In an ever-evolving market, advertising on eBay is here to stay. I’ve dabbled with some success and some failures (learning experiences!).
I’d love to start a debate on what’s worked/ not worked for others and throw around a few theories to keep pushing forwards in this area. I’ve started by breaking down all the promotions I can think of off the top of my head
The free in £ spent stuff (not forgetting our time has value)
Optimisation
Listings, images, specifics, description, category - It all starts with creating a good basic structure, filling in as many specifics as possible and using key words/ search terms early in your title and repeating in your description. Fill your title with as many of the 80 characters as possible, add relevant item specifics to the end if you need fillers. Use at least 5 photos – the white background for first image is often debated but this is generally required for your listing to be picked up off ebay by the likes of Google.
Using both buy it now and auction format listings to generate traffic
Feedback building creating buyer confidence
Being active (tweaking, end and sell similar older listings – definitely anything over 90 days with no sales but consider 30 days if low views/ watchers). I’m trying to dive listings into 12 blocks so this is a weekly keep the account active and refreshed task – Far from perfect at this but I do recognise when I’m in a good active pattern my sales tend to be more consistent.
Shop – header, featured categories, 4 rows of seller determined listings, banner advertising a category or promotion.
eBay newsletter – can be just words, advertise an active sale, send a coupon
Social media - Pinterest/ Instagram/ Facebook – automate your posts. Why? because some buyers are happier buying off a familiar platform than trying a new website.
Social media earn from sales by joining the eBay affiliate scheme and linking to your items
Sale event, this can be long running for items that show as rrp discounted and doesn’t need to be an extra discount over your listed price.
Promotions lower risk, pay on sale (good for one offs and slower moving items but the rules on what eBay will advertise are changing)
Promoted listings standard – from 2% of sales amount including postage any international fees, campaigns need refreshing periodically – they go stale and become less effective. Consider grouping items to run different campaigns thinking about seasonality and staggering end restart times
Add make an offer option to listings to enable buyers to open negotiations – can be good for slower movers but can also be quite admin heavy if you get tyre kicker buyers making loads of silly offers. You can put in auto accept/ reject amounts.
Send an offer to people who’ve watched or looked at an item a couple of times. New feature now exists to automatically make the same offer to subsequent interested buyers – it works by working out the percentage discount off the list price so should you subsequently reduce the price or have a sale event the same percentage discount will be applied which can lead to a larger than intended discount.
Send previous buyer a private coupon for an item or group of items that you think they might like – they’re already a happy customer so more likely to buy again that a general sweeping offer to everyone.
Sale event plus markdown (a sale that runs for upto 2 weeks, items to be included must have been listed for at least 14 days with no changes to price or postage.
Mulitbuy product level, product group Buy 2 get 5% off, buy 3 get 7% buy 4 get 10% - can be at product level or across a range of products.
Order discount (£10 off £100 spend or buy 1 get one 30% off type deals)
If you have both Multibuy and order discounts I believe multibuy will default as the offer that shows but both offers will work.
eBay coupon event (by invite often associated with pro trader or we’ve had a broader Autumn one that’s been offered to quite a few on the boards last couple of years) Sometimes eBay pay a percentage share of the discount. It can be a good boost but can be quite tricky to work out which items have sold under the offer
Deal of the day – by invite
Promotions, higher risk, pay regardless of whether you sell
Listing fees/ Shop subscription – I’m sticking this here because it’s something that’s coming up a lot on the boards at present. Advantages of a shop – brand creation (even if not branded products) encouraging extra purchases, having a URL to link to that displays more as brand you rather than generic eBay, seller hub promotions such as multibuy and access to terapeak for research. Moving through the levels you get international listings (in theory, with a feature shop) plus more listings to make the jump from basic to feature shop for most people the break even is needing around 750 listings. The next leap is good if you need better access to customer service support via concierge. Disadvantages are you pay regardless of sales volume so if your sales nose dive you still need to pay. Keeping an eye on your listing numbers and shop level can be worth periodically assessing
Promoted listings advanced – also known as pay per click. Can be set up as eBay recommends or you can choose for yourself. I’ve dabbled, eBay advertising recently gave me some support to create a very small learning campaign (10 listings out of over 700) which has a Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) of under 5 So I typically generate £5 sales for each pound spent on advertising (that’s a 20% extra cost in addition to the eBay final value fee, promoted listings standard fee) It can add up. It has a couple of advantages – it generates sales, improves listing organic position, generates product feedback creating buyer confidence, has a halo effect on your other listings the more sales you get the greater you look as being a relevant business having interesting stock to the eBay algorithm and the more views you’re likely to get.
Offsite Ads – eBay chooses the listings, you set a daily amount you’re happy to pay. I set mine at £5 have never used it all and my ROAS is 20. eBay don’t select that many of my products to advertise
Promoted display eBay creates a category group advert to drive traffic to your listings its pay per click. Didn’t work for me – I’d love to hear how others found it.
I don’t think there is any magic wand answer but by doing lots of the free options, a moderate amount of the lower risk and experimenting with what works from the higher risk group I hope to keep generating sales.
So care to share, whats working and not as importantly not stacking up for you?
