MAKE BIGGER COMMISSIONS
Ryan helps auction companies look like marketing experts by clarifying their message, communicating that message well, and measuring its effectiveness.

88: 6 Marketing Myths Entrepreneurs Believe

In short, avoid myopia at all costs. Get outside of yourself, your business, your ego. Don’t get bored with your branding; instead, realize that well-policed marketing will accelerate your brand over the long haul—long after most YouTube sensations have come and gone.

87: Measuring Your Social Media Influence

Social media analytics won’t tell you where to advertise your auctions. They won’t tell you how many people are absorbing your message—only those who interact with it. These sites don’t supplant the most important question to analyze your media outlays: “How did my bidders hear about my auction?” But they can give you a more informed perspective of how you’re doing at building an interactive brand on the Internet.

86: 7 Valuable Social Media Shortcuts

There are two halves to social media: sharing and interacting. While you can’t schedule your likes, comments, and other responses in advance, you can simplify the manner in which you collect and distribute the content you want to share. By uploading more than status updates, you can show your audience that you are a source—or at least a distributor—of engaging knowledge. Then, when you share updates about your business, these posts will have more credence and smell less like spam. You do have time for online social networking, if you use your time wisely.

85: Where Should You Advertise?

The only metric that should inform your future advertising is the collective answer to one question: “How do my bidders hear about my auctions?”

Some media will be in the budget simply to show the breadth of your campaign—to assuage sellers. But the majority of your sellers’ advertising dollars need to be going to higher ROI media, and you need to be able to sell and defend your suggested advertising outlays.

84: Will Self-service Websites Impact Your Business?

Proving where we add value and enough value to equal our fees will be one of the main challenges facing auction marketers in the future, as self-service websites attract more and more MLS agents and FSBO (For Sale By Owner) properties. Different auctioneers will have different valid answers to the question of value.

83: The Ads of Summer

We just need to ask ourselves if we’re using our advertising to advance their cause or their bravery to advance our branding.

You’ve got a summer of sports to sponsor—whether on Little League jerseys or on your nearest stadium’s JumboTron. Independence Day and Veteran’s Day are still left on the 2011 calendar, and soldiers are wearing camouflage or dress blues every minute from now until the ball drops. Show your support of these American institutions, pastimes, and heroes as you feel led. Just make sure your message is not diluted and your respect is not in question.

82: Long Distance Marketing

On a regular basis, I talk to auctioneers who are proposing and contracting auctions across state lines—in some cases across multiple time zones. Whether these auctioneers are selling for distant estates with local heirs or for banks with holdings in multiple states, they are faced with the same dilemma: how do we find buyers in geographic areas outside of our expertise?