eBay Promoted Listings is a promotional strategy that some sellers might be running scared of this Halloween. Many online retailers are asking the eBay optimisation team at Frooition, are Promoted Listings just a trick to increase eBay seller fees or are they a treat that will help them improve their visibility and sell more?

This fear has undoubtedly increased since eBay re-branded its Promoted Listings service into two different models in September. As a result, sellers now not only have to decide whether they should engage with the service, but they also have to worry about whether the Standard (Cost per Sale) or Advanced (Cost per Click) model is suitable for their products.

In reality, we believe there is nothing to fear from any strategy designed to optimise your eBay listings — so long as you don’t stray from the right path.

8 Nightmare Free eBay Promoted Listings Strategies

1. Select the right products: Promoted Listings are not a one-size-fits-all or universal strategy. Some products won’t have the margin to absorb any additional fees. Other products may already enjoy enough visibility in their categories and not require any further promotion. If you are not sure whether eBay Promoted Listings are right for your business, take the time to test a small selection of products.
2. Pick the right strategy: In theory, the Standard (CPS) model poses absolutely no risk to sellers, as long as the percentage fee is successfully absorbed in the margin of a sale after all the other sales fees, product and logistic costs are taken into consideration. On the other hand, the Advanced (CPC) model is slightly riskier but offers a fantastic opportunity to promote high-value items with smaller margins where a fee based on the percentage of sale might be too much of a burden to bear.
3. Write highly relevant keywords: The more relevant your keywords are to your potential buyer’s search, the greater the chance of your listing featuring in a prominent position. For example, a generic phrase like “phone case” will either cost you a fortune in clicks that don’t generate sales or simply disappear in the rankings. On the other hand, a more exact phrase like “iPhone 13 Pro Max Red Phone Case” will position your Promoted Listings much more effectively. Remember, eBay’s algorithm will always prioritise listings that perform well in terms of clicks and sales.
4. Maximise your budget: If you’ve got a lot of stock of a particularly popular item, don’t scrimp on your daily budget. The quicker you sell something, the less risk of a competitor jumping on your success and driving up the cost of your clicks and driving down your sales price. You don’t want your budget running out and sales grinding to a halt when you’ve still got stock sitting in your warehouse.
5. Set an objective and stick to it: If you do not see the margins you need from your promoted listings sales, don’t be afraid to pause your campaigns. Take your time to try and figure things out before re-engaging your audience with a different approach. Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.
6. Test, Analyse, Optimise. Reduce your risk by testing strategies using small amounts of money. If successful, it’s time to increase your spending. A test never fails if you learn from the experience and react accordingly — even if this means killing a campaign and focusing on something else.
7. Optimise everything else: If you are driving traffic to your listings, you’ll want to make sure they represent your business in the best possible light. The use of clean templates and professional design is a great way to make your listings stand out. Including video in your listings is also an incredible conversion enhancer you should consider.
8. Cross-promote: Frooition’s dynamic cross-promotion technology gives sellers a second bite of the cherry when someone lands on their listing, but the item isn’t quite right for them. Positioning relevant items on the original listing help keep potential buyers in your selling environment without exposing them to your competitors’ products.

Stand out from the crowd on eBay this Halloween

We all know that eBay is a highly competitive marketplace, and to stand out from the crowd, you may have to do more than your competitors. eBay Promoted Listings provide a targeted and profitable way to win more business this Halloween, throughout Black Friday and well into the Holidays.

How competitive are your eBay listings? For a free eBay listing health check, please book an appointment with our optimisation experts in the UK and EU or the US and ROW.