Global Auction Blog

If you have no idea what the title of this article means, well, don’t feel bad. Not even the most tech savvy among us knew what it meant 2 years ago.

Social Media is expanding and encroaching more into our daily lives everyday. Whether it is truly useful or simply another tech fad is yet to be seen. But with the younger generations living and interacting online this appears to be where the future is and if you want to reach them there is no use advertising in a printed newspaper.

If you want to skip learning about this latest fad, hire a high school student as a summer intern to setup your Social Media branding and advertising. This generation lives and breathes social media ( for good or bad ) and they know the ins and outs of how to get started. Another great starting point would be your local bookstore or www.amazon.com and search for books that cover Social Media Web Strategies.

MySpace and now Facebook have taken over many peoples lives and the time spent per week by all ages of people is more than the time they spend watching TV or reading newspapers according to surveys. How do you get your message across to these people?

Most importantly , if you are using these sites, you can’t blatantly advertise like you would in a newspaper. You must slowly work into and become part of the community. Don’t simply sign up for an account and begin blasting your upcoming sales to everyone that will be your friend.

You have a large group of real world friends at every auction, try to get them involved online to work with you and help promote your sales to their online friends. Also be sure to join any auction communities such as the Friends of AuctionZip.com Facebook group.

Linkedin.com

Linkedin is referred to as Facebook for the Business professional. It is a great networking tool and can help you find some fresh contacts that can help you down the road. It is largely used by corporate level employees, and if you are dealing with lawyers, bankers, large corporations, etc. on a regular basis it looks good to them that you are also using the site. After making a proposal to handle a foreclosure for a lending institution, you can bet they will be checking your Linkedin profile shortly after you leave their office.

Twitter.com

We know that Twitter has become mainstream when Oprah recently signed up and began “twittering” on her show. If you have never seen it, think of twittering as being able to text message everyone you know at once, and your messages are public so you are able to attract new followers .

I attend an Internet Marketing convention in Las Vegas every year, and have watched the early evangelists and adopters of Twitter hype it extensively but I personally could not find a practical use for it in my business or in my life. It was handy to find all the last minute meetups at the conference, but how could I use it to market my business or help auctioneers attract more business?

I can honestly say I don’t know if I see the full value of this yet, but I have begun twittering auction prices live from the auction sales. I am able to take a picture of a tractor for example with my BlackBerry, and send it along with information and the selling price live to my twitter stream for anyone following me to see. I can see the value of this to people like Greg Peterson at www.machinerypete.com to collect data who started his own twitter stream several weeks after I started.

www.AuctioneerTweet.com is a site recently launched by Aaron Traffas in Kansas, which allows you to join their group of auctioneers who are twittering. It is an interesting way to form a community of auctioneers who want to communicate more effectively..

The best part is all these services are free, and will only take up your time to successfully cultivate a long term ROI.

Makes you wonder what we will be learning about 2 years from now? or 5 years? We’ll talk about Blogging in our next article.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/auctionguyyy or search for me at www.linkedin.com

It wasn’t many years ago most of us had never heard of Google.com and when we first stumbled upon it we certainly had no idea what an impact it would have on our business and on our lives.

People no longer search for something online, they now “Google it “  What started out as a project at Stanford university has become the most well known brand on the Internet with revenues in 2007 of over 16 Billion dollars and a profit of over 5 Billion dollars. All from a simple search engine. How can that be possible?

In can be summed up in one word.  Adwords.

If you are not familiar with Adwords, they are the small text ads shown on so many pages around the Internet. What makes them so valuable is that they contextually targeted, meaning the ad matches the content of the page. A page featuring information on Red Wing crocks will only show ads that are relevant to that particular topic. Because it is targeted the website user is much more likely to click on that ad than any other type of ad.

When the ad is clicked, it costs the advertiser a preset amount and Google makes a commission off what is paid to the publisher.

Why didn’t any of us think of that?

If you are having a specialty auction with online bidding it is definitely worthwhile looking into the program as you can set a budget and use it to attract highly targeted traffic to your upcoming sales.

But Google is also extremely important to your business without you ever giving them a cent.

