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Selling online is a competitive business, with a seemingly endless number of sellers from all over the world vying for shoppers' attention. On marketplaces like Etsy, the competition can be fierce, making it difficult for sellers to get their foot in the door and gain visibility for their listings. Even sellers offering high-quality art, handmade goods, or meticulously curated vintage pieces often find themselves with little revenue to show for all the care and effort they put into the items they sell on their Etsy Shop. Like all things in the world of ecommerce, getting views for your Etsy shop hinges on two things: good SEO and good marketing. In this guide, we'll take an extensive look at both of these, and understand how to promote an Etsy Shop in a way that brings real, tangible results. We'll begin by understanding Etsy's algorithm and how you can combine SEO strategies with marketing practices to increase your listings' visibility. Then, we'll discuss 13 concrete strategies for promoting an Etsy shop in various ways, including several off-Etsy promotion strategies. Finally, we'll explore how you can expand your sales beyond Etsy, so you can get the most out of your ecommerce business without the constraints of Etsy.
Before we discuss how to promote an Etsy shop, we'll need to understand what determines the visibility of a shop's listings on Etsy in the first place: the Etsy algorithm. The importance of the Etsy algorithm cannot be overstated. It's the sole factor that determines who gets seen by shoppers – and who doesn't. Below, we'll take a look at the Etsy algorithm, try to understand how it works, and discuss how it can affect your sales on Etsy.
The function of the Etsy algorithm is to match buyers and their queries with Etsy listings that will lead not only to a purchase, but a good buying experience overall. For this reason, Etsy's algorithm takes more than just keywords into account – along with ensuring a good keyword-to-query match, the algorithm looks at the Etsy Shop itself to determine which listings appear and in what order. The algorithm will examine things like shipping speed, customer service metrics, and buyer ratings and reviews to match buyers with the Etsy listings that are most likely to result in a sale.
As the sole arbiter of listing visibility on Etsy, the Etsy algorithm has a direct and significant effect on your sales. Customers simply cannot buy from listings they never see, which is why visibility is the name of the game on ecommerce marketplaces like Etsy. Therefore, it's important to get on the algorithm's good side by making sure that your Etsy SEO is the best that it can be, and by ensuring that your entire Etsy Shop – from service metrics to product reviews – is second to none. In fact, making sure your Etsy Shop and listings are appealing to the Etsy algorithm is the most fundamental form of Etsy Shop promotion, and one that will bring you the best results if you take the time to do it right.
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Successfully promoting an Etsy Shop requires a varied approach, one that can recognize promotional opportunities while simultaneously creating high-quality listings that will result in a sale when promoted. The rationale behind this approach is simple: promoting an Etsy Shop will be more successful if that Etsy Shop and its listings are worth promoting. In other words, you need to make sure your listings are in order before spending time and money on promoting them.
Below, we'll go over the five concrete steps you can take right now to improve your listings and strengthen your Etsy Shop's ranking in buyer searches to drive sales. While these are in no particular order, we recommend looking at these as a checklist of best practices that you can use to ensure that you get the most out of your Etsy Shop, both organically and through targeted promotional efforts.
Keywords are the backbone of SEO. They offer a simple, straightforward way to inform the search algorithm you're optimizing for what you're selling. Getting the best results out of keywords requires two things: proper keyword research and correct keyword implementation. You'll begin by putting yourself in the shoes of the buyer, and come up with search terms that they would use to find the item you're selling. Once you have a few of those handy, plug them into one of the many keyword research tools available online to analyze the how competitive the keyword is (i.e. how much competition you can expect from other sellers trying to rank for that specific keyword) and get additional related keywords you can add to your listing. Then, you'll need to correctly implement the keywords into your listing by incorporating the main keyword into the title, and any additional keywords into the item description text. We've covered this more in depth in our Etsy SEO post, which covers how to correctly utilize keywords in your Etsy listings for best results.
In addition to keywords, Etsy offers its sellers a simple and straightforward way of telling the algorithm what the listing is selling: Etsy listing tags. Tags are essentially another way to provide the algorithm with keywords, and to do so in a simple and straightforward way. Every listing on Etsy gets 13 of these, and in our experience the best listings make full use of all these slots to get the best results in search rankings. Along with optimized Etsy listing images, getting they keywords and tags of your listings in order is already half the battle when creating Etsy listings that are worth promoting.
