How to Advertise for Your Garage Sale

One man's trash is another man's treasure. This idiom perfectly describes the joy that is a garage sale. While you may consider an old heart-shaped coffee mug one too many for your pantry, it may be just what another is looking for to complete their quirky collection. A garage sale is the perfect way to get rid of old, unwanted stuff and make some money out of it. But how do you get people to actually come and help take all this stuff off your hands? You advertise. You advertise big time! You let everyone know that you're coming up with this to-die-for garage sale that no one in their right mind would want to miss. You make it out to be the 'garage sale of the century' and we tell you how.

Use the Internet

The Internet is and will probably remain the most hassle-free way of advertising, be it your garage sale or a corporate giant's next big product. There are scores of websites that offer listings for garage sales. Craigslist and eBay are two prominent websites that offer this service. You can also Google your town or city and check for local, community-based websites that will let you post a classified. Yard Sale Search is another great website that offers listings for yard and garage sales throughout the country. In addition to dedicated portals, you can also use your Facebook account to spread the word about your forthcoming event. Create a page, an event, a group, or even an ad that lets people on your friends' list know that you will be organizing this huge garage sale. When you use these portals, ensure that you describe at least a few of the items you intend to sell. Keep the descriptions short, but attractive. Get them hooked, and you'll see them flocking!

List in Newspaper Classifieds

Another tried, tested, and quite successful way of advertising a garage sale is in a newspaper classified section. Contact your local newspaper, and check how much they charge. The tricky part here is adhering to the word limit according to your budget. Every word you use will count. So, use them wisely. Say as much as you can in as little as you can. It's much easier than it sounds.

Make Awesome Posters

While there are other easier ways to advertise, nothing beats the charm of a good ol' neon poster beckoning passersby to this grand garage sale where they might find the bargain of their dreams. To ensure that your sale attracts hordes of people, pay attention to the following points while making posters.

Use bright-colored paper. If people cannot see the poster, they won't bother reading it.
Avoid using multiple colors. A single color will help people identify with your sale.
All your posters should look alike. So, if you're not sure if your 8-year-old kid or the neighbor's teenage daughter will get it right, do it yourself. Printing is an option, but it's just more expensive.
Use a good quality, permanent marker to write on the poster. Ensure that the writing is neat, tidy, and legible, even from a distance.
Include all and only the necessary details on the poster. The date, address (with landmarks if required), and your name and contact number are the most important pieces of information that should go on it. Anything else is supplementary and shouldn't crowd the poster.
Put them up on busy streets that lead to and away from your house. This way, the posters will be visible to people traveling both ways.
Make sure there are big arrows guiding people in the direction towards your garage sale. You can also try something humorous like putting up posters that say 'If you're looking for ABC's garage sale, you're going the wrong way' on roads that are away from your house. You never know; it might just interest someone.
After you put your posters up, drive past them and see if you can read them clearly. If you can't, chances are no one else will be able to either.

Make Fliers

Fliers are also one of the best ways to advertise the garage sale. They could be just down-sized versions of the awesome posters that you're putting up, so follow all the pointers listed above for them as well. If you're getting your posters printed, then getting them in a smaller size shouldn't be a problem. In fact, it will be more convenient to do so. If you're making your posters by hand, you can try something different with the fliers. Maybe a different color or a different tone. You could even offer a free drink or snack for everyone who visits the sale. Put these fliers up on notice boards in convenience stores, cafés, community centers, schools, and any other place that sees a regular flow of visitors. Trees and electric poles (if permitted) are also great spots to put up fliers. Make sure you paste them on the poles. Using staples might pose a hazard for linemen.

Plan the sale well in advance so that you can clearly allot enough time to devising a good advertising strategy. On the day of the sale, make sure you have a big sign right in front of your house welcoming people to the best garage sale ever! Apart from advertising, make sure that the area you use for the sale is clean and tidy. If you're using your lawn, make sure the grass is cut and the soil isn't too wet. As a source of entertainment, you can play some soft music in the background. This will set the mood as you mingle with everyone helping them out with their purchases.

The advertising strategies mentioned above will be most effective if at least two or more are combined. Just remember to take all the signs, posters, fliers, and listings down after the big day, unless you want people calling at unearthly hours to inquire if the sale is still on.

Programmatic advertising buying

Programmatic advertising buying — that is, using machines instead of humans to purchase digital advertising — is the talk of the digital media world. In 2013, programmatic ad spending accounted for 15% of digital display spending in Canada. In the United States, some analysts are predicting that, by 2017, programmatic will account for 30% of ad spending, a jump from 21% last year. Proponents of programmatic say automated ad buying is a necessary efficiency in the lightspeed realm of digital impressions, freeing up human power to focus on campaign optimisation and overarching advertising strategies.
True, but not the whole story.
Programmatic is here to stay; few will argue with that assertion. It makes sense in many situations, especially when aligned with efforts on the ground. Established business models, like broadcast advertising, can be programmatic because quality brands understand the value of quality content and accept that value will rise year-over-year.
We are not there yet with digital media, and building the advertising value case for premium content is an ongoing process of education.
Programmatic direct or premium direct buys work well if the value is retained. It can save copious amounts of time on both the buyer and seller side of the equation; nobody needs to be convinced of the value of technology that minimises the tedium of making manual insertion orders.
However, programmatic buying’s time-saving efficiencies don’t necessarily translate into the best ad buying and selling model for all situations. In the same way that ad networks make it difficult to control the value wrapped around premium content, programmatic has its limitations.
There is an imbalance between traditional advertising and digital that has reduced the value proposition on both sides. Ad networks are driving down cost-per-impression (CPM) rates, and advertisers are getting poor value because of an increase in fraudulent views.
The result is a system that is currently not serving the best interests of content owners, publishers, or advertisers.
Before we can begin to address this market segment programmatically, people will first have to become experts and stabilise this digital ad environment.
As complex as computer algorithms have become, they don’t fully replace the nuances of person-to-person communication. Evidence is trickling in that suggests all is not well in the rapidly developing programmatic ad-buying sector.
This past February, The New York Times announced it was discontinuing its executive programmatic advertising position, confirming the newspaper publisher’s uneasy relationship with a system that allows advertisers to bid down the price of inventory, as reported in Ad Exchanger.
In his dissection of The New York Time’s fourth-quarter 2013 earnings, CFO James Follo pointed the finger at programmatic for at least a share of the blame for the publisher’s digital advertising challenges.
What’s the solution? I believe there’s a strong argument in favour of private exchanges that give ad representatives, who manage the relationship between the brands and the agencies, confidence that there will be absolute pricing alignment in content inventory.
In other words, if an ad rep is selling, say, U.S. National Football League (NFL) highlight content in the market direct for US$50 CPM, it will be available on a private exchange at an equal CPM rate.
Premium content combined with premium publisher audiences will drive value to the advertiser. Private exchanges must back market offerings, leaving it up to the buyer to dictate the form of the buy.
I’m definitely for programmatic in its most basic form of direct sales, but only if the technology creates buying efficiencies and supports in-person, human-to-human negotiated direct market rates for your inventory. If programmatic buying can thrive in this role, then I say bring it on. If not, premium inventory will take a hefty hit