Auction Ink Advertising & Design

Facebook (www.facebook.com) is arguably the most popular social networking site with 600 million+ users. The age of facebook users is completely across the board, and if you think only the younger generations are on facebook, you could be missing the boat. With facebook, you can create personal profiles or business pages. I happen to have both, but in this post I will address setting up a business page. Having a business presence on facebook is somewhat of a necessity in this age of new marketing.

(Before setting up your business facebook page, remember to have a separate email address setup for your online social media uses.)

On the facebook login page, there is a small link in the bottom portion of the screen to click for creating a page for a business. This is the route to take for setting up your business page. You will next choose the local business/place or company/institution option. As you are going through the setup process, NEVER click “create your profile” and enter information. If you do, it will convert your business page to a personal profile…and then you will have to start over, and quite possibly with a new email address.

Facebook will walk you through the steps to enter the information about your business. Always remember, if you encounter troubles, a teenager can probably guide you through the process with ease!

With your business page, you do not send friend requests; instead, others can “like” your page instead. You will keep track of the number of “likes” your page receives. On your facebook page, you can post links to your company’s website, your blog, etc…You can even link your facebook page to your twitter account, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Post information (updates) about upcoming auctions, recent sales statistics, seminars, awards you have received, give kudos to business associates, share what is on your mind about your business, and so forth. Once a facebook user has “liked” your business page, each of your status updates will appear in his/her news feed on his/her home page. The more you post, the more updates that will show up on users’ pages. I do caution you though not to be posting updates every hour as that may get a bit overwhelming for you and your facebook fans. Keep your updates consistent so you have a regular presence on your fans’ home pages though.

If your business structure allows, you can also offer facebook only specials for your fans. If you are a facebook user and have “liked” other business pages, you may have seen some of these facebook specials already. Consider it insider information, of sorts. You could offer some type of discount or promotion to your fans who print off the facebook only offer you posted. Get creative…the possibilities are endless, and there are 600 million+ facebook users out there for you to tap into to find your target market.

In the future, we will dive into those popup ads you see along the side of your facebook page and how you can target an audience for your own ad!

Yes, yes, I know…it has been way too long since I updated this with a post about blogging. Life happens at times, and things on the to-do list have to be prioritized. Taking care of my current auction clients and their pressing marketing needs will always be at the top of my business to-do list. That is just the way it is.

Regularly updating a blog is an excellent way for your company to come up in search engines. With your company’s website, it is pretty static, meaning that your updates don’t typically generate a new topic to appear when a potential client is conducting a search for a specific topic. The beauty of a blog is that each new entry can become a hit on a search engine. Each new entry is treated separately, where your company’s traditional website is seen as a whole.

Setting up a blog is really easy, and there are many options for you. If you Google “blog” many different sites will jump at you. This site is managed by WordPress.com, and it has been very easy to set up and navigate. Other sites are Blogger.com, or Blog.com. Another site that will pop up is Tumblr. I know that is what a lot of teenagers use as their online journal, and my understanding is that you need the exact Tumblr address (which is typically obscure) to access the blog. (I guess this keeps the old parents from finding it and learning what mischief they may be causing.) You will have a couple options when setting up the address for your blog. It will be easier for your clients and future clients if your address is a name with a .something after it. This will require a domain registration and yearly fee, but it will be less confusing than having an address like auctioninkadvertising.wordpress.com, which is one option I had. I chose to register auctioninkadvertising.com and go with that name.

Again, before setting up your blog, I highly recommend that you set up a separate email account. I wouldn’t suggest using your regular business email address.

Blogging is a way for you to share information. Blog posts can be as long or short as you like. You can blog about an upcoming auction, a past auction, a unique piece being offered at auction, general auction trends, etc… You can also use your blog to share your knowledge and expertise in a certain area, and hopefully when a potential client needs help in your area of specialty, guess who he/she will call?!?!

The more often you update your blog, the more chances you have of someone seeing your posts through a search engine. You can also create a QRC code linked to your blogging website and use it in your marketing materials.

