Why I Don’t Create Auction Company Promotion

This year, I’ve received a bevy of requests for the same thing. I’ve read the shared inquiry in emails, transcribed voicemails, Facebook messages, and even a comment on a blog post. The question?

“Do you help auctioneers promote their business—or just their auctions?”

The short answer is, “Just their auctions.” Since auctioneers are asking this a lot, it might be good for me to explain why. So here are my top 6 reasons why I no longer build this kind of Facebook advertising.

(1) You don’t need to promote your company to buyers.

The best way to promote that your website as a prime place to shop is to constantly show buyers what you’re selling. And the best way to do that is to show them the assets in your auctions. If you’re dead-set on spending company money to promote your marketplace, I’d add that money to your auction advertising budgets. In almost every auction campaign I build, I use an audience that targets people who’ve interacted with the past year of posts & ads from that client’s company. In most of my campaigns, that ad earns the most efficient traffic of any ad we create—often as low as 4¢ or 6¢ per click. Without company promotion ads on Facebook, I’ve helped multiple clients grow that audience to 200,000 people. Even without Facebook ads touting their buyer marketplace, I’ve seen clients double their annual revenue and quadruple their bidder registrations.

(2) Seller promotion on Facebook requires a lot of content.

If you’ve targeted your company promotion campaign to those most likely to need your services, you can’t just serve the same ad or two to your prospects. It might take years before a prospect is in need of your services—not the few days or weeks it takes for a buyer-based auction campaign to pay for itself. The needed diversity and quantity of content proves quite daunting, which explains why “social media manager” (the person in charge of brand awareness online) at most companies is a part-time or full-time job. Thankfully, regular auctions in their social feeds show prospective sellers that others trust you often. They see that “if you want something done, give it to someone already busy.” If your auction-based ads and posts look more professional than what’s out there, even better.

(3) Auctioneers haven’t been able to help me help them.

I have started the process of company promotion ads on Facebook with a few auctioneers. I think I’ve only ever had one make it all the way to Facebook. All the rest of the campaigns quietly fizzled out when the answers to the following questions never arrived in my inbox:

• What problem(s) do you solve for potential sellers?
• How do you solve those problems uniquely better than those prospects’ other options?
• What evidence (stats, quotes, case studies) do you have that you reliably deliver those solutions?

“Sold!” isn’t enough for sellers. Sellers are looking for more money, faster money, and/or easier money than their other options. Which of those fits you’re brand? How can you prove that?

(4) Auctioneers don’t have sales funnels in place.

Even if I could reliably get traffic to the auctioneer’s website, I’ve found that the bid callers asking me for company promotion would lose the fish before they reeled them into the boat. What I mean is that if they even have a page for sellers on their site, it’s rarely set up to net the fish on the line. It’s usually just one of the long, boilerplate lists that the auction industry copies and pastes from each other. “The most transparent way to sell” … “online bidding brings in more buyers” … blah, blah blah. It doesn’t address the questions asked above or their answers. It doesn’t offer hope and solutions—just a method of sale. The seller program on their site is not built as a succession of multiple, brief-content pages which can be tracked to see where people jumped out of the sales process. Few have forms for requesting a free consultation, downloading a seller guide, or submitting a consignment. 

(5) My personality isn’t compatible with the timelines.

I don’t have the attention span to watch a folder languish on my desk for six months or a year. I like getting from order to fulfillment to payment in as few days as possible. In 2021, auction folders have lived on my desk for an average of 17.3 days, and I get paid an average of 21.1 days after I send the invoice. Thanks to Facebook, that first number is steadily dropping. I’m still trying to figure out how to get that second number lower. Haha.

(6) I don’t need the extra work.

I’m on pace to advertise 743 auctions this year. My wife, my daughter, and I can all affirm that’s more than enough work to keep me busy—to keep me coming into the office as early as 5:00 A.M. and shutting down as late as 11:00 P.M. Seller marketing requires more creativity and mental acuity for me, and it’s far harder to estimate time and thus invoices in advance. 

I promote my company on Facebook, and those ads have brought me scores of inquiries and dozens of clients in the past two years, but I have tons of content at my disposal and a solid awareness of the problems I solve uniquely better than auctioneers’ other options do. I’m not saying company promotion couldn’t or doesn’t work for auction companies. I’m just not the right vendor to build those campaigns, and I don’t want to waste auctioneers’ valuable time and resources proving that I’m a poor fit.

