Finding quality clients who need your estate sale expertise is a bit more complex than finding buyers. One of the questions that estate sale company owners like you ask themselves is "how do I get more and better selling clients?"
Many of the items sold at estate sales are antiques, but the way you advertise your company and its services cannot be old school. Your advertising strategy must adapt to changes in technology and use all the tools available to make it easier for prospective clients to find you.
When was the last time you opened the yellow pages to find a company or place? Well, the same principle applies here. The first thing you should do, is to allow your prospective clients to find your business online. There are many ways to achieve this goal and some of them don't cost an arm and a leg; in fact, Google My Business
is the option that Google Inc provides to list your company information on the internet and it does not cost you a penny!
Low cost and high ROI advertising
When you google "estate sale companies near me," do you see your name on the list? It is imperative for your prospects to find you on the web an if you have an advertising budget, we suggest that you promote your business in Google Ads (previously Google Adwords), Instagram, Youtube and your Facebook for Business. Even althought the usage of Facebook has declined from 67% of Americans ages 12 and older to 62%, there are still millions of americans who turn to this social media outlet every day.
When it comes to digital advertising, nowadays you can select the regions, states, cities and even the postal codes where you want to advertise your company online; this means that you can choose to advertise your company only in the cities where you can provide your service. You can also specify demographics like age group and gender. For all these alternatives, you can also setup a daily or monthly budget so you don't exceed your advertising budget.
Tip:Google Ads offers "Smart Campaigns" which is a campaign option that is setup based on "Business Category" (estate sales) that can be easily configured even for new Google Ads users with some basic computer knowledge.
With most digital advertising campaigns, you don't pay when your ad is displayed but when your prospective client clicks on your ad and visits your website (this is called CPC or cost-per-click), making this method of advertising ideal and providing high ROI.
Let us know if your need assistance listing your estate sale company on the Internet or if you want advanced techniques to get your company in front of your prospective clients, we can help you with that!
Follow your prospects after they leave your website
If a prospect comes to your office and requests information about the estate sale service that you provide, wouldn't it be nice to have your sales expert to follow the prospect for a number of blocks explaining additional advantages of using your company instead of your competitors?
In digital advertising, this is called "remarketing" and it means that when a prospect visits your website, or Facebook Business Page, your advertising campaign will follow that visitor for a number of days. This is similar to when you search for a pair of shoes on the internet and you start seeing those shoes everywhere you go on your PC or smart phone. This service is available to everyone and you should take advantage of it. We will provide more details in another post.
Go mobile!
In 2018, the use of smartphones for online searches reached 58% compared to 42% of desktop computers. This only means one thing, you must make sure that your company website is mobile responsive. A mobile responsive website adapts to the small screen of tablets and smart-phones making it easy for visitors to read "and understand" the content of your website.
Update your website
Like vehicles, website designs are also trendy, and what looked like a great design a couple of years ago, may look "outdated" or out of style today and oftentimes better designed websites win customers over those that look old. Most of the time, simple things like changing the palette of color of your website could make it look refreshed. Don't forget to publish awards, certifications and positive customer testimonials, these last can help you gain the trust of your clients.
Tip: Your EverythingEstateSales.com PRO account is provided with a company website that is mobile responsive. Crete your FREE account today!
Provide value
Wouldn't you love if every prospect who visited your website would contact you and sign your estate sale contract? Unfortunately that is not the case. In a good number of cases, an estate sale is a highly emotional situation for the client. Fortunately for the client, the use of the Internet has made it easier to explore multiple companies to find the one that offers a better service with greater value. The last thing your client wants is to deal with problems during this emotional situation. Winning your client's trust is not just a matter of money (your commission), it also has a lot to do with the level of service and the value you will provide during the process.
Here are some of the things you can do to provide more value to your clients and win them over your competitors:
Provide a clear and easy to understand contract that fully discloses the services you will provide and ALL fees associated to your service. This one is very important and can win you lots of new clients over your competitors. This creates trust.
Schedule automatic emails to be sent to your prospects once they request information. Your EverythingEstateSales.com virtual office allows you to schedule auto-responder emails that are sent to your prospects based on the schedule that you specify. This will keep your company front and center.
Some of your prospects may be going through an emotional situation. Scheduling these emails in your virtual office to be sent out automatically the day in which they request information as well as 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days later will help them remember about your company.
Each of the emails should have new and meaningful content related to the estate sale process in general as well as about your company. This will add value.
Closing time
Assuming you did your homework right, and you are ready to sign the contract with your client, DO NOT introduce new terms or conditions to your contract unless extremely necessary. If that is the case, take the necessary time to explain to your client the reason why some conditions have changed. Take note of the situation and try avoiding it in the future. The less "last minute changes" the more chances you have of a successful transaction with your client.
Final idea
These tips are not intended to tell you how to run your estate sale business, but to provide guidance about important topics that will help you bring more traffic to your company website and finally close more estate sale contracts. Please contact us if you have questions or if you need help signing up.
EverythingEstateSales.com was crated by SX3 Software LLC, a Phoenix based company with over 20 years of experience designing and developing software solutions.
