If you’re taking your charity auctions online, you need a whole new strategy. The steps involved in planning an online auction differ from hosting a live one.
When planning your online auction, you need to know your audience, expand your reach, and focus on engaging your bidders. Marketing your online charity auction properly is also critical for success.
If you’ve decided to move your fundraising efforts online, then here are some top tips and tricks to help you plan a successful online auction to raise funds for your nonprofit.
First off, it is important to understand your audience. Know what they want and what type of auction would work best for them. There are several different types of online auctions to choose from. So, knowing what your audience would respond best to is important.
You also need to make sure that your auction items appeal to your audience specifically. This is why it is helpful to have a diverse range of items so that you can attract the attention of many people with different interests. We’ll get into this point a little more later on though.
When hosting an online charity auction, you also need to consider how tech-savvy your audience is. Make sure that the bidding process isn’t difficult and that your bidders know exactly what to click to make a bid.
If your website or the online auction software you use is too difficult to navigate, potential bidders will most likely click away.
Hosting an online auction requires a few different considerations than hosting a live one. These include the name of your online auction, the URL, the bidding methods, and list types.
The name of your online auction is important. You want it to be easy to find and memorable. So if someone sees one of your marketing campaigns or an advertisement for your auction they’ll remember what to search for.
Many people may overlook the URL when planning an online auction. But, having a long URL with lots of numbers, letters, and symbols, may confuse your bidders and look like an untrustworthy link.
Make sure that your online auction URL is simple and includes the title of your auction event and your organization’s name. This way, the link looks more credible and people will know without a doubt that they are in the right place.
When planning your online auction, you need to decide whether you want to preview your items in advance to generate some excitement. Listing your items as ‘view only’ lets people browse through them without being able to make a bid yet. Then, when your auction begins, you change the list type to allow for bidding.
You might also want to categorize different items so that people can easily find items that they may be interested in.
Online auctions allow for a much wider reach than traditional live auctions. This is because there are no physical/geographical limits on an online platform.
So, by hosting an auction online, you can reach your supporters from all over the world. This means that you can attract more bidders to take part and raise more money.
While this is a great tactic, it isn’t always practical. If you have physical auction items, you need to consider the shipping costs. If your items are vouchers for organized activities with local companies, then attracting bidders from other countries wouldn't work.
So, when implementing your online marketing campaigns, it is important to consider these factors.
When procuring your auction items, you want to make sure that you get a variety of different things. This will help you to appeal to many different people. If you have a wide variety, you will be able to draw more people from various demographic segments to your auction.
The price range of your items is also important. You want to make sure that you have items that anyone can bid on. This too will help attract many more people to your auction.
Marketing your online auction is essential as it can make or break your fundraising efforts. Your marketing campaigns need to be specific and targeted to draw people to your online event.
It is also important that you start marketing well in advance so that people have plenty of time to preview your items before the auction begins.
Personalized marketing has proved effective time and time again. So, it’s a good idea to segment your audience and send more personalized, targeted messages to different groups.
People respond to different types of messages. Thus, by doing this, you can help ensure that you are appealing to multiple segments within your target audience.
Keeping people engaged is also a crucial part of planning an online auction. To keep your bidders engaged, you can provide backstories on rare items to garner more interest and keep the bidding going.
Because people need to get notified when they are outbid, this automatically helps to keep bidders engaged as it builds some suspense.
Just like with a live auction, you need to make sure everything looks good online. Having quality photos of your auction items and just making sure that the layout and style of your website or web-page are visually appealing can help encourage more people to bid.
Using auction software, like BiddingOwl, can help take some of the stress out of this process. All functionality of an online auction is already taken care of - so all you would need to do is customize the website to suit your organization’s branding and that's it!
There are many different aspects of planning an auction online. These tips and tricks should give you a good idea of how to plan your online auction so that you can start raising more funds today!
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