How to effectively advertise to turn your audience into customers (Step #4)

Likes. Hearts. Followers. Subscribers. Pins.

All these words come to mind when I think about advertising. However, all ads are not created equally. Some forms of advertising are better for creating engagement, sales conversions, page views, interactions, etc. This article will break down all of the forms of advertising specifically on Etsy that I have used and my experiences, allowing you to save money and time that you would have wasted doing these tests yourself.

Etsy

• Social Media Feature

One of Etsy newer features (launched last October) is their social media feature which I briefly explained in my last blog post. This feature allows you to quickly create social media posts for your Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter pages. As pictured below these ads can feature Shop Milestones, Sales or Promotions, and Five-Star Reviews and they come with prewritten captions and hashtags.

• Etsy Promoted Listings

Promoted Listings have worked wonders for me and are super easy to use. You simply say you want to advertise a listing, click the bid price, select your daily budget and you are good to go! Advertised listings allow listings to be bumped to the first pages of the search results which increases your visibility. Additionally, If you item is already on the front page, for example my drink coaster holder, and it is being advertised with the highest bid for the search, your listing will show twice on the page. This will help keep your item in the mind of your potential customers.

Another great thing is you pay only for clicks. The chart below is for a section of my promoted listings for the past 12 months. I have 183987 impressions and 1801 clicks, this means that I paid only for the 1800 clicks at a few cents a click, rather than for the nearly 200k impressions.

Google Ads thru Etsy

I did not discuss this above but Etsy also has a feature to advertise for Etsy using Google Ads. I have tried this for a few short tests but I stopped quickly both times. I spent a lot of money on a few clicks but never got any sales from it. One click could be my total daily budget for 10-15 clicks using Etsy ads.

Also, my biggest issue with Google Ads thru Etsy is that you pay to direct traffic to a site you already pay to use to advertise and list your products. Etsy already spends tons of money advertising your listing on google https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000343788-Items-Appearing-in-Google-Shopping. Not only that but I would much rather spend my advertising money directing traffic to my stand alone site www.acornhillcollective.com where I am responsible for getting people to visit the site, rather than use it on Etsy where there are already millions of users on the site looking for our products.

Have you found success in advertising differently? Drop a comment below, I want to hear from you!