Recently we had the delight of working with Dragons Den member & award winning social media guru Steven Bartlett - who also runs one of the top UK podcasts, Diary of a CEO - among several other ventures he juggles with his team.
It’s due to this multifaceted approach to his career that Steven is passionate about small businesses on eBay & their stories. Two of these stories in particular, stem from our two #eBayWintern winners Phillip & Kirsty.
Phillip runs The Chocolate Cafe in Ramsbottom, Bury. It is both a delightful cafe for locals to visit and enjoy chocolate treats & coffee, as well as a chocolate shop online that provides customers with a range of quality handmade chocolate bars with exciting and innovative flavours.
You can visit their eBay shop here
Kirsty on the other hand, runs her custom gifts company from the comfort of her home & specialises in making bespoke gifts such as photo slots, coffee mugs, & so much more.
Visit Kirsty’s eBay shop here.
These two founders recently got the chance to work with Steven for the day, showing him the ins and outs of their business as well as gaining some valuable insight into his career so far & what lessons he would pass down to other budding entrepreneurs.
Steven’s Top 5 Tips for Success on eBay
1. Test & Learn - this is crucial for any new business, social media platforms change almost every day, so it’s important to test out these features to see what sticks with your audience. Is your business on TikTok? If not, why not? It’s a great platform to film rough and ready videos & the editing in-app is super easy.
For example, Kirsty saw her business really take off due to going viral on Tiktok with videos like this.
2. Sharing your eBay listings to Instagram Stories - a new feature on the eBay app is that you can share any listing on your account direct to your business profile on Instagram!
Simply open up the listing on the app, tap the ‘share’ icon in the top right and choose the Instagram Stories logo - from there you can post the listing to your story, you can also add a link sticker to ensure your followers can click through to the eBay website.
*The feature is also available on Snapchat! More info here.
3. Making use of the search terms - using the main search bar on the homepage online or via the app can act as a handy tool if you know how to use it. Think of what words or phrases you will want to use to create your listing and then pop them into the search bar, the more results returned from the search, the more popular it is and therefore more people are searching for it (and will hopefully stumble across your listing)
If you want to go even deeper, an advanced way is using eBay’s research tool Terapeak for finding out the best keywords for your items (however this is limited to those with a Shops subscription) info here.
4. It’s all about the imagery - think about the last time you saw an ad that caught your eye on social media or on a billboard, chances are it featured someone with the product, not just the product itself - think about how you can integrate more lifestyle imagery into your listing, still leading with the main product image on a white background, but also making use of the other photos you can use.
5. Look to your community - influencer marketing may seem like a daunting and costly exercise when you’re the owner of a small business, but there are many ways of collaborating with communities that are passionate about the industry you work in or relate to the products you sell.
Maybe you can offer coded coupon codes in exchange for content to be posted on their channel & yours, eventually you could end up with a network of creators/influencers that are regular customers that you can lean on for content ideas and getting your name out there.
GymShark made their ‘advocates’ an integral part of their marketing strategy right from the beginning, now they’re able to utilise a huge network of influencers across different channels for content - just like this.
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