a wildly popular site that features discussion forums and free classified ads; a sort of on-line community that brings buyers, sellers, and potential roommates together from across the country.

I'm glad that I took my son's advice. Thanks to his insight my rental property was leased within 48 hours of posting my ad on Craigslist. More amazingly, I had over 25 inquiries in just the first day alone, including one from as far away as Texas.

Advertising online means that you can begin marketing your product immediately instead of waiting several days (or weeks) for an ad to show up in the classified section of the local paper. Here's a run-down of the other advantages I discovered in advertising my rental property using a social networking site:

-- No or minimal cost to advertise. Most sites are free to join which can turn into free advertising for the business owner.

-- Photograph bonus. Photographs are expensive to reproduce in print publications but are all but free online. (Sites that blend advertising & networking may have limits and/or charge a nominal fee for photographs.)

-- No word limit. Prospective tenants want details and the more the better. No word limit means we can include all those extra selling points in our postings.

-- A URL that can be shared. Online ads generate a URL, a link that we can post on other social networking sites to increase exposure of the product.

-- Simplified communication. Posting rental listings online means that questions, requests for more information, applications, and more can all be handled conveniently by email.

-- Reaches. The web reaches a market beyond the local newspaper. For prospective tenants looking to relocate, they'll tap into resources like Craigslist and other sites for a geographic listing of available properties for lease.

-- Paperless. Advertising online has the benefit of being completely paperless. Instead of printing multiple sales brochures, rental applications, and sample leases to pass out to prospective tenants, everything can be emailed which reduces waste as well as cost.

Advertising an apartment or rental on a social networking or other web site won't work in all situations, especially if your clientele includes empty nesters and retirees. But if your target market is the "under 30" crowd, you'll discover (like I did) that social networking sites will be the first places they look for rentals, roommates and more.