With over 65% of the search engine marketshare, how you show in the search engine results is very important. If you are not on the first page of results, you might as well not bother at times because there is so much competition for the simple generic terms.

To use our Global Auction Guide network as an example, we receive approx 100,000 referrals from Google every month. Much of this traffic is for generic terms such as “Farm Auctions” , “Local Auctions” or “Real Estate Auctions” which are the top 3 referring phrases to our server from search engines. If these are terms that are important to your Internet success then you either have to beat out the websites above you in the search engines to move up the rankings, or join them. You just need to decide what is cost effective for you.

But there is the other end of the search spectrum that cannot be overlooked. The Long Tail of Search refers to the search terms that perhaps only get searched for a few times a week. This is where auction sale bills become very important as you want to have as much text and content as possible to attract the Google Bots that spider the web. In 2008 our server received search referrals to 587,013 different keywords. It is much easier to rank highly for obscure terms than it is for generic terms, but you need alot of unique terms to attract the same amount of traffic that ranking well for a few generic terms will do.

This is what attracts attention to your individual sale bills for upcoming sales and archiving your old sales keeps the search engines coming back forever. This is free traffic to you so you don’t want to delete all the good work you have done by throwing out your old sale bills.

I have a website, that’s all I need.

We have heard that response from auctioneers hundreds of times over the last 8 years since launching the Global Auction Guide Media Group.

Over the next year we will be doing regular column here in the MSAA newsletter that will help explain what you need to do to make the most of your own website, and also how to market your upcoming sales to the most bidders online with an effective and economical marketing program.

This month we start with something that is integral to every website available today.

The Domain Name.

In the Auction business your brand is just as important today as it has always been. Perhaps even more than ever as competition increases for the limited amount of sales.
Your brand is an extension of your reputation and you need to promote your brand online.

YourCompanyNameAuctions.Com is an important place to start. For as little as 9 dollars per year you can register your brand name and make that tiny first step towards the future. Even if you do not have your own website it is perhaps just as important to start here. Protecting your brand is worth 9 dollars per year for every business.  A Domain name is comparable to the sign on your business location. If you choose to move, you can take that sign with you and move to a bigger and better premise someday. There are many reputable domain companies available online such as www.GoDaddy.com or www.DomainSite.com

The first and most important rule of domain names is make sure you are the owner (Registrant). If you have someone else register it then they would own it and it will be impossible to get it back if you choose to go elsewhere. If you want to check your current domain names their is a great site at www.domaintools.com that will tell you more than you you thought you could know about your business.

Advanced Strategies

If you are really interested in being aggressive in domaining, then there are a few other strategies you can use to benefit from the web. Do you own yourtownauctions.com ? How about yourstateauctions.com or yourregionauctions.com ?

Do you have a specific niche that you specialize in ?  How about Moorcroftchinaauctions.com or Redwingauctions.com

These all help to make your brand rank higher in Google without having to purchase premium advertising in the search engines.

We’ll talk about Google and it’s huge influence on how you rank online in our next article.

Speed is perhaps the greatest advantage of buying at auction. The fall of the hammer is a binding contract,  and vendors are bound to sell, so long as the winning bid meets their reserve price.

‘On the fall of the hammer,  contracts are exchanged and this eliminates that awkward and stressful period in a normal property transaction when legal and survey investigations can scupper many a deal well after the price has been agreed,’ says Robyn Peat of George F. White (01388 527966).

At the same time, however, the fall of the hammer legally commits the winning bidder to buy. That’s why the first crucial step to ensure you make the most of an auction is to do your homework.

Start by securing a catalogue as soon as it’s published—usually three to six weeks before the auction day. Once you have found some properties that fit your needs, arrange the viewings. Bear in mind that you may be invited for group viewings, rather than individual ones—this is a standard practice for properties to be auctioned off. Even so, try and strike a personal relationship with the agent handling the auction ‘to get as much insight as possible and offprint information if available,’ recommends Lindsay Burden of Fox Grant (08707 745 600).

It is also worth asking the agents what price they expect the property to achieve. ‘They may or may not tell you but it does no harm to ask,’ says Mr Peat. ‘This can give you a guide as to whether the property has been priced conservatively to draw interest or not.’

