11 Ways to Market Your Estate Sale Company!

1. Google My Business
If you haven’t registered your company with Google My Business, you should do it today. If you don’t have a physical address, make sure to add your company as a “service” based business and select the area you serve. By registering with Google My Business, you’re greatly increasing your chances of showing up in the local search results you see in a Google search. The bonus here is that Google local search results are shown at the top of the page.

2. Incorporating Reviews
Reviews are a fantastic way to show off how your company is doing. They’re also a great way to learn how you can improve. There are many tools like the White Spark review gathering tool that you can use to encourage your customers to leave reviews. There’s nothing better than word-of-mouth advertising. Having a large number of great reviews doesn’t just help attract shoppers to your sales, it also tells a potential client how awesome you are and that you have a following. Load up on great reviews!

3. Building or Updating Your Website
If you don’t already have a website, you should close this article now and get one! The internet has changed the game on how people search for and find information. You need to have some type of web presence. Websites give a potential client a way to connect with you through a web search. If all they find is a page on a directory site with only your phone number, they won’t make the same type of connection with your company as they would by finding your website. It’s all about making a connection to the person searching online, so you can persuade them to find out more about you and your company.

4. Gathering Content
One of the hardest parts of social media is knowing what to post. If you start thinking like a marketer, you’ll find that knowing what to post is actually pretty easy. Start with some of these ideas as a basis for your posts. Pick content that tells a story, informs your readers, allows you and your followers to celebrate together, teaches them something, asks your audience for feedback, or gives something away. You can also mix and match these criteria. You could post your sale listings, while making sure to inform your followers of what they’ll see, when the sale takes place, and where it’s located. Has something funny happened lately? Did you find a unique item at your upcoming sale? You could post something like, “Check out this awesome 1950s kitchen item we found hidden in the back closet of our upcoming sale!” There’s always a story somewhere. Talk about the history of an item in your next sale. Tell readers about your best find as a liquidator. Talk about an item in your next sale that would make a great repurpose project! Engage your followers by asking questions. Everyone wants to talk about themselves. Show your expert skills by posting about specific types of items you’re knowledgeable about.

5. Social Media
Take all of your content ideas and start posting them to your social media accounts. Get into the habit of posting at least once a week at first, then progress to two or three times a week. With Facebook, you don’t want to post too much or your posts could become overwhelming. In the long run, quality is always better than quantity. Remember that with social media, you’ll always have failures. Don’t let that discourage you. You won’t know how a piece of content will do until after you’ve posted it. Many times at EstateSales.NET, we’ve had a piece we thought would do well that failed and a piece we were unsure about that did fantastic. The idea is to understand your followers (which are the people that come to your sales) and give them content they want to engage with. With social media, it’s all about engagement. This is the number that means the most. It’s different for different industries, but I usually say that if you see 5% engagement in a post on your Facebook Analytics, you’re doing well.

6. Branded Material
Branded material can get expensive, but there are several things you should think about investing in - business cards, yard signs, and flyers for advertising your mailing list. You may also consider banners, tags, and t-shirts. These are some solid tools you use to increase your company’s brand awareness.

7. Grow Your Email List
Growing your email list is a fantastic way to connect to your followers. Use your email list to inform your followers of when and where your sales are taking place. An easy way to start building your list is by having a paper sign-up sheet at your sales’ checkout areas. You can also add an email notification sign-up page to your website.

8. Targeted Facebook Ads
Use targeted Facebook ads to find shoppers that might not know about your service. You can tailor your ads to individuals that fit into certain criteria in a specific location. For example, you could target individuals that like estate sale related content in your area with your sale ads. You can use this tool as another way to get the word out about your sales. A word of warning though, you’ll really want to keep track of how much it costs per new customer acquired to decide if Facebook advertising is right for your company. You should try several different ads before giving up if you don’t immediately see the results you’re expecting. If you continue to not see results, you may want to reevaluate Facebook advertising as a tool for your company.

9. Grow Your List of Citations and Check for Corrections.
Citations are very important to internet marketing. Check out our previous article that goes into detail about the use of citations, here. Citations are good for SEO and for directing people to your company. Citations could include Google My Business, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, EstateSales.NET, etc. A citation is a listing in which your company's information is part of a database. You want to make sure your citations all match and are correct. You don’t want to give a potential client bad contact information. Google tends to reward companies in search that have legitimate, matching citations. It’s a way of proving the legitimacy of a company.

10. Brand Your Estate Sale Company
Creating a brand for your company is a major step toward growing your estate sale company. The public has been trained to embrace and connect to brands. By branding your company, you can help make this connection with your customers and potential clients. Branding is extremely important. It’s what you tell the world about your company along with the emotion a client or a customer feels when they see your logo or think about your company. To embrace branding, start by developing an overall theme for your company. What will my logo look like? What is my color scheme? What do I want to communicate? I usually suggest making a list of words and phrases that describe your company. Take a look at color pallets and take note of colors that you think represent your company. Think about where you’ll incorporate your brand elements; in your signs, business cards, website, flyers, etc. If you’re not graphically inclined, you may need to contact a graphic designer and give them your ideas. Tell them that you’re trying to brand your company. Have a logo and a color pallet created. Have them show you what a logo looks like on multiple forms of advertising, like on banners, flyers, and business cards. Branding can be one of the hardest parts of marketing, but if you invest the time and the money into your company’s branding, you’ll really separate yourself from your competition.

11. Make Sure to Utilize Features Included With Your EstateSales.NET Account
There are several features in your EstateSales.NET account that can save you time and help you market your estate sale company. The first thing you should do is upload your company testimonials to the site. This will place your testimonials on your company profile page for potential clients to see. If you conduct business in multiple cities be sure to add those cities to your company profile from within your account. When customers go to Find a Company, this makes your company show up in more cities -- making you more likely to be found by a potential customer. Start email marketing using our fully CAN-SPAM compliant email newsletter marketing system. Also, make sure you’ve completely filled out your EstateSales.NET profile with your company’s contact information and social media profiles.