How To Utilize Facebook Events For Your Auctions
Getting The Most Out Of Your Social Media Account
If you’re an auction company, you know how challenging it can be to have a large inventory of items that constantly change. Although some auctioneers specialize in one specific industry such as cattle and livestock, farms, vehicles, real estate, jewelry, or other items, it can still be challenging to find the right audience for each of your auctions, especially if you are one of the auctioneers that does NOT specialize in one specific area. For example, if most of your business’s auctions are estate sales, it’s likely that the items up for sale in each auction are going to be very different depending on the person whose estate you’re selling along with many other factors as well. Facebook events can help you separate your auctions so that you can reach the best audience for the items you have selling, and we are going to show you how!
Step One: Analyze Your Auction Items
The very first step in utilizing Facebook Events for your upcoming auction is going to be analyzing your auctions based on the lots within them. For some auctioneers this might be easy (ie: if you’re a real estate auctioneer and all your auctions are single pieces of land) but for other auctioneers it might be a little more challenging depending on how many items you have within the auction or based on what you are selling – such as if you have livestock or cattle. We suggest trying to group together your auction items based on relevancy if possible and make a note of the most prominent group of items you are selling. For example, if you are running a liquidation auction for a local general store, and there happens to be a lot of sports equipment that is being sold, make a note of that – the information will come in handy later on!
Step Two: Create A Facebook Event
Next up, you’ll have to create a Facebook Event, we would recommend that you use your business page for this. If you don’t have a business page, we would recommend that you make one so that you can continue to utilize it going forward to continue growing your audience and brand. To create an event you will click on the “Event Button” under your pages header image, you will be prompted with a popped open box that will require you to enter in information for the event, such as the name, location, description, category, frequency, start, and end time. Fill all of these details out and change the cover photo to a photo relevant to the auction. We do suggest that in the details portion of the event, you include a link to your website or directly to the auction! Once you have filled out those details, scroll down and make sure you have filled out all the remaining fields such as schedule, keywords, and ticket information. (note: utilize the keywords field by using keywords relevant to your auction items – this makes your event easier to find by people searching for items that you might have) Once you have filled out all of the information you need in your Facebook event, you should be able to publish or schedule your event.
Step Three: Upload Quality Photos
While creating your Facebook event you can only use one image which will act as the single event image, but once you have published your event you will have the ability to add more images within the discussion portion of your auction Facebook Event. When taking images of your auction items, be sure to keep them light and as accurate as possible. Once you have the images you want to upload, click into your event, and in the discussion portion of your event you can add various images or even videos to post within the event. This is a good idea for any upcoming auction because it allows any interested buyers to see various auction items to help peak their interest even more. If you are hosting an online auction, or have more information on your website, feel free to post the link to the auction items with the photos that you post to make it easy for anyone interested in the items to go straight to the online lot if applicable.
Step Four: Share and Boost, or Advertise Your Event
Once you are ready to push traffic to your auction event and start letting everyone know about your upcoming sale, we would recommend that you share the event to your personal page, as well as explore paid advertising options for your event! If you choose to run a paid campaign for your event, it will be helpful to go back to the noted groups of items from step one! While advertising on Facebook you have the ability to target very specific audiences based on interests, employment, and other options as well. For example, if we go back to our example in step one about having a lot of sports equipment items for sale in this specific auction, it would make sense that we might want to target an audience who is interested in sports, sports memorabilia, and other sports items. This is the beauty of paid advertising, you have the ability to focus in on specific users based on what you are selling! With that being said, if you really want to dive into the advertising along with your auction events, you might even want to explore splitting your auction into two separate events based on the items so that you can very specifically target certain interests within your paid ads – although this is not necessary, it can be a powerful tool in order to maximize your auction results.
Step Five: Record Your Results
Lastly, we would encourage you to record your results throughout the process, record the number of users responded to your event, record your website traffic coming in from Social Media, and definitely record your auction results. Keeping track of your results will help you analyze the effectiveness of the actions you are taking to increase your auction results.
Facebook events can be a powerful tool for auctioneers to reach out to the community, get their information in front of many people, and better the results of their auctions. We hope that you will explore the options of Facebook events for your upcoming auctions – if you need help in your auction marketing efforts, reach out to us today. We offer various marketing services for Auctioneers anywhere.
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