How to Advertise my Etsy Shop?

Etsy is one of the largest marketplaces for new and experienced sellers alike. Reaching  nearly 5 billion in sales volume last year, Etsy has become a great place to get your products recognized!

However, getting your products in front of Etsy’s spotlight can be easier said than done. So in this article, we’ll be going into detail on everything from building your brand identity to increasing your repeat customers!

Maximizing Your Sales Through Etsy

Before we dive into the numerous ways to promote your store online, it’s important to focus on getting your shop recognized on Etsy itself.

When users browse your shop, their first impression is typically based on the images you share, so it’s important to invest in eye-catching product photos. Once you’ve created an engaging feed, it’s time to dive deeper into each listing.

Just like Google or Bing, Etsy uses search algorithms to recommend the best products. This allows you to target and rank your listings by keywords and keyphrases. As you understand your target audience, you’ll be able to take advantage of this and get your products recognized by Etsy itself!

As your listing moves up the results, so will your organic traffic, which is why SEO is so powerful! To ensure you’re getting placed near the top, you first have to understand what terms your target buyer is searching.

Once you’ve done this, you can include this term in the title and description in order to get it recommended! Now that you’ve tailored your images, titles, and descriptions, you’re able to start getting your products recognized through social media!

How to Promote my Etsy Shop on Social Media

Social media is becoming an increasingly valuable and cost-efficient source of traffic. Simply by posting and engaging, you can build a presence on social media and leave an impression on your target audience.

Whether you’re selling books or pet toys, you can use social media to build and engage with your community, bringing more eyes to your products. But how do you get your content recognized on social media? This process can be broken down into three easy steps:

1. Setting up Your Profile
2. Creating a Content Strategy
3. Maintaining Consistent Growth

Setting up Your Profile

The first and most important aspect of building a presence on social media is your profile. This is your brand’s home in the community, so it’s important to craft a profile that engages and converts viewers.

To do this, there are four aspects you must pay attention to. First, you must use a searchable account name if you want to get found. For example, if you want to appear in pet toy searches, you could use “Bella’s Pet Toys”. 

Next, it’s crucial to use a relevant account handle. Whenever your profile is mentioned or shared, people will be looking at your account handle. While it doesn’t have to be formal, it’s important to make it readable and to exclude any unnecessary characters.

When browsing your profile, your bio’s job is to convert the viewer into a follower or customer. To do this, it’s important to tell your viewers what you’re sharing in a clear and concise way. After this, it’s important to provide a next step by using a call to action. This may say “Follow for daily tips, tricks and styles!” or “Visit the link in bio for more!”

The final, and arguably most important aspect of building your profile is your profile picture. This is your brand’s icon, which will appear everywhere from your posts to your conversations. If you don’t have a logo yet, you can create one using Canva or use a selfie if it’s a personal brand!

Creating a Content Strategy

Once you’ve built your profile, the next step is to create a content strategy that keeps your audience coming back for more! While you want to provide a variety of posts, it’s important to stick to two or three content pillars to ensure your content is relevant.

There are a few aspects that you must consider when determining what, when and where you’ll post. First, you must consider who your target audience is and what kind of content they are consuming.

If you’re targeting pet-owners on Instagram, it’s likely your target audience wants to see pictures of pets. Now that you’ve identified what kind of content to post, it’s time to start creating and posting.

It’s important to include a variety of content styles and formats so your audience doesn’t get bored of the content. This means incorporating photos, reels, carousels, videos and stories. Once you’ve established which types of content you’ll be posting, it’s time to take action.

Maintaining Consistent Growth

One of the most common principles of social media, consistency is key, remains truer than ever when promoting your Etsy store. If you want users to consistently engage with your content, they have to know when it’ll be published.

To keep posting on track, you can set up a content calendar or use a tool like Buffer to ensure consistency. This allows you to post the same day and time every time, so your audience is ready for your content!

Consistency is important in more than just the content you produce. If you want users to engage with you, you must do the same. This means commenting, liking and connecting with users in your community on a regular basis.

With these three keys, you’ll be able to build a solid foundation to manage and grow your audience. Doing this allows you to learn more about your audience and build a reliable customer base, which will prove immensely beneficial in the next section!

Where to Advertise my Etsy Shop

Now that we’ve discovered the organic marketing opportunities, it’s time to dive into the paid promotions that can help you skyrocket your engagement. Etsy offers in-app promotional tools, which is arguably the easiest way to start promoting but far from the most efficient.