As discussed above, Etsy's algorithm has one function: to match buyers with listings that are more likely to result in successful sales. One major factor in buyer purchase decisions (and, therefore, how Etsy's algorithm ranks a given listing) is shipping costs. In fact, free shipping is one of the main considerations buyers cite when deciding on whether or not to proceed to checkout. All this to say, if you can, offer free shipping, even if only to domestic buyers or over a certain order amount. If you're not able to, see if you can offer it anyway by recouping shipping costs into the item's price.
Making use of the right keywords and offering free shipping are important for getting your listings to appear and rank in buyer searches, but all of that won't help you net any sales if there are no buyer searches in the first place. If buyers are simply not interested in what you're selling, your chances of making a sale are nonexistent. For this reason, it's important for online sellers to keep an eye on trends that are relevant to your product niche to ensure that you consistently offer shoppers items they actually want to buy. This is not to say, however, that you must embrace every trend and whim of the market. Make sure your product selection strikes a balance between current and classic, so you can appeal to the widest swathe of buyers possible in your niche.
No matter what you're selling, no online promotion strategy would be complete without the use of social media channels. This is especially true for Etsy, a creator's marketplace where sellers rely heavily on visuals and aesthetics to market their products. Deciding where to promote your Etsy Shop will depend on what you sell and your target audience, but one of the most successful social media channels for promoting an Etsy Shop is Pinterest. There are different approaches for how to promote your Etsy Shop on Pinterest, but Pinterest truly is one of the simpler social media channels to leverage for getting more eyes on your Etsy listings. Simply select a good product image (we recommend opting for an aspirational lifestyle shot rather than a studio shot), add relevant hashtags, and pin – it's that easy. Etsy even offers a Pinterest integration for Shop Manager, making it easy to pin new listings as soon as you've uploaded them.
Last but not least, consider running Etsy Ads to promote individual listings with paid advertising methods. Etsy has two types of ads: commission-based off-site ads, in which most sellers are automatically enrolled (although most can also opt out), and PPC ads, where you run your own ad campaigns by enrolling individual listings. We recommend the former to all sellers, and the latter for sellers who've gotten their Etsy listings optimized and promoted on social media. Etsy's PPC ads help you get better rankings in search results, and are a good way to get traction and visibility for new listings.
Now that we've covered broader strategies for promoting your Etsy Shop and listings, we'll go over 13 proven tactics for promoting an Etsy Shop, both on and off Etsy. While this is not an exhaustive list, we've carefully selected these strategies based off our years of ecommerce experience, on Etsy and on other sales channels. These methods include tactics to promote an Etsy Shop for free as well as paid promotion strategies, making them suitable for all kinds of Etsy Shops. Browse through and discover how to increase your organic views with optimized listings, how you can leverage social media to promote your shop and listings, how to republish listings for increased visibility, and more.
We touched on some aspect of optimizing listings for SEO above, but it's worth mentioning again. The importance of well-optimized Etsy listings cannot be overstated – they're more likely to bring traffic in organically, have better rates of conversion, and are actually worth spending money on to promote via ads or paid collaborations. Ensure your listings are optimized for SEO by conducting thorough keyword research for each listing, and incorporating keywords into the title, tags, description of your Etsy listings. If you list with EasyChannel, you can leverage smart AI-powered listing optimization tools to optimize your Etsy listings in bulk, allowing you to save time while creating highly-optimized listings that rank better and convert more.
Etsy has two types of ads for sellers: commission-based offsite ads, and on-site ads that work on a PPC model.
All Etsy sellers are automatically opted in to offsite ads. Sellers whose shops made $10,000 or less in revenue in the preceding 365-day period eligible to opt out, while those whose shops made more than $10,000 in the preceding 365 days are required to participate. The former group pays a 15% commission fee to Etsy whenever a sale is made through an offsite ad, while the latter receives a discounted commission fee rate of 12%. Etsy offsite ads promote your Etsy shop on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media channels, as well as on search engines and their respective ad networks like Google and Bing. Sellers are not able to choose which of their listings to promote or where they're promoted, as this is determined by Etsy.
