Tag: etsy shop ideas

How to Increase Ecommerce Holiday Sales

August 9, 2018 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

by Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing

If you haven’t started preparing for holiday sales Etsy shop owners need to get going! Increase your holiday sales with my 2019 Holiday Sales Planner for Etsy Shops. It is jam-packed with 23 pages of my tips, tricks, SEO search phrases, planner pages, worksheets, examples and strategies to get the most out of your holiday sales.

Below are some ideas to inspire you!

5 Ideas to Increase E-commerce Holiday Sales

1. Starting in September (or right now if you wish) include a flyer and/or coupon in all customer packages encouraging customers to come back to your store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, coupons and offers.

2. Use popular search phrases for various holiday buying occasions in your titles and tags, if they apply, such as white elephant gifts, stocking stuffers, secret Santa gifts, dirty Santa gifts, advent calendar fillers and 12 days of Christmas gifts.

3. Add holiday theme photos (like I did below) to your regular product photos as Etsy loves to use these types of images on their social media pages and on their home page. You can purchase these types of backgrounds on Etsy or Creative Market.

4. I highly recommend that you run Etsy Promoted Listings during the peak gift buying time of October 14th to December 23rd. Only go as late as December 23rd if you have priority shipping and can get those orders there next day.

5. August is the time to be sending out your submissions for holiday gift guides for print magazines. When emailing out pitches, the email subject line should read: “Product Submission for 2019 Holiday Gift Guides”. Send out pitches to blogs for their gift guides in early October.

Want to Read More?

How to Find the Right “Gift” Search Phrases

June 25, 2018 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

You likely know that the gift market, depending on what you sell, can be a large source of your revenues. Therefore, wouldn’t it be nice to know the types of gifts and gift recipients that people are searching for that might carve out more a niche for you to target in this highly competitive market.

For example, did you know that there are 18,000 Google searches every month for “gift for a 10-year-old-boy“? Buyers are getting more specific about who they are searching for, what they are searching for and the gifting occasion allowing you to zero in on search phrases that still have a lot of traffic but not as much competition.

Comparing Google “Gift” Searches

Gift for teacher (33,100 monthly searches) vs Gift for teacher at end of year (12,100 monthly searches)
Housewarming gift (49,500 monthly searches) vs Housewarming gift for man (4,400 monthly searches)
Gift for woman (27,100 monthly searches) vs Gift for woman who has everything (2,900 monthly searches)

You will see that people also search this way on Etsy and Amazon. Better to get some traffic than none at all as the competition on the major search phrases is just so high.

More Search Opportunities

Adding in one little word can also open you up to new search opportunities. A lot more people are doing voice searches so the search will be phrased a little differently and in a lot more detail. For example, while there is a ton of competition for the search phrase, “Gift for wife“ with 14,800 searches each month, there is a lot less competition but still good traffic for “Gift for my wife” at 1,900 monthly searches. Again, you will see that people also search this way on Etsy and Amazon.

In fact, if you go over to Amazon, and use their autocomplete feature, you will see that instead of just searching on “gift for dad“, by simply adding “who“ after, you see all of these popular searches that customers are also using:

Gifts for dad who has everything
Gifts for dad who fishes
Gifts for dad who likes to cook
Gifts for dad who travels
Gifts for dad who golfs
Gifts for dad who grills

So instead of just going after the most popular gift search phrases that have TONS of competition, focus in and start compiling gift search phrases for more niche targets as Christmas is only 183 days away!

Have you checked out my other blog, OnlineShopLove.com? On this blog I promote some very cool products from my customers. Again, if you have ever purchased any of my services or even one of my ebooks, feel free to email me a link to one (1) cool product for consideration at attentiongetting[at]gmail.com.

The Biggest Mistake Etsy Shops Make

March 1, 2018 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

One of the biggest mistakes I see Etsy shops make again and again is focusing all of their marketing efforts on having their products get found by the Etsy search engine. Big, big mistake.

When I consult for an online business, whether they sell on Etsy, Amazon, Houzz, whatever the case may be, I always advise that their traffic has to be a balance of traffic from the marketplace’s search engine, but also from Google, from email marketing, from publicity, from advertising and from social media. If you focus your efforts just on Etsy SEO, and they make one little change to the search algorithm, your business can fall off substantially and immediately. I have seen it happen to many successful shops, and then they practically had to start all over.

Don’t get me wrong, SEO is important but it is just one component. Did you know that most major online retailers get the majority of their traffic and sales from their email marketing efforts, not SEO? I never understood why sellers spent so much time and effort trying to get new customers rather than trying to get repeat business from their current customer base. The big retailers have figured this out, so why haven’t the smaller ones?

In terms of publicity, I once watched an Etsy shop whose product was mentioned on a very popular blog, get over 1,000 orders in 24 hours. Granted publicity can be hit or miss, but when it hits, it can be big.

In terms of social media, I have consulted for many successful Etsy shops where the majority of their traffic comes from Facebook or Pinterest, and usually the result of doing weekly giveaways on social media.

In terms of advertising, it is still the most tried and true form of getting traffic and sales. If you haven’t tried the Etsy Promoted Listings yet, I highly recommend them. I have not seen a successful Etsy shop yet who is not running them. The key is to have the right strategy.

Want to be successful on Etsy? Then try my Etsy 30-Day Success Plan. This digital download has hundreds of my proven tips and tactics to do every day for 30 days that will drive more traffic and sales at your Etsy shop.