You are now an Etsy POD shop business owner with your shop launched, your product published and all the settings are done. And you waited for a few days or weeks, but still not getting a huge amount of sales. You might be getting a few sales here and there it’s not significant. Have you realised that there is an Etsy Ads service that you can leverage to get more exposure for your product listings?
There are many different ways to get traffic to your product listings. Etsy SEO is a good way to get organic traffic when you are ranked for the keywords. But to give it a push, you can also consider using Etsy Ads.
There are over 96 million buyers on Etsy and these people are here to buy things. This is why you should leverage Etsy Ads to boost your POD business. Buying Ads from Etsy is like giving a boost in your search result ranking. All the product listings advertised are on the top few rows of the search results. This is a good hack rather than waiting for it to rank organically. Which may take some time.
Today, we will share about different Etsy advertising options available and how you can use Etsy Ads for your POD business.
What is POD Business
POD is called print on demand. It’s a dropshipping business model where you don’t hold any inventory or buy the products until someone bought them from your store. The difference here will be that it’s a printable product that you only trigger your supplier to print your customized design after someone purchase from you.
This gives a product differentiation where you can create your own design for a product. So you can have your own unique product rather than dropshipping some random product that anyone can access and sell it.
With a POD business, the startup cost can be very low. You just need to invest in the design, some marketing tools, Etsy fees and customer service to reply to the questions raised. There is no need to stock up on your product. Not only that, once your product is sold, and your supplier produced it, they will be in charge to ship it out and update the shipping information to your customers.
What Are Etsy Ads
Etsy Ads is the advertising by Etsy to promote your product listings on Etsy. With Etsy Ads, your product listings will rank at the top of the search result.
There are two types of Etsy ads that you can use. On-site and off-site ads.
On-site ads refer to the paid ads in the Etsy marketplace itself. All you need to do is to turn on the ads and set your daily budget. Etsy will handle others things and show your product listings in the relevant search result.
Once your product listings are selected for the Etsy Ads, they will be shown on the top of the search results and will have the disclaimer of Etsy ads.
When you turn on Etsy Ads, the platform will place your ads based on your list quality and the bid amount. To maintain the quality of the Etsy marketplace, they will be more likely to list high-quality products first so that’s more likely for the buyers to get what they want and buy it. Another one would be when you are trying to show your products on highly competitive keywords, you are going to expect a higher pay-per-click cost.
Why Use Etsy Ads for Your POD Products
There are many ways to bring in traffic for your Etsy product listings. You can buy ads from Facebook, Google or other ad providers. Or you can be using other marketing methods like social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing and so on.
However, one of the trends that we notice was, the best traffic source for an Etsy shop still lies in Etsy itself.
For the free method, Etsy SEO is a great way to bring in free traffic from Etsy search results. However, it takes time to rank and stay consistently on the ranking. This is why, you can have a combination of organic reach via Etsy SEO and paid Etsy ads.
Etsy ads are like hacking the Etsy ranking system by putting your product listings higher in the search result. In most cases, if you are bidding for the right keywords, your listing will be at the top of the search results. Not only that, having Etsy Ads in place, you can increase your brand awareness in the marketplace by showing your products to more people on Etsy. And getting more sales and reviews will further increase your Etsy shop quality score and in return, help in increasing your Etsy search result ranking.
And finally, the most important one. Etsy Ads are lower in cost for sellers to advertise compared to other social media platforms. It costs only around $0.20-$0.50 per click.
Optimize the Etsy SEO
As Etsy Ads does not require you to enter much information or details of what you want to show your products, it’s based on your product listing SEO result. For instance, the keywords that you have in your product title, description and tags are those that will be taken into consideration when showing your ads.
Hence, you should follow some of the basic SEO strategies in your Etsy shop product listings to get ranked and advertised on the right keywords.
1. Keyword Research
To start, you need to know what keywords people are searching for on Etsy when they want to get an item. Also, which keywords is having lower competition and are easier to rank for? You are not going to try and fight for the high competition keywords as those are very hard to rank.
Instead, you can focus on the long-tail keywords that have a good amount of searches and are less competitive to rank for. To do this, you can use the Etsy SEO tools like eRank, Allura, and Everbee
to have a look at what products are trending and what keywords that people are searching for. These tools will give good inspiration for the keywords that you can focus on.
2. Optimize Product Listings With the Target Keywords
Once you have the target keywords, you need to include that in your product title. For the first three words, including the most important keywords followed by other keywords. Apply the same to your product descriptions, tags, attributes and product categories.
When writing your product descriptions, it shall be simple and easy to scan through as people are not going to read long paragraphs of words. Add on bullets and lists to make it easy to read through. And most importantly, easy for the Etsy and Google algorithms to scan through.
Another very important thing to optimize is the product tags. In every product listing, you can include a total of 13 tags. In the tags, use relevant attributes and keywords that describe your product. This is a very important place to include all your keywords as every single tag is precise.
3. Use Quality Product Photos for Your Listings
As in every eCommerce store, photos are the most important thing to showcase your products. Etsy allows up to ten photos for each product. You need to use it wisely by putting the best photos first and then showing the products from different angles and how to use them so your potential customers can understand well how it works.
