Once your Etsy shop is up and running, you’ve got to start promoting your store. Following is information that focuses on some of the more commonly used marketing activities you can adopt for your business. Which options you choose are entirely up to you and should be based on your available resources, your target audience and what items you’ll be selling.
Word-of-mouth works best
If you’re capable of impressing your customers, get them excited about what you’re offering and provide top-quality customer service, one of your rewards as a seller is that they may speak favorably about you among friends, coworkers and family members. Plus, if your customers become loyal to you and what you’re selling, they may also provide a positive endorsement to these people about your company and products.
An even greater reward is that some of your customers may be inclined to share information about you and your company through their social media, which could quickly reach a much broader audience. When you receive complimentary calls or emails from customers, be sure to promptly thank them and politely ask for a favorable review on Etsy and to tell their friends via social media.
Positive word-of-mouth serves as a reliable endorsement and can be more potent than any advertisement that someone sees because they know and trust the source of the endorsement, whether it’s from a friend, coworker, or family member.
Focus on generating repeat business from existing customers
Once you discover how much time, effort and money can go into driving traffic to your shop, you’ll realize that generating repeat business from already satisfied customers is much easier and requires far less effort.
Maintaining communication and a favorable relationship with your clients is one of the simplest methods to generate repeat business. However, you can assist in ensuring repeat business by adopting several approaches:
- Provide a reduction on repeat orders that’s exclusively for returning clients.
- Compensate clients for every dollar they spend in your shop. For instance, for every $100 they spend, they automatically receive a gift card worth $10 or $20.
- Encourage clients to sign up for (opt in to) a weekly, biweekly or monthly email that will provide special discounts and promotions as well as useful information that the client will find valuable. For instance, you can share instructional information pertaining to your products, plus offer exclusive previews of new or soon-to-be released products.
- Publish a blog and, within it, promote special sales or discounts to existing clients.
- Create a birthday club that entitles existing clients to receive a special reduction during their birthday month or within seven days of their birthday.
- Develop a referral promotion in which the existing client receives a reduction each time someone they refer places an order in your shop, and at the same time, that new client receives a reduction too for being a new (referred) client.
- Interact and share information with your clients via your social media accounts, and promote online-only specials to your social media friends and followers.
- Provide your existing clients with the opportunity to purchase new items featured in your shop in advance of the general public.
- Create and distribute coupon codes to your existing clients (or potential customers) that offer a percentage reduction off their next order, free shipping, or a savings of a fixed dollar amount.
Related: 3 Things You Must Know Before You Start Your Etsy Business
Rely on your positive ratings and reviews to enhance your credibility
Earning and then showcasing positive ratings and reviews from your past clients is a powerful tool for helping to convert visitors to your Etsy shop into paying clients. As you’ll quickly discover, positive ratings and reviews give your business instant credibility. These same reviews also allow your future clients to learn firsthand about the experiences of your past clients.
Your potential clients can quickly discover exactly what other people think about whatever it is you’re selling. The ratings and reviews you receive are automatically and prominently displayed within your Etsy shop — there’s no way to hide them. That’s why it’s extremely important to put forth your best efforts to provide top-notch customer service, always be honest with your clients, sell only the highest quality products, fulfill and ship your orders promptly, and take steps to build strong relationships with your clients.
After clients receive their order, it’s then up to them to decide whether they want to write and publish a review about your product(s) and business. This is purely an optional activity on their part, but there are simple steps you can take to encourage your clients to publish a positive review of your product(s), without you coming off as being pushy or unprofessional.
Just as great reviews can help your business, earning poor ratings and reviews can literally destroy your business. Never underestimate the importance of Etsy’s ratings and review system as you decide how you’ll operate your business and ultimately treat your clients.
Take advantage of Etsy’s own SEO tools
One of the simplest ways to attract potential clients to your shop is to take advantage of Etsy’s SEO tools. At the time you create your Etsy shop, and then again when creating each product listing, you’ll be asked for keywords (tags) that clearly, accurately, and succinctly describe your business and products.
Your goal is to incorporate terms that you think your prospective customers will utilize in Etsy’s search bar while seeking out products that are comparable to what you provide.
When the HTML tags you include match a potential customer’s search words, a listing for your shop or one of your product listings appears in that person’s search results with a link directly to your shop or that product.
Etsy determines your search result ranking based on a variety of factors, which it doesn’t fully disclose to sellers. These factors likely include how many search words/tags that the potential customer entered in the search field match the words/tags you provided, as well as how long you’ve been in business and your average ratings.
Ultimately, once you start generating traffic to your shop, Etsy provides detailed analysis and information about those visitors. This information includes what keywords were used to find and visit your shop or product listings. Tracking this information is a quick and simple way to determine which of your keywords/tags is attracting the most traffic and which ones need to be adjusted or replaced with more commonly used words/tags.
Engage actively on social media
On any given day, billions of individuals around the world spend time on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. They’re utilizing social media to acquire whatever information they desire or require in a format that’s highly personalized and that’s presented to them on an on-demand basis.
Social media has now transformed into a space where business operators can freely and informally communicate with existing customers, seek out and attract new customers, and establish an interactive online community that revolves around their company and/or products.
Related: This Teen Paid for College by Selling on Etsy. Here Are 5 Ways She Did It.
As an Etsy shop owner, it’s not a matter of whether or not you should engage actively on social media. Undoubtedly, you should! What you need to consider is, based on your target audience, your available time and resources, and what you’re selling, which social media services will fulfill your needs the best.
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