I'm in charge of the Dexter (you guys know him... the Showtime series) prop auction and we have oddly been struggling to get bids. I thought I had hit all the marketing checkpoints on the head. The site was on major sites like the Huffington Post, the major fan-sites and Twitters, and a bunch of nuanced marketing ideas made up the marketing. Showtime has no involvement with marketing or the auction besides providing hundreds props so it's more of a "small guy" operation. The props are mostly great pieces to own and the ones that aren't are priced right. Can anybody advise us on moving in the right direction? Dexter a huge 15+ million (probably really 20+ following so there has got to be an option we're missing. No, I didn't find Facebook ads to provide a bang for their buck although they make the most sense of all paid advertising for this. I've seen plenty of other cable TV auctions earning several times what we have been (the majority of props have no bids!) so suggestions to move in that direction would be really helpful. (By the way, my last thread on this was removed likely because I offered compensation for help -- which I'm not offering here -- so I'd appreciate a heads-up and a reason if this one is removed so I do not break any rules. I checked he rules and it seems this post is fine.) Thanks! The auction's at dexterauction.com
Are there Dexter fan clubs, forums, or dedicated websites? You should be targeting them with ads, of course, if you have not already. Also, can you get a special deal from Showtime for some ads running on thei website or even cable TV shows that Dexter fans might be viewing? I quickly went to your auction site and, to me (someone who has never seen the show), most of the "featured" props are things that only a devoted fan would know as they probably only showed up on the screen in a viewable size on rare occasions. So, my advice above focuses on targeting your lead generation efforts to your highest probability prospects. By the way, what PR efforts have you tried? PR can be very effective and is low cost.
Showtime is selling similar props for hundreds more; several times more. Prices are a bargain for a show with 20+ million fans. Need to take promotion to the next level.
Thanks for your attention. In terms of PR I've distributed multiple press releases through free services and found all the email addresses of relevant sites and started directly emailing them as well. Also have a partnership with the main Dexter fan sites. Tried getting Showtime but even if we raised the donation level they weren't interested in promoting.
Okay, so it seems like you have covered your bases with the ideas that I suggested. Have you tried PPC ads on Google and Bing? If you target longtail keywords that only Dexter fans would search for, I doubt that the bidding would be very competitive, so you might get some targeted traffic cheap.
One other crazy thought: would it be possible to get some of the stars to tweet about the auction or post about it on their FB page or otherwise promote it? With the charity angle, it might be attractive for the stars and it would not hurt their brand to have their old props selling fast and high.
I've been waiting to find them online on Twitter and was actually planning on doing this today. It'd be difficult to contact them on Facebook. Twitter too but it's a thought. Any tips to get their attention? Might try getting a few RT's for that but that's about it. I could get other people to Tweet them as well about it... I'd like to try ads but we don't want to spend anymore money on the auction.
I am no expert on the entertainment industry, but I think that contacting the celebrity about this type of thing will require more than just a tweet. These folks have agents and PR people who are supposed to deal with contact from the public and also to screen for business opportunities, so I would research as to who they are and try to connect with them first. Of course, be prepared with a 30-second sales pitch as to why this will be good for the celebrity to do, etc. They would be the people who could connect you with the celebrity if they like the idea.
Because you mentioned a willingness to pay for some services in your original post, I assumed that you had some sort of minimal budget. Because I believe that you will be in a noncompetitive keyword market, I am thinking that you could budget $10 per day at $.25 per click which every day would get you 40 new prospects who were searching for something about the show. Note that my bid numbers could be way off if I am missing something about the competitiveness of the keywords.