The main aim of a yard sale is to draw in buyers. The facebook page will do this to a large extent and having a Facebook group and linked to that a more general Facebook page will help.
I constructed my Fleetwood Jumble Trail group for people wanting to sell and to advertise their sale with posts on the day. Making a general jumble trail page (Page rather than group) will attract more people to the subject area. I then pinned a Fleetwood Jumble Trail Post to the top of the page. Facebook pages are picked up more frequently, than Facebook groups, in Google searches. I gave my Facebook page a more general name ‘Jumble Trail Events‘ and I also shared other jumble trails on the page to give it more traction. The more events and links a Facebook page has the more it will be circulated by Facebook and Google.
I also looked at other Facebook groups and communities that focused on reselling and recycling. Fleetwood is based in the Northwest of England, just outside of Blackpool, so I looked for FB groups and pages which focused on this and allowed you to post and advertise. One group ‘Manchester & N. West Carboot Sales – Jumble Trail Sales – Table Top Sales’ has over 9K members and I regularly posted The Fleetwood Jumble Trail dates and times in this group with much success and feedback.
Other Facebook Groups included
Fleetwood Chat
Uk Reselling / Reselling Community Group
Fleetwood Selling Page for Local People
Lancashire Suitcase Rummage
Anything Goes Blackpool
Buy/Sell Thornton Cleveleys and Fleetwood
Blackpool and Fylde Coast Selling Page
Car Boot Sales Morecambe Bay Area
Bispham Buy Sell and Swap
Bispham Bargains
Fleetwoods New Sell & Buy
Preesall Car Boot
Carboot Sale Finder
Free Ads
and many many more . I advertised on average three times a day on facebook.
However, I cannot stress enough the importance of charities selling on the jumble trail. Many charities and Churches have an ongoing need to make money at every opportunity for obvious reasons. As long as they are selling from a residential property they can sell on the trail and the benefit of this is that they have their own following which in itself is advertising. The Fleetwood Jumble Trail was great for local Charities as it was free to sell so they kept 100% of the profits they made and we had about 4 charities and a church selling on the trail which they in turn advertised. One of the Charities Cats In Care mentioned the jumble trail in a local newspaper. One Fleetwood resident advertised the event in a free local news letter Community Matters. My point being here is that the more people involved the more advertising will naturally happen.
One of the main take a way’s about free advertising is that posting has to be consistent and your post will be quickly pushed to one side for another post. The best times to post are 7am and 7pm and its best to post daily, most of the time in the same places. Never reply on people to find you and by casting your net wide the more success you will have.
The other form of advertising is sign posting. Buyers who have found their way to Fleetwood may not be familiar with the roads and although they have the map to download – you can make finding the houses on the trail easier with sign posting. I encouraged people to have balloons at the end of their road. After the first jumble trail I noticed that the most successful sales were those people who constantly posted what they were selling on the Fleetwood Jumble Trail Facebook page and other selling sights and also who signposted their sale either with arrows or balloons. People simple out and about would then be alerted to their sale and pop in as well as those on the Trail. This was the difference between a lot of buyers visiting a sale and not many.
Many people did leaflet dropping locally but I’m not sure if, on a small or no budget, this was effective and it was one of the downsides to not having a budget at all. It has to be said that any advertising was good advertising and you will never really know the true extent of any one particular form of advertising was effective when so many were applied.