Tag: facebook marketing

The advertising and promotion technique is breathing new life into the traditional antique business.

According to the latest trend reports, even businesses that are centered around the preservation of the past – that is, through the sale of antiques – are benefiting from what social media marketing has to offer.

Antique galleries and shops are now using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and so on.

This comparatively recent trend of social media marketing is providing a new vitality to a trade that has not changed in a very long time. Many antique dealers are using several different networks in order to better promote their collections and to be able to appeal to a whole new and younger demographic.

This social media marketing trend is becoming much more evident at antique fairs and other events.

For instance when perusing the various booths at the Chicago Antique Fair, this year, it became very evident that many of the participants were looking to social media marketing to be able to hold on to the connections that were made at the event. One prime example was the Chicago based Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, which calls itself the largest auction house in the Midwest, and that is the fifth biggest of its kind in the United States. They have been using Twitter since 2010 and Facebook since 2008, and have now recently added their own Pinterest page.

According to the auction house’s business developer, Laurann Cavenaghi, the main goal of advertising and promoting is to solidify consignments that are high in quality. She pointed out that social media marketing is one of a number of highly effective ways of accomplishing that goal. She stated that “We share our catalogues, promote events, and market our upcoming auctions on Facebook and Twitter.” Cavenaghi went on to add that “It also allow us to reach younger audiences that are becoming increasingly interested in the art and antique markets.”

Social media marketing isn’t limited to larger auction houses and dealers, though. It was clear that even smaller antique dealers are benefitting from this technique. New York’s Rehs Galleries is now run by Lance Rehs, the fourth generation in his family to do so. He also identified interacting with people over social networks as an important element of his daily work.

The data showed that a mere 37 percent feel that their advertising on Facebook is effective.

According to the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report that has just been released, many marketers are not satisfied with the results that they are seeing with their efforts over Facebook.

The report also indicated that many marketers are not using the networks to their greatest potential.

Though it had been expected that the greatest surprise that the marketers would reveal regarding their social media marketing would be the lack of participation, this was not at all the case. Instead, the report’s authors were most taken aback by the number of businesses aren’t tracking the effectiveness of their campaigns so that they aren’t actually aware of the impact that it is having.

Among the study participants, 97 percent said that they were using social media marketing in their campaigns.

Moreover, the 86 percent of the respondents said that they felt that social media marketing was an important part of their overall advertising efforts. When asked specifically about the use of Facebook, it was revealed that 92 percent of the participants were using that network as a part of their advertising and promotions. Forty nine percent of those using Facebook felt that it was the most important of all of the platforms.

However, only 37 percent of those using Facebook social media marketing actually felt that it was effective.

That said, the report underscored the fact that this figure does not represent the number of companies that have actually seen success from their social media marketing over Facebook. Instead, it represents the number that feel that it is effective – not necessarily based on having tracked the impact of their ads and their return on investments.

The reports also pointed out that it is more likely that large organizations will feel that social media marketing over Facebook is effective than smaller or medium sized companies. It was the bigger companies that were most likely to feel that targeted traffic was moving from the platform to their company brand site. Among smaller companies, a considerably lesser impact was noted by the research.