If you find a home you’d like to bid on, research the surroundings, says Paul Mooney of Savills (020 7824 9091). ‘Talk to local agents, understand the area, find out prices at which other properties have sold,’ he advises. Ms Burden also advises taking a tour of the neighbourhood a few times ‘to establish that there are no hidden blights to put you off, such as a chicken farm whose smell pervades with a westerly wind.’

Then register your interest with the selling agents and ask for the relevant legal pack, which is usually available two weeks before the auction date. ‘The pack contains a draft contract, title documentation, all the relevant searches, and a copy of the HIP if applicable,’ says Matthew Allen of Fisher German (01295 226 287). ‘It may also contain information relating to the planning history of the property.’

Make sure you examine it in detail with a solicitor and raise any issues or doubt with the auctioneers—the property is sold subject to that legal pack, whether you have read it or not.
‘Check and recheck every scrap of information,’ recommends Mr Peat. ‘There are no second chances and mistakes can be costly.’

Now is also a good time to arrange a detailed survey. ‘Generally a survey will not have been done for you and I would not advise you to rely on another report anyway. You need to arrange for this to be undertaken,’ says Mr Allen.

If you intend to carry out any work that requires planning consent, ‘qualify any third opinions and judgements by making your own independent enquiries of the local authority,’ says Ms Burden. Also speak to several builders to get an idea of costs. In the meantime, Ms Burden adds, ‘keep in contact with the auctioneers to check for any amendments, sale updates or legal notices that may have cropped up.’

It is also important to have your finances sorted out. Because the fall of the hammer heralds the contract exchange, you will be immediately asked to pay a 10% deposit from cleared available funds, and will have to make the rest available within 28 days. This means that, unless you are a cash buyer, says Mr Peat, ‘you must make an application for mortgage funding (prior to the auction).

You cannot bid without having a firm offer of mortgage from a mortgage lender.’ If you are unable to pay at the agreed time for whichever reason, you risk being sued for the full amount plus a compensation.

All these steps, says Mr Peat, ‘will entail you outlaying money on a transaction that you may not be successful in.’ The upside, though, is that, if you are successful, you may be able to ‘acquire a property at or near to the lowest price acceptable to the seller’ through a highly transparent process. Not to mention that,  if you have done all the legwork and got your funding in place,  you may be even able to buy our chosen home before the auction. ‘If you are in a position to finance immediately and sign the contract, this may suit the client,’ says Ms Burden.

With credit becoming harder to obtain, however, some auctioneers, such as Fisher German, are now running conditional auctions, where a non-returnable deposit is paid at the fall of the hammer, but buyers then have six weeks to get their funding approved and two more weeks to complete.

When you have facts and funding straight, it is time to get ready for the auction. Begin from what Mr Mooney calls ‘the Savills mantra’: ‘An unhappy buyer should not commit ,’ he says. ‘If there is even a tiny doubt, you should refrain from bidding.’

If you are happy to proceed, though, try and become familiar with the process. ‘Get some auction room experience,’ says Mr Allen. ‘Attend a couple before dipping your toes.’

On the day itself, bring with you some form of ID ‘for money laundering reasons,’ says Ms Burden, who suggests carrying a passport, driver’s licence or utility bill.

Try to arrive on time, introduce yourself to the auctioneer and ask whether there have been any amendments to the property’s details. The sit in a visible place at the back of the room—like that, you will be able to survey what other bidders are doing while remaining within clear sight of the auctioneer. When the time comes, bid clearly by raising your hand or the auction catalogue—paddles are rarely available!

Once the bidding starts, it is easy to get carried away, so stay calm and have some safeguards in place to avoid going above your budget.

‘Set yourself a limit and stick to it,’ urges Mr Allen. ‘Just because someone else has carried on bidding long after you have stopped, it does not mean the property is worth as much as they are paying for it.’

Mr Peat suggests getting out of the room as soon as you have hit your ceiling, while Mr Allen recommends having someone else bid on your behalf.  Remember that, if you go above your budget and you win, you can’t back out and have to honour the contract.

But what if you win within your budget? Wait a few minutes before uncorking the Champagne to sign the contract and pay the 10% deposit. Your new home will be yours in 28 days.