As the president of Kompolt Online Auction Agency, Jenny Kompolt runs eBay auctions for some big players, including Toyota, Hewlett-Packard, and Martha Stewart Television. She's become one of the first people that big companies call when they want help with a high profile eBay auction.
However, when a company like Intel or Home Depot (two previous Kompolt clients) calls her up, they're not expecting to boost their bottom line. Instead, they're running a charity auction - Kompolt's specialty - with the goal of increasing brand awareness. In effect, they're using eBay as an advertising vehicle.
Kompolt, for example, ran an auction for NBC in which the network sold The Today Show's Green Room book, signed by the likes of Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon. The book fetched $34,000, with proceeds donated to the Lupus Foundation. For NBC, the auction drew a lot of eyeballs, helping promote The Today Show to eBay's vast user base.
An auction like that, Kompolt explains, "is done as a brand play and a promotional play, utilizing the eBay platform."
Kompolt's agency is a type of business that didn't exist just a few years ago: a kind of hybrid auction business and advertising agency, which marries charity fund raising with corporate brand building.
Turnkey Solution
Although these large firms could run their own eBay auction, they're aware they need a helping hand - "It's an animal they don't know," Kompolt says.
"Anybody could make a pretty 'About Me' page, but there's really a lot of nuances to setting one of these up," she says. Kompolt's ten-member agency creates it all: they design and build all the listing pages, the About Me page, the promotional graphics, the photography, the FAQs, and the disclaimers, as well as working with eBay promotionally and advising clients on driving traffic to the auction site.
Her team also handles the all-important bidder pre-qualification process. This is a sensitive process with such high bids - "Sometimes we're pre-qualifying people for millions, so we have to make sure they're well taking care of," she says. Finally, Kompolt's agency manages the auction as it runs, and after the final sale they see that proceeds are distributed to the non-profit.
"We do everything, A to Z," she says.
(To see the production values of her auctions, go to Kompolt.com's front page, and click on "Visit one of our auctions.")
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| The Kompolt Online Auction Agency offers turnkey solutions for brand awareness-building charity auctions. |
Leno's Harley
Based in San Luis Obispo, California, Kompolt's agency has raised more than $6.3 million for various charities since launching in 2001. She charges clients a flat fee and a "nominal percentage" of the selling price, she says.
Although Kompolt's auctions take place at a far higher level than, say, when Uncle Fred sells his used lawnmower, there are some universal tools she uses. In particular, she utilizes gallery images and eBay's store feature, and she often places an item in two categories. For instance, a signed guitar for a Grammy auction would be placed in both the Musical Instruments category and the Autographs category.
Her auctions often run for ten days, though, if need be she uses a three- or five-day auction. As in most auctions, the first few days are typically slow. But, like anybody's auctions, the bids for these high profile charity auctions come in a flurry toward the end. "For Jay Leno's Harley, the bid was going up hundreds of thousands in the last couple of minutes," she says.
Kompolt's Five Keys
In summing up her years of experience running charity auctions on eBay, Kompolt offers these five essential principles for online charity auctions:
1) Establish a Clear Direction
Before you start to plan an auction, determine what your top priorities are: Are you looking to drive brand awareness, awareness of a new product, or to generate as much money as possible? If you don't establish your goals up front, you can't really develop a plan.
2) Create a plan for driving traffic to your auction
The ability to reach out to millions of bidders is a major advantage of online auctions versus traditional live or silent auctions. You won't capitalize on this, however, unless you make people aware of the opportunity.
The three common tactics employed to drive bidders to online charity auctions are:
A) Media partnerships (e.g., enlisting a magazine or television show to get involved); B) Celebrity involvement (e.g., persuading star supporters of a cause to donate items and generate publicity); and C) Outreach to cause supporters.
3) Manage your merchandise mix
Offering a high-profile item (a car, a celebrity's clothing, etc.) is great, but in most cases, it makes sense to offer merchandise at low, mid and high-price levels. This enables a wider spectrum of consumers to participate.
4) You must have good customer service and bidder management
There is nothing more aggravating - and potentially damaging to sponsoring brands - than to discover that the highly publicized winning bid on your auction's signature item was actually bogus. That's why Kompolt strongly recommends using bidder pre-qualification service on high profile and high revenue items.
To increase the chances of receiving high bids - and of those bids being legitimate - it's important to make sure that all potential bidders receive excellent customer service. This builds bidder confidence that they'll be treated fairly and that the item they're bidding on will be delivered as described.
5) Assemble a strong auction team
Depending on your resources and the level of publicity you expect to generate, your auction expertise could come from A) an in-house expert, B) an experienced, trusted trading assistant or C) a professional auction management company.
| Vital Statistics |
| Name: |
Kompolt Online Auction Agency |
| Date started with eBay: | Company started in 2001 |
| Sales/revenues: | Assisted clients in raising over $6.3 million in revenue |
| Main software tools: | Proprietary software |
| Payment solutions provider: | Channel Advisor |
| Number of employees: | 10 |
| eBay success tip from Jenny Kompolt: |
"Utilize eBay for all it can do - from generating revenue to promoting your brand to benefiting a non-profit. It's so powerful!"
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James Maguire is a contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. His column appears every Monday.
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