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Stock images purchased from iStockPhoto.com

Sorry: “Sold!” Isn’t Enough For Sellers

Six years ago tomorrow, my wife and I moved into our current home. Since moving here, we’ve witnessed something uncanny or at least new to us. Real estate agents regularly ask us to sell our house. Once or twice, they’ve done it in person on my doorstep. One of my neighbors actually sold his brand new home—that wasn’t on the market—to a stranger who knocked on his front door and asked him to sell it.

A few months ago, I received one of these solicitations by way of a postcard. It didn’t convince me to sell, because my wife hates moving and says we have to live in our house at least a decade. It did intrigue me, though, because I rarely see auction companies pursue sellers so well. The graphic design wasn’t impressive. The photos weren’t groundbreaking. It’s copywriting wasn’t clever, but its message was something I can rarely convince auctioneers to use.

Without that message, I am uncomfortable wasting auctioneer’s money on advertising to sellers. Every winter, a line of auctioneers call or email me about getting more sellers. This winter was no different. The consultation unfortunately doesn’t continue long after I ask them the following questions:

• What makes your auction service uniquely better than a seller’s other options?
• What do they get with you that they won’t get anywhere else?
• What is your typical seller’s pain point?
• How do you solve that problem?
• What supporting evidence do you have to prove that you consistently solve that problem?

No matter what the seller problem is, it typically comes down to one or more of the following:

• They want (or need) money in a hurry.
• They want (or need) more money than what other sale methods might net them.
• They want easier money—fewer negotiation exchanges and/or no contingencies.

Instead of telling sellers we can get them more money, faster money, and/or easier money, we in the auction community tend to push something ambiguous like a transparent process or true market value. Sellers don’t want true market value. They want the most money possible. 

Most of the auctioneers I’ve consulted this winter want me to tell potential sellers that they can get properties or estates or equipment sold. The problem is that those sellers don’t doubt auctions sell stuff. They want to know prices realized relative to the market. Like you and me, they’ve seen real estate and personal property sell for pennies on the dollar in auctions; and they’ve seen news stories about art and jewelry that sell for record-breaking figures. Most of the sellers we’re pursuing aren’t in the Sotheby’s/Christie’s asset categories; and they want reliable information to assure them they won’t lose their shirts. 

“Sold!” isn’t enough. 
“Sold at auction!” isn’t, either.

As an industry and as individual companies, we’re up against objective headlines like the one on this postcard:

SOLD IN ONLY 3 DAYS
$3,100 OVER ASKING PRICE!
Another happy client!
Learn about our “Easy Exit” listing agreement

To be sure, not all real estate markets are like the one in my school district. And this probably isn’t the result of all of Acree Brothers Realty’s listings even here. Every hit isn’t a home run. It doesn’t have to be. Unlike a listing, almost every auction we conduct should result in at least one of the three headlines—more money, faster money, or easier money. All we need to do is consistently tout that. For $35, you can tell sellers about that auction’s more/faster/easier result for a week in your market on Facebook. If you don’t think your potential sellers are part of the 70%+ of U.S. adults with a Facebook account or the 50% of U.S. adults who check Facebook daily, you can mail a postcard showcasing a group of your results to your top prospects every couple months for about a dollar a piece (not counting design).

Successful sales—whether auctions, buyouts, or listings—are your best seller acquisition tool.

If you’re not having more/faster/easier auctions, then you need to chase people who don’t care about how fast a transaction takes, how much they’ll make, or how difficult the process will be. Those folks comprise a niche for another discussion. Everyone else—farmers, retirees, debtors, collectors, consignors, loan officers, mansion owners, middle managers, estate executors, and special commissioners—they’re all looking for more money, faster money, and/or easier money.

Successful advertising happens when a company connects their solution with a consumer’s need, want, or aspiration. If our advertising doesn’t start there, it won’t usually get there. That must be our lead, our focus, our headline. Customers won’t care about our services until we prove we care about their situations. The auctioneers who do that best and most often get to be the ones with the best and most frequent commission checks.

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Stock images purchased from iStockPhoto.com