A few years ago, a famous commercial said:
A do-it-yourself tourist? Not Alpitur? Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow!!!
The same holds true for the DIY sales of used machinery. Let’s see why.
As you probably know already, mmgservice.it is a website dedicated to “buying or selling used stone-working machinery,” where the used machines available are published (both in and outside of Italy). The mmgservice.it site is nothing other than a catalog of used machinery, visible worldwide, where potential customers can find excellent opportunities to buy machines to be installed in their factory or shop.
In this article, I do not want to dwell on the pros and cons of buying a used machine, but I would instead like to reflect on the effectiveness of posting a used machine on our site as opposed to posting it on one or more Facebook groups.
If I have to sell a machine, what’s better for me: entering it in mmgservice or posting it on Facebook?
I’ll post it on Facebook
I often see customers who post photos of the machine they have to sell on Facebook, perhaps in a thematic group such as one for of marble workers or even on the pages of mmg service srl itself. They do this, and that’s all, waiting for someone to contact them. I assure you that if it someone doesn’t contact them within the next 24 hours, the chances of it ever happing become close to zero
Relying on your Facebook post alone is not an effective strategy; it can be a complementary step to other actions, but it’s not enough.
I personally post the used machinery available on Facebook, but unless I implement a paid advertising campaign on the post, it only reaches a tiny portion of potential customers and just for a limited period. The post is displayed in the feed of the customers registered in the group only during the period in which it is published and is displayed along with the thousands of notifications we have in our Facebook timeline.
Perhaps you had a situation similar to this in your feed:
A video of kittens, a fake news posting, a political news posting (perhaps true), sports news, a plate of pasta photographed by a friend, the posting of the machine for sale, another video of kittens, and the cycle starts over again.
Capturing someone’s attention amid thousands of notifications and posts on a Facebook page is very hard. And unfortunately, it’s not very unlikely.
What about tomorrow? What about next week? What about three months from now? That post will no longer be displayed unless you go to the group page and start scrolling through the various posts sorted in a …. chronological manner. Good luck with that!
Let’s see some actual figures
I looked at my Facebook posts over the past year. The organic coverage (i.e., not charged) of the best articles amounts to a maximum of 500/600 people reached. “Reached” means that the post appeared before their eyes, but who knows if they were interested in that machine at that time. To the contrary, it’s very unlikely.
The following image shows the organic coverage of my Facebook posts.
statistics about posts on facebook
What happens if I publish the machine on the mmgservice.it site
This is the scenario:
We receive your e-mail and process it.
We supplement any missing information and perhaps ask you for more data. We arrange the photos to make them more appealing, and if we are not OK with them, we’ll ask you for others. We will defiantly ask you for a picture of the plate and a video.
We’ll publish the machinery on our site. We associate it with the appropriate category and put it on the homepage for a period of time.
Do you know how many people visit our homepage every month? -> about 1500!
And if, for example, your machine to be sold is bridge saw. Do you know how many visits we have in the bridge-saw category? -> about 2000!
The numbers of visits (and the visibility of the post) increase over time; they don’t decrease as they do on Facebook.
That means that if your machine is published for 3 months, 6,000 people will see it. In addition to this, you have to add the people who directly land on your machine’s page entering the Brand and Model via a Google search.
From which countries? -> all of them, potentially.
Your machine’s page is translated into three languages, Italian, English, and Spanish.
Do you know how many machines are sold abroad on average among those published on our site? –> 80%.
Increasing the number of potential customers increases the offers made for that individual machine and therefore raises the possibility of a sale. And you can sell at a higher price. Yes, often the net price we pay for a machine is greater than what the customer on his own would be able to collect selling it independently. This independence entails several uncalculated risks: the risk of mistakes during disassembly, the risk of not knowing how to move and handle the machine, the risk of making mistakes in the export documents (if the machine is sold abroad), and so on.
If we are involved, we take care of all the services related both to the sale, on the one hand, and to the purchase on the other.
The image below shows the number of visits at mmgservice. The figures are related to the visibility of each page and each machine.
Users visiting mmgservice are looking for a used machine. At that precise moment, and probably if they find something convenient and in good condition, they are ready to bear the expense of the purchase.
Visits to the site but much more also
These figures don’t consider the customers who receive our direct calls and reply emails. We propose similar, equivalent, or complementary machines in our reply emails. For example, to a customer asking for a specific polisher we answer with the information regarding the machine plus all possible alternatives to produce an offer as complete as possible.
We always have to try to provide the best machine to potential buyers in terms of quality/price ratio, and one which satisfies their needs.
Above all else, we have to consider the buyer. If there is no potential customer, there is no sense in discussing prices.
I’ve learned one thing over the years: There is definitely someone in the world right now looking for the precise machine you want to sell. The problem is finding that person. And at MMG Service we work every day to increase the likelihood of finding him and making ourselves known to the largest audience as possible in the industry.
So?
If you need to sell your used machine, don’t be like the tourist in the Alpitur commercial.
Send us the machine to be sold (i.e., photos and information). It’s all free, it doesn’t cost anything, and you rely on professionals who work in the industry every day.
Ask around about us. I won’t be the one to tell you we’re the right company; it’s better if you ask your colleagues. Some of them are sure to know us. :-)
No mmgservice? Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow!!!!!!!
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