Etsy's onsite ads are a little more involved, requiring you to actively enroll listings in order to run them. Unlike offsite ads, these ads work on a PPC (pay per click) model, meaning you'll pay an advertising fee each time a potential buyer clicks on one of your ads, regardless of whether or not that click resulted in a sale. This type of Etsy ad places your listings in sponsored slots or displays them to specific shoppers, using your bid per click to determine whether your ad is displayed over competing advertisers. As a paid advertising solution, we recommend this option to more established sellers who can allocate a monthly portion of their earnings to an advertising budget.
Social media is a powerful promotion tool, especially for the types of products sold on Etsy. Most social media platforms are based on visual media – videos and images – making them ideal for promoting handmade/customizable pieces, vintage items, and craft supplies. Getting started with social media promotion for your Etsy Shop is free, but it does take a bit of time to create engaging posts that get results. It's important to remember that social media can be hit or miss, but the key is consistency – keep your social media channels active and up-to-date, and engage with your followers in comments and DMs to show that your Etsy Shop is active, reliable, and values its customers. A good way to manage so many messages is with a multichannel helpdesk, which integrates with your social media and selling channels and aggregates all your customer interactions into one inbox.
While republishing listings to increase visibility is a widely-used strategy on many platforms, few sellers actually do it right. On Etsy, misusing this method can backfire, so it's important to only use it when other methods have not resulted in sales. To understand why, we need to take a moment to understand how Etsy's algorithm chooses which listings to show buyers.
On Etsy, every listing has what's known as a listing quality score, which is assigned by Etsy based on a variety of listing- and seller-specific factors. This listing quality score changes as the listing gains history (sales, clicks, and other forms of engagement), going up with positive interaction and down with negative interaction. For example, if a listing has a large number of sales but poor product reviews, its listing quality score will drop. The same goes for listings that buyers consistently scroll past rather than clicking into. On the other hand, a listing's quality score will increase with positive interactions such as successful sales, good feedback, and wishlist saves.
For this reason, it's important to take into account a listing's sales history before taking it down and relisting it, which resets its listing quality score. If your listing has sales history that contributed to its listing quality score, taking it down and starting from scratch means you lose that listing's positive quality score. In this case, rather than taking down your listing, see where you can optimize it for better visibility. Improve keywords, optimize titles, and adjust tags, and renew the listing. Keep in mind that Etsy will charge a renewal fee for making changes to a listing, so it's wise to get all your optimizations out of the way in one go.
On the other hand, if your listing has racked up bad reviews, or if it has never made any sales after being live for several months, taking it down completely and starting from scratch will likely be the best option. Still, your new listing should never be a duplicate of your old one; it's important to understand why the listing never got any traction in the first place. The same logic applies here too: analyze and revise keywords, and optimize the listing's title, tags, description, and images to ensure that it performs better the second time around.
Nothing gets buyers interested like a good sale, and that's just as true on Etsy as it is on other retail platforms. Seasonal sales, bundle discounts, or (especially) free shipping are all great ways to drive sales and increase order values. If you're able to, offer your buyers discounts to encourage them to purchase from you over the competition. You can even include a special discount code in every order to encourage repeat shoppers!
Listing optimization is more than just keyword research and implementation; images play a pivotal role in your listings' rankings and overall performance on Etsy. Choosing the correct size for your Etsy listing photos and ensuring that the main listing's image composition is optimized for displaying in search results on desktop and mobile is crucial for encouraging buyers to click into your listing.
Whether you sell on Etsy or on any other online marketplace, a trustworthy product recommendation is the most powerful driver of sales you can strive for. Whether it's word-of-mouth recommendations or a positive review, shoppers place significant value on other shoppers' experiences when deciding which products are worth spending their money on. In a similar vein, a good word from a trusted influencer or blogger can skyrocket your sales dramatically and in a short period of time. As people whose entire brand is based around their followers, influencers and bloggers can reach a lot of people in a very short amount of time. Since people voluntarily choose to follow these influencers and bloggers, their recommendations carry a lot of weight with their audience. Influencer and blogger collaborations have many models at different price points, with some offering product recommendations at no additional cost aside from the item, making them a good option for a wide range of Etsy sellers.
