How to Promote an Auction to a Specific Audience
Bringing in the Right Bidders
Auctions are a great way to sell your assets. They are fun, fast, and can bring in higher profits than traditional sales. Just as with any other sale, you want to make sure that the right people are aware of your auction so that you can reach as many potential bidders as possible. Afterall, you wouldn’t want to be pushing a huge marketing campaign for an agricultural equipment auction to individuals that work in the construction industry! That wouldn’t be the best use of resources and likely wouldn’t improve your sales. Whereas focusing on a specific target market of potential bidders can help you bring in bidders who are truly interested in buying your assets – thus driving up the bidding price and making you more money. If you work with an auction house (like us) they will use their own resources to promote you auction to the right bidders, but there is a lot that you can do on your end that will help promote your auction even further to your specific audience!
First things first – know your audience
Considering the fact that you are probably part of your audience, you will probably have a pretty good idea of who will be interested in the assets that you are selling. Determine exactly who you want to promote your auction to. Perhaps you know other businesses in your area that are looking to expand and would jump at the chance to buy your equipment. Maybe you know of a few farmers that have been renting equipment for the planting or harvesting season that are contemplating if the rental costs are worth it and have been looking into buying their own equipment. Think about who your customers are! If you will no longer be servicing them – see if they want to buy your assets to use themselves! After you’ve determined who would be most likely to want your items, you will have a better idea of how to inform them about your auction.
Highlight your auction on your website
One of the best places to notify people about your auction is on your own website! You get tons of traffic from individuals that are clearly interested in your company and your services, so they will probably be interested in what you are selling! Create a graphic for the auction for your home page so that it’s one of the first things that people see when visiting your site (while still maintaining the overall image of your website). You can also write a blog post about your upcoming auction to put out more content in more places! This is a great way to give in depth information concerning the logistics of your auction to your visitors and will help drive traffic to the auction page.
Promote on your own social media pages
Just because an auction house is promoting your auction on their social media doesn’t mean that you can’t also promote it on yours! If you don’t have a ton of time to dedicate to your social media, simply share the posts from the auction company on your own page. It will show your followers that your auction is taking place and direct them to where they can register. If you have more time and want to go above and beyond, set up your own social campaign for your auction. Create a general catalog post of all the items up for auction, send out reminders, and have a ‘featured item’ post each day leading up to the auction so that potential bidders can see all your items. If it’s a live auction, create a Facebook event that you can invite people to! You can also find Facebook groups full of members in your industry that you can post in about your upcoming auction. Make sure to read the group guidelines of course – many groups have restrictions to what members can post in regards to selling assets.
All these things will help you connect with targeted potential bidders. Anything that you push on your social media will show up to your followers who clearly already are interested in you, and members of the industry focused groups will be excited to learn about ways they could expand their own production. And just like that you have a group of bidders that are in the bullseye of your target market!
Take advantage of your contacts
After you’ve reached out to your followers on social media, take advantage of further resources that your company has. Most likely you have an email list that you send promotions, new releases or newsletters to. Take advantage of that! Send out an email to your contacts with information about your upcoming auction – highlight some of your key items, give the backstory as to why you’re selling, and include all the information they might need to register and participate in the auction. Anyone on your mailing list is clearly invested in your company and will want to know what’s going on – and might want to purchase your assets! This is a great way to alert a specific audience of your auction.
Print marketing
If you know that a lot of your customers are used to print marketing, make sure to do what you can in the physical world to inform people about your auctions. Print out flyers to hang up in prominent places around town, put an ad in the local paper, send out mailers, or even create physical invitations for a live auction! You will know best how your target audience receives information, take advantage of that knowledge to promote your auction to them in whatever ways you can!
These are just a few great ways that you can promote you auction to a specific target market along with the marketing that an auction house will be conducting for you. Having a specific audience to focus your marketing campaigns on brings you bidders that are more invested in your auction who will drive up your final bids. And the higher your final bids the more money you make off your auction! If you are interested in holding your own auction, contact us today to see how we can help you sell your assets!