I know that updating my blog needs to inch its way up my business to-do list. I have been blessed with an abundance of wonderful clients who have been keeping me quite busy. I guess I could always ask them for an extension on a deadline so I can add a new post to my blog. What do you think?

Even though I believe direct mail is here to stay, there are many other marketing options we must consider when putting together advertising campaigns.  In regard to advertising in general, eMarketer “expects US online advertising spending to reach $31.3 billion this year, a dramatic 20.2% increase over 2010 spending.  By 2015, nearly $50 billion will be spent on online ads in the US.”  Now, I will be the first to tell you that I believe auction advertising is its own little science, but we can’t ignore the data telling us that many people today get and want their info in an electronic format or online.

Before you get too far into business blogging or social networking, I strongly suggest you set up a separate email account to be used solely for these purposes.  A gmail or yahoo account would work well.  Nobody will really see this email address, other than you when you login to a site, and it will protect your business email address and keep it separate.  In addition, if you have someone else in your office blogging for you or updating your facebook or twitter status, then you don’t need to give out the password to your personal/business email account.

So, go ahead and set up that separate email account and get ready to read about blogs in my next post…

Before I start posting about different media for auctioneers to utilize in advertising campaigns, there is one dangling topic I must address.  If you haven’t read an older post titled “Reinventing Your Image,” I suggest you do that before reading on…

A few months ago, Ian and I started reinventing our home’s image with a huge landscaping project.  We had tried for a couple years to revamp massive landscaping islands that went untouched for more than a decade.  We dug; we pulled; we cut; and we trimmed.  Unfortunately, we found it was time to start fresh and decided to create a clean landscaping slate.  First, we determined our yard had too much going on with 3 large landscaping islands.  Since your house is “the outfit” and the landscaping should be “the accessories,” we ruled it was time to scale things back by at least a third…..hence the previous photo of the bobcat leveling the ground.  We removed one landscaping island completely and dug out everything in the other two, as well as everything in front of the house.  Well, we dug up everything but one nice tree.  This summer and early fall was spent preparing the ground by digging up roots, killing weeds, raking dirt and creating a new landscaping area on the side of the house.

Two weeks ago, all of the new plants arrived.  We started digging holes, 52 of them to be exact, to begin the image transformation.  This time, we dug; we filled in and topped with peat mixture; we compacted; we smoothed; and we watered.  Last Saturday, we covered the areas with weed barrier, and we unloaded and spread about five yards of mulch.  Since we are pretty ignorant when it comes to landscaping, we have relied quite a lot on our friend Brad.  Basically, we ask Brad what to do; he tells us, and we do it.  He knows what he is talking about, and we trust him as an expert in this area.  Actually, he put himself through Rose Hulman by operating an independent landscaping company in the summers, so he really is an expert.

Last Saturday, when Brad came over to show us how to properly install the weed barrier plastic/fabric, he brought a tool called a mattock.  He said when we were finished mulching that we could take our power edger and create a nice, clean edge around the areas and then take the mattock and remove the layer of top soil and other organic material butting up to the nice new edge line.  If we did this, then we could put the weed barrier back down, spread more mulch over the area and have a very nice looking edge to the grass when finished.  Brad added that it wasn’t necessary, but it would make a more polished edge with a better over-all look.  Yesterday, Ian and I started this last stage of the project – creating the edges with the mattock.  Ian would use the edger and remove the layer of soil with the mattock, and my job was to clean up the excess dirt removed as well as fill in the area with new mulch.  We worked on this for a while yesterday afternoon, but ran out of mulch before the job was finished.

This morning, with a new yard of mulch, 46 degree weather and winds gusting up to nearly the same number, I found myself crawling around on my hands and knees on the cold ground picking up dirt from the mattock edge and spreading more mulch.  It was cold.  My back and knees were hurting.  It was truly that last thing I wanted to be doing on a Saturday morning.  But, as I plugged along, I realized how this work related to auction advertising.  (Strange correlation, but trust me on this one…)

When you are working on an auction advertising campaign, do you take the time to “mattock the edges?”  I mean, do you take the time to give the salebill or ad a nice, polished look?  Or do you just get the basic information together on a sheet of paper and call it good?  For you, it may just be another salebill; but to your client, it may be his/her only one.  Your client hired you to represent his/her property to the best of your ability in an honest manner.  Are you taking the extra time to accurately highlight the properties best features, or are you settling for good enough?  Taking the time to give the salebill or ad that extra zing can be a daunting task, but it is one that will pay off well for you and your client in the end.

