Continue reading »]]> Last week, I worked a live online auction.  The auction was held in a large 150,000 square foot u-shaped building.  There were a few locations within the building where my aircard had a heck of a time maintaining good reception.  As a solution to the problem, I upgraded my aircard to the new Compass 597.  I was instantly impressed, as my speeds soared to new heights never before reached on my other aircard.  I used the aircard on Saturday at an auction, and had very good success, and excellent response times.

At the end of last week, I was informed that an auction I’ll be doing next week was going to provide me with some challenges.  The challenge was/is there is no cellular coverage in the building.  Although, immediately out the front door, there is tremendous coverage.  At least, that’s what the coverage map seems to indicate.  My solution to this problem was a bit more creative.

I picked up a high gain booster antenna, and a Cradlepoint CTR500 EVDO Travel Router.  This allows me to do several things.  The first is to plug the antenna into my existing aircard, and increase the reception by one to two bars.  This will be important for those less than good signal moments.  The second is that the router allows me to plug the aircard directly into it.  This allows me to setup the router and aircard in an area where I have the best signal.  I then can either broadcast the signal wirelessly with the router, or use my Ethernet radios to transmit the wireless signal a long distance (60 miles direct line of sight, or through up to 10 walls).

With the upcoming auction where there is no connection inside.  I’m going to setup my travel router, aircard and antenna near an outside door.  In theory, I’ll have a good strong signal from that location.  I’m then planning on hooking the router to my Ethernet radio, and point to point broadcasting the Ethernet signal to my laptop which will be hooked to my other Ethernet radio.  It may sound like a cumbersome arrangement, but I’m hopeful this arrangement will allow me to increase the effectiveness of my wireless setup in those locations where signals are hard to come by.

Continue reading »]]> On the heals of declining revenues, eBay is beginning to refocus from online auctions to a “buy-it-now” platform.  From the article, I gleaned some interesting tidbits that apply to our traditional auction business.

But as the business of buying and selling over the Internet has matured, the thrill and novelty of auctions have given way to the convenience of one-click purchases. Hershenson will hold his last eBay auction June 3. “The auctions are nothing like what they once were,” he says. “They won’t ever come back.”

…

At the current pace, this may be the first year that eBay generates more revenue from fixed-price sales than from auctions, analysts say. “The bloom is well off the rose with regard to the online-auction thing,” says Tim Boyd, an analyst with American Technology Research. “Auctions are losing a ton of share, and fixed price has been gaining pretty steadily.”

…

What happened to auctions? Not only do shoppers want convenience, they’re also looking for value. And the proliferation of pricing information online has made it easier for consumers to bargain-hunt and lessened the need to risk overbidding in an auction.

As a traditional auctioneer, some of the above information is concerning to me.  However, most of the commentary doesn’t surprise me.  In fact, it confirms what I’ve believed for a few years.  The auction industry is completely different from what it was several years ago, and it needs to continue to evolve if it is to remain the first choice to for individuals to sell their assets.

“The bloom is well off the rose with regard to the online-auction thing.”  Scary.  The traditional auction industry has only begun to grasp the “online-auction thing.”  This year marks the first year where there are as many (or more) online only auctions in the local papers as there are live auctions.  The scary thing is that the bloom is off the rose for most industries, yet the bloom has only begun in the auction industry.  

“What happened to auctions?  Not only do shoppers want convenience, they’re also looking for value.”  This has always been true.  Nothing has changed here, except for a how much convenience “shoppers” want.  It used to be that an auction was a day long activity.  Buyers showed up early, and spent the day at the auction looking for value.  Now buyers show up minutes before their item of desire (if they know when it will sell), and leave shortly after the item sells.  In our experience, the majority of buyers leave an auction by 1pm – regardless of the start time.  We’re now experimenting with earlier start times (8:30 in some cases) to leverage this pattern.

I’m not completely convinced it’s the convenience factor that “happened to auctions.”  Rather, I am convinced it’s the busy factor of life.  Buyers overwhelmingly indicate they enjoy auctions.  However, they have so many other commitments (irons in the fire, if you will) that they cannot spend an entire day waiting for an item to sell.  Perhaps, this points to auctions being an inconvenient way to find value.  I’m not convinced.  If you can’t spend the day, all companies will allow a buyer to leave a bid on an item, and most will allow a buyer to bid via phone on an item.  In some instances, auctions include online bidding (pre-bidding), and live online bidding.  All are convenient ways to participate in an auction without the time commitment.

We’re continually looking for ways to adapt our business and increase the convenience factor while maintaining value for both our buyers and sellers.  Earlier start times are just one step.  Other steps we’re considering are the inclusion of online bidding (pre-bidding) on major items, and online only auctions (eBay style – despite the bloom being off the rose).  All three steps are an effort to make auctions more convenient to buyers, while maintaining prices for sellers.  I’ve got another idea that I’ll explore another time concerning “buy-it-now” options for live auctions.

Continue reading »]]> MediaBuyerPlanner has the breakdown of the recent 2008 State of the Marketer report.  Highlights include:

Online advertising spend is expected grow at a rapid rate, with 90 percent of marketers saying they will continue to increase their direct online advertising budgets – and 15 percent saying they will “radically” increase online ad spend.

Moreover, some 78 percent of marketers say they will increase their social media spend; 74 percent say they will increase their direct email spend; and 65 percent say they will increase their mobile texting/SMS spend.

Overall, more than 40 percent of marketers have radically increased their budgets for online advertising from three years ago.

If you haven’t already figured it out, big business is moving online in a big way in the next half decade.  What this means for the traditional marketing mediums of newspaper and magazine, I’m not sure.  However, I do know it means our marketing of auctions and real estate needs to continue to evolve towards an increased online presence.

While we’ve added a facebook page for our company, and have discussed a regular blog feature to our website, we’ve not yet begun to spend significant amounts in direct online advertising.  We do include our higher end properties in large targeted online marketing campaigns, and our smaller projects all feature targeted online marketing.  However, In order to stay competitive, and ahead of the curve, it will increasingly become important to move our marketing dollars from newspaper and magazine mediums to online mediums.

To illustrate this point, our website has received over 18,000 unique visitors in the past 9 months.  Of this traffic 30% came directly to the site.  The other 70% came to the site either by a search engine or referral from another web site.  In fact, our top five traffic sources are: Google (31% of all traffic – with 8 of the top 10 search words our business name or an iteration of the name); direct traffic (30%); midwestauctions.com (5% – an online auction portal where all our auctions are advertised); kstp.com (5% – a television story in which I was interviewed concerning the auction of the Armstrong-Quinlan Mansion); and oldhouses.com (4% – an online ad campaign for the Armstrong-Quinlan auction).

If we spend 70% of our marketing dollars in print media that drives 30% of our online traffic, and 30% of our marketing dollars in online media that drives 70% of our online traffic, what would the results be if flipped the spending?  Would we drive the growth of our business?  Would we reach an entirely new clientele that would sustain our growth, and push our company to the next level?