If you’ve followed the steps above, you already have a strong community surrounding your brand, so promoting posts could help you grow that community. This can be done using Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or wherever you may find your audience!

Once you find out where your audience is hanging out, the next step is to find out what type of content they are interested in. You can do this by visiting similar pages, and analyzing what kind of content they are producing. Once you’ve gathered a few content types, you can integrate them into your own content strategy.

Organic growth is an incredible way to build genuine connections, but if you’re looking for a quicker method, you may want to look at paid promotions. Paid promotions, whether it’s Etsy or Facebook, are an incredible way to get your products in front of your target audience.

To do this, you can head over to Etsy or your favorite social platform, and create a campaign. By doing this, you can reach users targeted by age, location, interests and a number of other factors! Check out the next section to learn other ways to get your products out there.

Best Marketing Strategies for Etsy

Whether you’re looking to grow organically or promote aggressively, there’s a number of marketing tactics that’ll help you increase your traffic and sales!

• Etsy promotions
• Boosted posts
• Building a website
• Blogging
• Email marketing

Etsy Promotions

Etsy offers a “promoted listing”’ feature that’ll allow users to boost product listing without using a third-party. While the targeting is limited, this can be an excellent way to get started with promoting your listings.

To get started, head over to the marketing tab and click promoted listings. Then just set your daily budget and configure your promotion’s settings. Once this is done, you can kick back and let Etsy take the wheel.

Boosted Posts

Social media networks also allow you to boost content to get more targeted viewers. If you’ve begun building a social media presence for your Etsy shop, boosting posts can be a great way to hasten the growth of your audience.

Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest, you can promote pictures or videos of your items to reach more targeted users. This is likely the easiest way to grow your social media because it doesn’t require any additional content.

Building a Website

If you’ve been selling on Etsy for a while, you may be looking for a way to truly build your brand. Building a website will allow you to seize full control over your branding and advertising

And now, with Etsy360, you can integrate your Etsy store with your website. This allows you to gain control over your brand, while still allowing Etsy to manage transactions and inventory.

Building your own website opens up a number of doors in marketing. By taking ownership of your store, you can then take advantage of blogging, email marketing, and custom branding.

Blogging

Blogging has been long established as one of the most powerful long-term traffic sources, but it’s not as easy as it may seem. Building and maintaining a blog requires relevant and consistent content, and if you’re able to produce this, the possibilities are endless!

To get started with your blog, all you need is a website or similar platform to share your ideas! Once this is done, you can begin identifying what type of content to produce, and when to produce it.

Email Marketing

Building a blog is a great way to start getting traffic to your website, but what’s most important is what you do with that traffic! As more shoppers browse your website, you can use email marketing to capture their contacts and retain more readers and shoppers!

To get started with email marketing, you can use a plugin like Mailchimp, that makes it easy to automate email marketing campaigns. By offering coupons, newsletters or promotions in return for joining the email list, you can grow your list and keep your readers and shoppers coming back for more!

Building Your Brand on Etsy

Whether you own your domain or sell on Etsy, branding is crucial to getting repeat customers. While Etsy has some restrictions, there’s still a number of ways to set your products apart from the rest!

While you can only rename your Etsy shop once, other aspects such as your logo, images and voice go a long way in branding. These things, along with other brand assets, allow you to create a recognizable brand.

While visual effects are a large part of branding, it’s also important to consider aspects such as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and keywords. These things set you apart from others in a way that no image can, and can be extremely powerful when used correctly!

Your USP is the reason customers should choose your products over your competitors, so it’s important to have this established. Whether your the comfiest or most sustainable, customers must know why your brand is better than the next.

As explained earlier, your keywords are the words used to find your brand in search. To rank for this, you simply must include them frequently throughout your store. This tells Etsy your shop is related to the words, allowing users to find your shop using them.

Beyond branding your Etsy store, you can also use social media, websites and blogs to help promote your brand with customization opportunities. The more places you reach your audience, the more of an impact you’ll leave!

Getting Started

Etsy is a notably powerful tool for getting your products recognized, but there comes a time when you must look outward to reach new heights. From organic marketing to aggressive campaigns, there are loads of strategies to help get your Etsy shop out there.

So if you’re ready to take ownership of your store, head over to your audience’s favorite social media and start building your community today! As you’ve learned, this lays a foundation for any other marketing strategies you may execute, and requires little to no effort to start!