Remember, your auction salebills are more than just a vehicle to advertise that particular property.  Your salebills speak volumes about your company and your image and can have a shelf life that spans a couple years.  I know of instances where auctioneers have either earned or lost an auction based on the look of their salebills, and I would be willing to bet money that the ones who won had taken the time to mattock the edges, so-to-speak.

I am glad our landscaping project is complete.  I will tell you that I was really not enjoying my time yesterday afternoon or this morning crawling around finishing the edges; however, now that I see the finished product, I am very glad we took the time to use the mattock on the edges.  Our home’s image is fresh and new, and believe me, it is going to have a very long shelf life!

It seems like there is always somewhere I “should” be or something I “should” be doing at any given moment.  I should be exercising more, making healthy homemade breads and muffins, pulling weeds in the yard, organizing tubs full of saved artwork and papers from my kiddos over the years or even perhaps researching mounds of data for a new blog entry.  Typically though, any place I “need” to be trumps any place that falls on my “should” be list.  For instance, each weekday morning I need to get my youngest two up and ready for school instead of going out and walking or jogging a few miles between the hours of 6:15 and 9:00 AM.   Since I have a high schooler, a middle schooler and an elementary schooler, my morning rituals are spread out over a couple of hours.  Another example might be that I need to work from 9 AM to 3 PM each weekday to keep up with my auction load so that I keep happy customers and remain gainfully self-employed.  My lawn may look impeccable if I spent those 6 hours working on it each day, but a greater need awaits me during those hours.

Similarly, there are probably places your business “needs” to be to be effective in the marketing world today.  Auction marketing has drastically changed over the past decade and in order to keep up the pace, the list of places your business needs to be is changing and growing at a speedy clip.  In addition to salebills, signs, website and newspaper ads, auction marketing now includes:

Facebook

Twitter

Linked In

FourSquare

Blogging

Email Blasts

Text Messaging

YouTube

Podcasts

Do you even know where your business needs to be?  The next several advertising droplets will address these new marketing tactics and how you can incorporate them into your marketing strategies.  For most of you, these new marketing tactics are a “need” to help you do the best job for your client.

The older I get, the more I realize that principles from our personal life can also be applied to our profession.  Our adult Sunday school class recently started a study discussing the topic of what you would do if you knew you had 30 days to live, and one of the exercises we were to do at home on our own really struck a chord with me.  It made me really reflect on my life as a wife and a mom; however, the exercise also made me realize the theory could also benefit many people as they think about their business.  It goes something like this…

Take out a piece of paper and write down your top 10 business or career priorities.  These could be current duties within your job or perhaps goals you would like to accomplish.

Once you have completed your top 10, scratch five of them off your list, leaving your top five.

Now, take your top five and scratch off three more.  This may be more difficult than you initially think it might be; however, you will be left with your top two business priorities.  I can see where many of these might be something like expanding business; increasing customer service; being a better manager; becoming more effective as a leader; utilizing time management skills; becoming more profitable…

On the bottom of the same piece of paper, draw a large circle.  Take that circle and divide it up like a pie chart breaking down how you spend your day at work.  Do you find you spend 50% of your time doing the same task?  Are you surprised at how you actually spend your time at work?

Here comes the interesting part….compare your top two business priorities with the way you spend your day at work.  Are you spending the majority of your time working toward your top two goals or priorities?  Many of you might be pleasantly surprised to realize that you are doing just that.  Perhaps though, you may find you need to make some adjustments in how you structure your day.  You may not be able to completely alter your work schedule, but if you take the first hour of every day to work toward your top two, it could definitely be a step in the right direction.

