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Peak shopping season is just around the corner. To help you navigate the busiest selling season of the year, we teamed up with eBay for a webinar that offered insider tips and key strategies you can use to sell more in Q4. You can catch up with an on-demand recording of the webinar here.
We spoke with Berengere Chaintreau-Fuchs, eBay’s Head of Seller Experience, and Fabio Esposti,eBay’s Head of Product Marketing about how Seller Hub Promotions and Promoted Listings can optimise your exposure and make the most of this selling opportunity.
Before we jump in, it’s important to note the changes that have affected the ecommerce world in 2020.
The pandemic has shaken up the way consumers shop and we’re seeing a trend towards what we call “effortless ecommerce”. This is essentially the idea that commerce is moving closer to the consumer wherever they are spending their time.
Where we used to have to leave our homes to go to the shops (a high-effort adventure), we can now shop from wherever we’re browsing, whether that’s Instagram, Google, or via an online marketplace. It’s important that brands and retailers take a moment to step back and think about how to position their business for the future.
In this webinar, we highlight how the entirety of the internet is increasingly becoming commerce enabled. This reveals a new challenge for retailers to think about and shines a spotlight on marketplaces. The ability for consumers to shop for everything in one place is an influential concept in the ecommerce world and marketplaces like eBay represent over 50% of the volume of goods being sold online.
The webinar kicked off with a presentation from Berengere, who encouraged sellers to think seriously about eBay in Q4 and placed a heavy emphasis on Seller Hub Promotions.
These are a collection of in-built promotional tools that eBay sellers can use to shout about the great inventory they have. Remember that consumers see eBay as a destination for value shopping, which means it’s important to give shoppers more value for their money.
- Multi-Buy - this allows the seller to give different prices depending on the quantity of products sold in one hit
- Order Discount - this lets sellers offer discounts based on a customer’s order size or the amount spent
- Sale Event - this allows sellers to promote an unconditional offer where the price is reduced
- Offer to Buyer - this lets sellers create a specific and private offer only sent to interested shoppers (i.e. those that have seen or “watched” an item)
During the webinar, Berengere revealed that multi-buy offers see 10% in additional sales than regular listings. On top of this, 30% of watchers convert to buyers when a seller uses the Offer to Buyer promotion.
The promotion(s) you choose to implement in Q4 will depend on your goals and the products you are planning to highlight. The price and volume of purchase are key in defining which promotional tool is best for you, but as a general rule:
- Sale Event is best for high price and mid-high frequency products
- Multi-Buy is best for low-mid price and mid-high frequency products
- Order Discount is best for low-mid price and low-high frequency products
- Offer to Buyers is best for high price unique items
Berengere also touched on some new changes coming to eBay in Q4. These include more automation capabilities to make it easier to reach more buyers, a “Great Price” signal that will tag competitively priced items on eBay, and a new standard shopfront feature.
After Berengere finished up her presentation, we moved onto a tutorial from Fabio who showed sellers how to use and optimise Promoted Listings to get more views and stand out.
Promoted Listings can get placed in search results, View Item pages, My eBay, and at the checkout. This is important considering the complex nature of the customer journey today. Shoppers often visit multiple different pages before making a purchase and so, with a Promoted Listing, sellers are able to follow them throughout that journey.
- More Visibility - sellers can enjoy up to 32% more views on their products and can achieve a 27% uplift in sell-through rates
- Risk Free - sellers only pay for an ad when a buyer clicks on it and buys the item with 30 days of the click (there are no fees per impression or per view)
- Seller Control - sellers are in complete control of the process, from the start date and end date to the items promoted
- Long-term Impact - sales from advertising benefits an item’s history on eBay and helps improve their organic search rankings
- Halo Sales - Promoted Listings bring in free traffic which helps branding and awareness. As people browse more of your items, you can engage future customers who bookmark products, watch an item, or buy another product from you
Start by navigating to the Seller Hub and the dedicated Promoted Listings’ dashboard. Third-party apps will have access to this as well.
From there, you can create a new listing and set the ad rate that you’re willing to pay to promote your item. This is essentially a percentage of the item’s final price. For example, if you’re selling a mobile phone for £200 and you’ve set an ad rate of 10%, you’ll pay £20 if the ad is clicked on and the item is sold within 30 days.
Promoted Listings are a great tool to tap into if you want to boost best selling items, increase sales on a new product, push seasonal items, or if you’re running a sales event.
Sellers will struggle to get sales if their listings aren’t optimized. This means choosing the right category, writing an effective title and an informative description, taking professional product photos, offering a competitive price, and choosing the best postage options is crucial.
Pay attention to eBay’s item recommendations. These have been identified as products that yield the most benefit and are based on trends in the marketplace, the current competitive landscape of items, and the historical performance of each product.
You won’t get results overnight. Make sure you give campaigns time to build momentum and rack up views. This is why it’s important to start early if you have a time-sensitive or seasonal product you want to promote. Start too late, and you won’t build up the momentum you need to instill buyer confidence in time.
Think about the margins you have available for advertising and consider testing different ad rates within that margin. eBay suggests the best ad rate for certain products based on the item’s attributes, its past performance, seasonality, and the current competition, so use that as a starting point to spring off from.
Keep a close eye on your Promoted Listings campaigns and monitor the success of each product. If you’re not getting the results you want, try tweaking your listings and testing out different ad rates.
Fabio and Berengere gave eBay sellers some great tips for maximising their exposure and sales during the busiest shopping season of the year. With the marketplace’s rich selection of promotional tools, it’s easier than ever to stand out and sell more.
Speak to us to find out how Linnworks can connect and automate your commerce operations so you can capture every revenue opportunity.
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