Marketing Business Listings for Business Brokers

What are some tips to marketing businesses for sale online?  A lot these tips also apply to online marketing in general.

When it comes to marketing a business listing online there are many sources, such as www.Bizben.com, www.bizquest.com, www.bizbuysell.com, www.craigslist.org, etc.

The challenge is that a lot of businesses are listed on these websites, so how do you ensure that your listing(s) stand out?

• Keywords, Keywords, and more Keywords.
• Use pictures in your ads.
• Post & Revise ads on the Highest Traffic Days.
• Use Twitter to promote your listing(s) to the search engines and general public.

• Speaking of Social Media, don’t forget about a Facebook Fan Page for your business.  Facebook Fan Pages for your business are a great way to raise awareness from your social circle of friends and encourage referrals from them.

• The same applies to your LinkedIn Profile and your LinkedIn Company Page.  Both are ideal places to promote your business and let your LinkedIn network know that you are marketing specific listings.

Let’s start with Keywords. Put relevant keywords in the body of your advertisement and in the title.  One major Keyword is the geographical location of the business(es) being marketed for sale.  Try to list the geographic locale as precise as possible, because the search engines are striving to deliver as local as possible results to people.  For example even if someone in Downey searches ‘Manufacturing Business for Sale’ without adding ‘in Downey’ to their search query, their search results will show ads and listings that have the word ‘Downey’ & ‘Manufacturing Business for Sale’ in them.  If your ad just says California or Los Angeles County, then your ad will be displayed less frequently.

This bring up One major caveat, which involves confidentiality.  When using many keywords and listing geographic location, it can be easy for people to figure out which business is listed for sale.  This can be damaging as vendors, competitors and customers can find out, which can have negative repercussions for the business.  So, keyword targeting has to be done carefully to avoid exposing your client and their business to this potentially adverse effect.

Other Keywords to focus on are using industry terms in the ad.  For example, with Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing businesses, common industry terms are ‘chemical etching, Heavy Metal Backed, multi-layer boards, etc.’  Again, these are search terms that Knowledgeable buyers are likely to use, so using them in your ad copy increases the likelihood of Google and other search engines matching you to them.  Think of the search engines as matchmakers, and you will be better understand the psyche behind successfully using online marketing.

Avoid posting ads on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  These three days have far less internet search traffic for business related queries.  Sunday through Wednesday have much higher search volume, which means you get greater exposure.

This also applies to those websites that offer a ‘refresh’ of older ads.  Refresh on the highest volume days.  Refreshes are where your ad gets to go back to the ‘top’ of the search results.

As for using Craigslist, there are a few things you need to be aware of.  One is that the ratio of Non-Serious buyer to serious buyers is much higher on Craigslist than other strict business for sale sites, which means you have to be stringent on filtering the time wasting leads that come in.  Another thing to be aware of is the fact that ads placed on the site become very old and get pushed to the bottom very quickly, so you have to refresh the ads every few days.  The way to do this without being spammy, is to have multiple ad copies, so you can cycle through them every few days, and each time the ad will have fresh content.

Using pictures in your ads.  Again, this raises confidentiality issues, but these are a little easier to solve.  The pictures can be limited non-identifying pictures, because at the very minimum, the pictures are useful in attracting eyeballs to the ad, which increase the frequency of clicks.  More clicks mean more potential buyers looking, which of course you need to find the right buyer(s).

Use Twitter to promote your listing to the search engines.  Major search engines provide twitter results, so if you insert keywords into your tweets, you can attract search traffic clicks.  What you want to do is insert a shortened hyperlink to one of your ads into your tweets with appropriate keywords mixed in.  There are services that will help automate the sending of these listing promoting tweets.  It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but there are tools that, if properly utilized, can help you tremendously leverage social media and internet for promotional purposes.

When it comes to social media, now we’ll discuss Facebook, which of course is the most highly trafficked site along with google.com.  While Facebook is certainly designed around your personal social network of friends and family, there is a very public aspect to Facebook in the Facebook Fan Pages.  Set up a Facebook Fan Page and start to promote your business and businesses you have for sale there.   As for your regular Facebook page, add as many friends and colleagues as you are comfortable with.  This is because your Facebook contacts can be a referral source for you when you post work related topics that they might have a friend or colleague to refer to you.  Bing.com is heavily relying on Facebook for it’s search results, which gives you another reason to use Facebook as a marketing and content distribution platform.

The same applies to your LinkedIn Profile and your LinkedIn Company Page.  Your LinkedIn profile is an ideal place to update your LinkedIn contacts about your new listings and other relevant business activity.  A LinkedIn Company Page is the appropriate part of LinkedIn to promote your business and the products and services you offer.

For more information on how Just Elementary, Inc. can help you with your social marketing efforts, please contact our Client Care Manager Sonia Chhabra at (888) 926-9193 or by email cs@justelementary.com