We bought a “project” house a little over three years ago.  There was nothing structurally wrong with our house, and the real issues were that the inside was stuck in 1986 and the landscaping was in abundance and in the state of a jungle.  We immediately started working on some inside projects like removing lots of mauve and gray patterned wallpaper.  I painted many rooms, and we started replacing carpet.  The landscaping jungles received a little attention out of necessity, but I was set on getting the inside looking the way I wanted it to look.   If I had to guess, I would say our neighbors wished I would have been more concerned with the landscaping.

Since most of our neighbors have never stepped inside our front door, the outside of the house created our image.  Those landscaping jungles were what neighbors saw repeatedly and were the only thing passers-by could use to form their initial opinion of us.  It kinda sounds to me like the outside of our house was our brand.  And with that, I take a huge gasp for air.

Now lets think about your company and your brand.  You may have removed all the 80s wallpaper, so-to-speak, from your business, and your staff may be working in harmony like a professionally-designed interior; however, if your marketing is like a landscaping jungle, you could be in trouble.  Remember, your brand is not what you think about your company….it is what others think about your company.

Back to the house for a moment.  For the past three years, we had been working on the landscaping jungles a little bit.  We had trimmed, cut and dug away a couple truckloads worth of excess foliage from our jungles.  Even though we had invested hours in that work, the old plants, bushes and trees that remained simply hadn’t been taken care of properly for nearly 15 years and had grown somewhat out of control.

Take a close look at your marketing materials.  Are your company promo materials sending a nice, clear message?  Do those items all have a similar look using the same paper stocks, fonts and colors?  Do you have a real logo that you use everywhere?  Is the general look and feel of your auction marketing pieces consistent?  Or do you have a marketing jungle creating a distorted image for your company?

This weekend marked the beginning of a huge event for us.  Continuing to try and make the old, outdated landscaping look good was quite frankly not going to work.  With my oldest son’s graduation sneaking up on us next year, I decided it was time to completely re-do our landscaping.  After three years of not being particularly fond of the image our house was giving others and definitely not wanting graduation party-goers to think that was our brand, we have started to reinvent our image.  We rented a skid steer (official name of a non-Bobcat branded bobcat) and got to work!  One large trailer and truckload-full later, we now have a relatively clean slate.  We did decide to incorporate one tree and many of the gorgeous landscaping rocks into the new design.  It was hard work removing the old, and we still have many, many hours of work ahead of us as we prepare the ground for the new plants and shrubs; however, it is going to pay off big-time.  Beautiful new landscaping will welcome guests soon.  Our neighbors who drive by our house on a daily basis will have a fresh, new palette of well-planned color to enjoy.  We are redefining our brand so that the outside reflects the family on the inside.

Of course we need to take this back to business; so, think about your brand.  Are your marketing materials telling the story accurately, or are they creating an inconsistent jungle?  With some detailed planning and some hours of honest work, you can reinvent your image.  Is it time to update the layout of your salebills, ads, signs and website?  It won’t happen over night, but it will be well-worth the effort.

For almost 17 years, I have been known as a specialist in the auction advertising PRINT world.  Salebills, black/white newspaper ads, company promo materials, color magazine ads, postcards, sign designs….you name it, I’ve done ‘em hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

I’ve been blessed in the fact that my business has grown exponentially through word-of-mouth advertising alone.  (Keep that in mind if you ever wonder about the power of word-of-mouth advertising.)  Since starting Auction Ink in 2005, I have been able to sit inside my little print world bubble and not really venture outside much.  And, whoa, have I been missing the boat.

I don’t really need to jump on board the social media/online ship for me, but rather for you.  If I am providing a service to auctioneers, then I need to provide a complete service in helping you reach your bidders.  We need to incorporate social media, blogging and maybe texting into your marketing plans.  My job is to help you do the best job for your seller.  If we leave potential bidders out there, then we are doing the seller a huge dis-service.

So, after 17 years…it is time to lose the word “print” in what I have known for so long.  It is time to make my mark as a specialist in the auction advertising world.  Your sellers deserve it.