Promoting Your eBay Shop

I really did have a good giggle at some of the suggestions provided by eBay at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/stores/promoting-your-store.html the one being that eBay are suggesting that you[notice the term you ;] also promote your eBay shop using other paid-for advertising. This is somewhat ironic, considering that the eBay fees you are paying, are in fact a marketing fee to promote your goods/services to a population of buyers.

That said, lets break these suggestions down and cover them in more detail, as they ;re all not that bad!

On eBay

This is absolutely true, over to you eBay! No wait... we're on own, we better carry on reading!

Absolutely! Lets break this down into the components:

These listings, known as GTC (Good Till Cancelled) and 30 days are far cheaper than their shorter counter parts, however there are some not –so-apparent restrictions.

eBay changed their polices around the time that the eBay shop listings were put into the main search, the restriction is that at any one moment in time, you are allowed a maximum of 15 eBay listings for the same item (great so far...), but only one of them is allowed to be a fixed price listing (a BIN).

Using links in your eBay listings to promote your eBay shop should be second nature, cross promoting other shop categories (or the same category) is also strongly advised if you are using a eBay listing tool is capable of doing such (turbo-lister does not count here, you need a quality platform as covered in my review on eShop Listing Tools [Link to come later])

The eBay businesses that really work the nuts (and bolts) of their eBay shop are ones that keep a common theme or branding style from their eBay listing, to the eBay shop, to the eBay shop pages, to dare I say it, to their other ecommerce platforms.

As a buyer, if I see a quality designed listing, with well formatted, clear, concise data, I am able to feel reassured that the item I am viewing is most likely going to be the item I am going to be receiving and are likely to buy, as long as it fits the requirements, pricing levels and other criteria (way to deap to cover buyer habits here).

However if I move away from that listing or press the Back button from hell ; (see later article on this [Link to Come Later] ) and navigate to other eBay listings, and then stumble upon the same seller, immediately that business should be in my mind and recognisable from before. In a good way of course (as the business was displaying quality, well formatted inventory data in the listing).

Then if I move to their eBay shop and buy, I will receive branded email notifications on about my order and (if marketed properly) most likely end up looking at their website business also, which of course... should have a consistent branding look and feel to what I am already used to.

Companies spill millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions on marketing each year, remember your eBay fees are a marketing fee, so instead of wasting it on multiple mish-mashed listings and poorly implemented eBay shop. It has to be one part of a much larger structure to aquire new customers.

I think I have stressed enough when consistent branding from-the listing to-the shop to-the after sale marketplace(s).

eBay have really impressed me with what they have been up to in the past few years on the Marketing Tools front to the eBay shops. No longer is it a hap-hazard attempt, but a calculated approach can be made to eBay shops.

Email Marketing, targeted cross promotion, a pretty nifty side bar and header bar to the eBay listings and the now somewhat-defunct listing feeds functionality.

Even for the graphically challenged like myself, creating a consistent branding, look, feel and identity across the entry points of buyers to your business on eBay is now relatively easy achieved within a few clicks.

WHAT!!!!!!!! Honestly, if you are seriously considering doing this, you better be spending at least 60% or more in Google adwords or other marketing on your own website(s) [<<< notice the S ;] before you even consider spending more money for you are already paying eBay to do for you .

Awww the poor about me page, at least it has a special logo to it. By the way, did you know that this is the only page you are allowed to post your website URL on?

You have to have a serious inventory base or of a high value area to be able to sensibly afford a Anchor eBay shop. An Anchor is far from what it used to be and £100 the dearer too! This is only an option if you have 50,000 listings (this is the threshold where 1p listings v's 4p listings kicks in) or want to spam erm I mean Market ; up to 5000 separate emails each month.

I 'll be covering these subscription levels off in more detail in future articles.

I would only suggest this if you are in a specialist/product specific forum outside of eBay. There are 99.9 million other eBay users looking for stuff to sell, lets not shoot ourselves in the feet.

Off eBay

Before we go any further, unless you have a extremely good reason for not having your own website, all marketing should be pointed at your website. Fees are cheaper or nill, converting a repeat buyer to a repeat buyer on a website, well they ;re the golden ones!

Great guidance here, however taking your branding ; as discussed earlier, this should port really well to your also, very conveniently branded website. That said eBay again have done a great job in past 36 months or so and Marketing ; section in eBay shops is a fantastic start. I really like the newsletter option, its just so underused!!

Absolutely, you categorically must be putting in your main product line keywords into your shop name, which also doubles as your shop url. This varies so greatly from one seller to another, so I can only offer basic guidance here. That is if you sell iPods accessories, put ipods in the shop name some how, such as Quality iPod Accessories , rather than Jims eBay Shop .

The same goes for the meta keywords for your shop categories, name thew categories aptly and add meta keywords aplty for each category.

At the time of this going to print, this is rather amusing as eBay has just been shunned by Google. eBay sellers were uploading their products to Google base themselves and also eBay was doing the same, however Google stopped that and have now kind of ignored eBay listings. See eBay Noticeably Absent from New Google Product Search Marketplace Program. However unless its free, spend you time and money on input streams that you ;re not already paying marketing fees on.

Other Tips

Oh dear no, buy a domain name and put a webshop on it, don't point it at eBay.

Again another absolutely!!! one, it must be 4 years now or more since they introduce the stats tool for eBay shops, its come on quite well since then and if you really do get the time between managing those extra sales from your new webshop for the domain name you bough above and the money you have wisely spent on promoting it, then yes, check out what your eBay buyers are upto and make any changes as required.

ListMyShop.co.uk

Related

Why Open An eBay Shop?