No matter what you create, getting your name (and that of your Etsy Shop) out into the online sphere that aligns with your products is a great way to gain a following and snap up customers. If you sell handmade knits, for example, posting tips, questions, and engaging with knitting forums on sites like Reddit can be a great way to make a name for yourself in the community. Avoid publishing your listings directly on forums where it is forbidden, however, and don't exclusively publish products with the aim of attracting buyers. Instead, aim to contribute to the community, put out quality content and genuine engagement, and sales will soon follow.
As a community-centered ecommerce platform, it's not unusual for sellers on Etsy to collaborate with each other to promote their Etsy listings and increase their sales. Etsy even provides a framework for seller collaborations with Etsy Teams, which are essentially groups of sellers who have something in common.
Cross promotions with other sellers are varied, ranging from shared Pinterest boards to in-person collaborative events. Etsy even has a guide for sellers who are interested in collaborating with other sellers, with ideas and examples to help get you inspired!
As the influence of social media on ecommerce is ever growing, and Etsy is no exception. Several years ago, Etsy introduced Shop Updates, which offer a way to engage with the Etsy community through shoppable still image promotions. Shop Updates are visible on your Etsy Shop's home page, and can be integrated with social media channels like Instagram and Facebook. As their name implies, Shop Updates are meant to keep interested shoppers (those who've favorited your Etsy Shop or one of your items) updated on the latest promotions, deals, and product drops. In practice, all you need to do is take a photo (we recommend you don't use listing photos for this), optionally tag an item, and publish it as a shop update. The only drawback is that the Shop Updates feature works only through the Etsy Seller app, so you'll need to download the app to your smartphone in order to benefit from its functionality.
Since its launch, buyers have flocked to Etsy to find something one-of-a-kind, whether it be a unique vintage item or a handcrafted piece of jewelry. As Etsy grew, the items offered on the platform have increased exponentially, with personalized items consistently ranking as buyer favorites. If the items you sell can be customized or personalized, we strongly recommend adding the option, even if it's just for your best-selling items. Buyers love purchasing customized and personalized items, and are more than happy to pay a premium for it.
This one might seem a little out there, but if you live in an area with an established community that aligns with your product niche, you might want to consider a collaboration with a local business. Like with Etsy seller collaborations, the possibilities are endless, ranging from shared promotional hashtags to in-person shopping events. This strategy is very much location and niche dependent, so your mileage may vary, but it's a creative way to promote your Etsy Shop offline and get your products in front of potential buyers who otherwise may never have seen your listings.
Last but not least, learning and improving as you go is by far the most valuable tool in your seller toolbox. Etsy has robust analytics for everything from listing performance to customer service stats. Make use of these analytics to get a data-based assessment of what works and what doesn't when promoting your Etsy Shop, and make better decisions on where to spend your time and money.
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Selling on Etsy is challenging, and no matter how much you work towards promoting your Etsy Shop, you'll always hit the same glass ceiling: you're ultimately limited to shoppers on Etsy. And while Etsy has no shortage of buyers, you'll inevitably find yourself fighting against far more experienced and established Etsy sellers.
The best way to instantly expand your reach beyond Etsy and instantly multiply your pool of potential buyers is to grow your ecommerce store beyond the confines of Etsy, and begin selling on additional online selling channels. This can be done quickly and easily with multichannel integration tools like EasyChannel, which offers integration for Etsy and many other leading ecommerce sales channels, including eBay, Amazon, Instagram, Shopify, and more. Easily integrate your Etsy Shop with as many sales channels as you want, scale effortlessly, and manage it all with EasyChannel's user-friendly interface!
While there's no single best way to promote an Etsy Shop, there are many strategies you can employ to increase your visibility, boost traffic, and drive sales. You can begin with more accessible promotion strategies, like promoting your Etsy Shop on Pinterest and other social media channels, and advance to more involved methods like running Etsy Ads and collaborating with influencers. No matter which approach you choose, promoting an Etsy Shop is never a one-and-done task; rather, it's an ongoing process with that requires consistent optimization in order to consistently see results. Ultimately, as long as you make the effort to promote your Etsy Shop, you're already miles ahead of most of your competition. And if you keep at it and consistently work on promoting your shop and listings, you'll quickly find the best promotion methods for your shop and its unique marketing needs.
You made it! and you're now more equipped to sell more online!
Enjoy a reward for your hard work!
Learn more about how EasyChannel works for online sellers.
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