Antique dealer marketing agency

Every item is a single unit, so the feed has to drop a piece the day it is reserved or sold, and pieces on approval need to come out too. Titles carry the period, country, material, form and maker, in that order, because the query is usually a string of exactly those words. Condition is used on every antique, without exception. Campaigns split by price band and by form, since a set of dining chairs and a small piece of treen need different budgets and different reading windows, and larger pieces are judged over months rather than weeks. Search terms need constant negative work, because valuation, identification, how to date, how much is it worth and repair queries all look relevant and never buy, while the words for reproduction, replica and style pull people who want a new copy. A separate campaign runs on selling and probate terms into a valuation form, which is where the next stock comes from.

Antiques do unusually well on video because the objects reward close attention and the dealer's knowledge is the interesting part. A drawer pulled out to show the dovetails, a hand over an old surface explaining the patina, the underside of a table, a maker's stamp found under a rail, a restoration in progress, a fair stand being built, a van being unloaded after a buying trip. That content sells pieces and it also brings in stock, because people who watch it start thinking about what is in their own house. Catalogue ads run from the live feed so nothing sold is shown again. Retargeting follows the form and period someone browsed, with a long window, because furniture decisions wait for a room to be ready. Prices are shown in the creative for smaller pieces and left to the page for the larger ones.

Antiques sit in their own part of the product taxonomy and every piece is fed as used with identifier_exists set to false, since there is no barcode and usually no brand. Where a maker is known, the maker goes in the brand field. Each piece is its own product with no item group, and sold pieces go to out of stock rather than being deleted so the page survives. The part that catches dealers out is materials. Items containing ivory, tortoiseshell, certain corals and some tropical hardwoods are restricted or prohibited under international trade rules and under national bans, and the advertising policies follow those rules, so a listing with ivory inlay can put the whole account at risk even when the sale is legal where you are. Those pieces should be excluded from the feed and handled through enquiry, with the paperwork and exemption details stated plainly on the page.

The trap in this niche is building the whole site out of product pages that die when the piece sells. The fix is a layer of permanent pages above them: one per period, per form and per notable maker, each explaining what defines it, how to recognise it, what it was made from, typical dimensions, what affects value, and what you have in stock now with an alert when you have nothing. Sold pieces stay live and link up to those pages, so years of stock become evidence rather than dead ends. Alongside that, write the identification and care questions people ask assistants: how to date a chest by its construction, what a hallmark means, whether woodworm is still active, how to care for old finishes, and whether a piece can be shipped abroad. Those answers bring in both buyers and sellers.

The stock list email is the whole programme. It goes out when a buying trip lands rather than on a fixed weekly slot, because that is when there is something to say, and it is segmented by the periods and forms each subscriber has looked at. Trade and decorator subscribers get it earlier, which is normal practice and is what keeps them subscribed. Before a fair, a preview goes to people within reach of it with the stand number and a few pieces that will be there. Enquiries that did not close get a gentle follow up when something similar arrives rather than a chase on the same piece. After delivery there is a care note about humidity, sunlight and polish suited to the piece, and a standing invitation to send photographs of anything they are thinking of selling.