Category : Auction Marketing
Rex Schrader’s earthly life came to a close on Friday, and he left a torch for us all to carry. Rex showed me what that flame entailed and how to carry it. In short, that man changed my life. I feel indebted to continue what he modeled during the 18 years of our friendship. Rex
How did I know that would be the result? What gave me the confidence I’d win that bet? I’ve been drinking my own Kool-Aid for the past three years. I’m a convert and a missionary, the doctor and the patient, the scientist and the test subject. I don’t think I’m the president of the club, but I’m most definitely a member.
The more important questions to ask are:
• How am I adapting to the changing buying culture?
• What has my experimentation and analytics shown me recently?
Marketers who don’t continually ask themselves those questions will eventually be replaced by those in companies who do. That should worry every auctioneer far more than the future of Facebook.
All of this is why my clients’s Facebook ads don’t read like newspaper ads or sale bills. People don’t buy auctions. They might not even buy things. People buy how those things make them feel, how those things solve a problem, how they assume those things will make their life better.
Mark Zuckerberg took days to respond to the uproar online and on TV news networks so that he could follow the advice of J Daniel Atlas, the protagonist of Now You See Me, a flick that featured illusionists plying their craft to perform Robin Hood-type heists: “First rule of magic: always be the smartest person in the room.” Zuckerberg offered an olive branch to the media, the government, and Facebook users. Along with that he secured Facebook’s place as the most advanced, intuitive platform for advertising for the foreseeable future. Even Terry Benedict’s casinos aren’t sophisticated enough to have seen this brilliant move coming. But now your company is. You’re welcome.
The auctioneers who look to use Cold War-era mindsets with post-9/11 media will be left in the shock known by so many Americans 15 months ago. They, too, will wonder how they were undone, how they weren’t understood, how they couldn’t outsell the competition. On the flip side, the first ones to see what the actual game is will be the only ones who can win it.
We wrongly assume our ideal buyers and sellers are just like us. We assume the marketplace looks at auctions and the assets in them through the same lens we do.
Zuckerberg’s agenda is just a continuation of a trend. Organic reach has been gradually dropping for years. For most business pages, unpaid reach has dropped below 50%—and in many cases below 25%—of the people who at one point liked those page. Facebook has been testing zero organic reach in six foreign countries. It’s reasonable to assume that we’re months—not years—from zero or near-zero organic reach here in the States.
Facebook rookies seem to believe that there’s a set, static amount—or some price grid—that Facebook charges for results; and they seem to think I know where to find that grid. It makes sense: other media are sold that way. Sadly, though, neither of those assumptions are correct. That said, we can learn to make educated guesses. I’ll tell you what I recommend per campaign, but first I want to show you how I arrive at that suggestion.
More to the point: all of my clients work on speculation. They take projects not knowing how big their paycheck will be or, in some cases, whether there will even be a paycheck on the other end of the deal. That takes some serious guts, a risk-taking ability I don’t have.
No matter who designs your print media, hold them to these standards. First, though, hold your brand to these standards. I know it’s hard. Entropy and familiarity fight us. Our ambition to sell and our exuberance about the auction makes restraint difficult. The more we remember that each piece is just a tease to the next step, though, the easier it becomes to trust less content to do more work. When our media consistently follows these cultural expectations, sellers and buyers will feel more at ease in the auction marketing process and with you managing it for them.
It doesn’t cost you money to ask these questions. In fact, it might cost you significant money if you don’t ask these questions—especially if you don’t ask them before you sign the auction contract. Save yourself some headaches. Take the prescription four out of five TV doctors recommend: ask two of these questions, and then email your advertising vendors in the morning.
If you can prove any or all of the above, sell the heck out of them to people who look just like your past sellers. Don’t shoot one piece into the ether and wait for the Brinks truck. Create a systematic series of digital and/or print touches, and brand them with a consistent look and familiar message. If you come across as empathetic and competent, you’re more likely to grab the sellers everyone wants.
The benefits of optimizing for landing page views outweigh the above considerations. In most situations, the more targeted our audience, the better; and I’ve found Facebook’s algorithms to outperform my educated guesses most of the time. That doesn’t mean I would optimize all my Facebook advertising for landing page views.
Back in 2004, I became an author. I released a book of 41 discussions of interesting Bible characters. In 2003, it was the highest-rated manuscript on a service that faith-based publishers use to find authors without agent representation. At the one publisher who legitimately considered it, the editorial staff loved my writing and the compilation;
Your direct mail has the same job as your Facebook ads—and any piece of your advertising. It only has to get the prospect to the next step. More than likely, that step is to visit your website—even if the auction is conducted offline.
While my company will gladly still design direct mail, newsprint ads, and banner ads for auctions with firearms, I will no longer create Facebook advertising for auctions with guns in the catalog. The stakes are too high for me. Take time to evaluate whether they are for you, too.
As of right now, the best way to advertise an auction with guns is to create a separate catalog for the guns. This way, you can run Facebook ads for the other lots that will sell or sell higher because of Facebook exposure. The gun catalog can be promoted separately via email, direct mail, newsprint, etc. (Lists of both gun dealers and people with hunting licenses are not only available but reasonably priced.)
I would contend that we spend much of our time uneducating the room. By that I mean that we have to lead people out of counterproductive advertising strategies and practices that have become engrained into the industry. We do that because using new technology with old approaches just multiplies the audiences for bad advertising.
Over the past 20 years, social scientists have been documenting the phenomenon that those who know the least about many topics actually have the most confidence in their understanding of them. According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, not only is ignorance bliss; it’s also incredibly deceiving.