You can also add product videos to your product listings so people can visualize how to use them. No matter what you do, make sure you follow Etsy guidelines for the product photo to avoid being penalized.
4. Complete Store Information
Just like how a physical store looks like. There is a big signboard in front of the shop, a notice board, announcements, product racks, and the policies in place. The same goes for your Etsy shop. This is how people judge your shop. Either is it a professional and trustable shop or not.
In short, go to the Etsy shop dashboard, and edit your Etsy shop. Make sure your shop banner is there. The “About” section is there where you can share your backstory and the background of your shop. Knowing your background will give your customers more ways to feel relatable.
And of course, an announcement bar if there is any new launching or discounts. And to avoid disputes, have a clear policy for your Etsy shop. This will show your professionalism and crates confidence for your customers.
5. Shipping Cost
Trust me, people don’t like to pay the shipping fee. And Etsy knows this very well. That’s why, shipping cost is part of the Etsy SEO algorithm to determine your rank. Ultimately, Etsy will favour products with free shipping. But you should have your shipping strategy based on your business model.
For some, they will just embed the shipping cost in their product cost and offer free shipping. Just make sure you get your calculation right to avoid losing money.
How to Start Your Etsy Ads Campaign
Once you complete optimizing your product listings based on the SEO strategies above, it’s time to start your Etsy Ads campaign.
1. To start an Etsy advertising campaign, go to the “Shop Manager” on your Etsy account. Then click on “Marketing,” “Etsy Ads,” and “Get Started.”
2. Let Etsy know your goals so it can optimize the ads placement to drive the best results for your shop.
3. Set your maximum daily budget. You can start with anything between $1 and $25. Depending on the number of listings you are advertising and the keyword competitiveness for your product you might want to increase the budget so your listings will get more exposure. You may start with $3-5 per day to see how it works. And increase the budget when you get a promising result.
4. Click “Start Advertising.” And your Ads are launched.
5. You may track your ads performance once a month to see what works and what’s not. For those listings that are not performing, you can consider removing them and focusing on the new listings that are performing.
6. Then, optimize the listings further in the “Manage advertised listings.” section
7. Visually check your ads’ performance in “Other options,” then “Show graphs.”
Tips for Launching Successful Etsy Ads
Although it seems to be easy to start and launch an Etsy Ads campaign, there are some tips for launching successful Etsy Ads.
Start at the Right Time
While Etsy Ads is good, you don’t necessarily start it from the first day. Work hard to get a few sales organically from Etsy first. This will be a good source of data for Etsy in order to understand your target customer group and who to show your ads to.
Consistent and Patience
eCommerce is an ever-changing market, what’s working today may not be working anymore the next day. And vice versa. This is why, you can’t just throw out your listings and not care about them.
Instead, you need to monitor and analyse the data. And then optimize your listing to make sure it works. This is the advantage of running an eCommerce business compared to a traditional business. There are lot of data that you can track and analyse in order to optimize your sales process and product listings.
You can start with a small daily budget like $5 to see which listings are performing and which are not. Then, remove those non-performing listings and replace them with new listings. Test and optimize.
It’s totally normal that there are some listings that work and some do not. And this process is to identify them. So, just remove those not working and focus on those bringing in sales.
Analyze The Result and Optimize
When your Ad campaign runs for a month, it’s time to review the campaign result. This will allow you to identify the trends of your business and understand which listings are working and which need some work to optimize them.
And of course, to evaluate how much you spent on the ads and what is your return.
What Are Etsy Off-Site Ads
Etsy Off-Site Ads is a type of advertising program offered by Etsy allowing Etsy sellers to promote their products on external websites, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, in exchange for a fee.
With Off-Site Ads, Etsy sellers can reach a wider audience outside of the Etsy marketplace and attract more potential buyers to their products. Etsy handles the advertising for sellers, automatically creating and managing ads for their products on external sites. Etsy charges sellers a fee for Off-Site Ads, which is a percentage of the sale price of the item that was sold as a result of the ad.
As a seller, you don’t have control over the ads placement, but trust Etsy on this. However, it’s good that you only pay when there is a successful sale. Unless you are above $10,000 a year in sales, you are not able to opt out of the program and will be charged a 15% Etsy advertising fee. And if you are over $10,000, the fees will be reduced to 12%. The off-site ad fees are charged over the product price and the shipping, including other Etsy fees. And it’s capped at $100.
For an Etsy seller, off-site ads are good to bring more exposure to your Etsy shop. However, if someone clicks the ad repeatedly, you will be charged accordingly.
How To Optimize Your Product Listings for Off-Site Advertising
Off-side ads are similar to your Etsy ads. The difference is in the ads placement place. Etsy ads will be placed on Etsy itself while off-side ads are visible to a much wider audience, including on Google, Facebook, and other social media.
To get good results in off-site ads, you should also update your SEO regularly and optimize it based on market trends and competition updates.
Final Thoughts – Using Etsy Ads to Boost Your Print-On-Demand Business on Etsy
Etsy ads are one of the very good ways to bring in sales for your Etsy shop. No matter you are using on-site or off-site ads, you should always focus on Etsy SEO to improve your Etsy shop traffic.
