Marketing for Etsy: The Ultimate Guide to Boosting Store Traffic
If you make your own products or enjoy curating vintage wares, setting up an Etsy shop is an obvious move. However, simply creating a store on the platform is no guarantee of success. As with any other e-commerce business, marketing your Etsy store is vital.
There are countless ways to approach this task — some more effective than others. As a new seller, knowing where to start can be a challenge.
But don’t worry, help is at hand. In this guide, we’re going to explore some of the most popular Etsy marketing strategies and look into some key tactics used by top-performing sellers.
What Is Etsy Marketing?
Etsy marketing is about improving brand awareness and bringing more potential customers to your store, with the eventual goal of increasing sales.
Etsy sellers achieve this through many different methods, but pretty much all strategies can be divided between two categories: on-site and off-site.
On-site marketing techniques are deployed on Etsy.com, or using tools provided by the platform. In contrast, off-site marketing happens away from Etsy. The purpose of these methods is to attract target customers who might never otherwise find your store.
In both categories, you will find some tactics that are free and some that require a financial investment. It’s definitely possible to build a thriving small business without spending a dime on Etsy marketing — but in order to maximize your revenue, it can be a good idea to grab some premium tools.
Why You Need to Promote Your Etsy Store
On a platform with 96.3 million active buyers, you might be wondering why you need to promote your Etsy store at all.
However, this marketplace also plays host to 7.5 million sellers. That means there are only 12 customers for every store on Etsy, and some of the biggest sellers scoop up much more than their fair share.
In other words, competition is fierce. If you want to make any significant revenue from Etsy, you need to fight for your slice of the pie — or bring new customers to the platform.
That said, the rewards for getting it right are worth the effort. Many sellers make thousands of sales every month on the platform, equating to five-figure monthly revenue, or better.
Effective Etsy marketing can even improve your outlook away from the platform. Plenty of business owners choose to set up stores on other sites or on their own domain, and they utilize Etsy in order to draw new customers into this network of sites. Some of these newcomers may even become repeat clients away from Etsy.
How to Market Your Etsy Store
If you would like to unlock this kind of success on Etsy, there are numerous strategies you can use for marketing your store. Let’s take a quick look at your options:
SEO and Store Optimization
Believe it or not, you can massively improve the amount of attention your store receives through clever branding and search engine optimization.
Top sellers utilize keywords throughout their store to drive traffic, and upload appealing visual content to impress visitors.
Social Media Marketing
Aside from search, one of the best ways to attract new customers to your Etsy store is through posting on social media.
In particular, visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest provide the ideal space for showing off your handmade and vintage products. Post consistently over time, and you can even pick up fans who will jump on every new listing.
Email Marketing
Although Etsy doesn’t have built-in marketing features, sellers are allowed to ask customers to join a mailing list.
While this obviously doesn’t help with finding brand new customers, email marketing is an effective way of drumming up business from people who have previously made a purchase from your store.
Advertising
If you have the budget, you might consider running a few ads to promote your products.
One route here is Etsy Ads, which is a built-in feature that offers promoted listings in search results and elsewhere on the site.
Alternatively, you can run offsite ads. Facebook ads are particularly popular with sellers, although you could theoretically run ads almost anywhere.
7 Proven Tactics for Etsy Marketing
Whether you are just starting up your store or looking to grow, you’re going to need some Etsy marketing along the way. Here are some of the best marketing tips used by sellers right now:
1) Optimize Your Product Pages for Etsy Search
Let’s start with the absolute essentials. If you want to be successful on Etsy, you need to optimize your product pages.
This starts with imagery. Every listing should include half a dozen great product photos. If you don’t have the budget for a professional, just use Pixelcut on your phone — this app helps you capture studio-quality images in seconds.
Next, you need to look at your product descriptions. They should be clear, concise, and packed with search terms that potential customers are likely to use. This kind of SEO (search engine optimization) makes your products more likely to appear in search results on Etsy, and even on Google.
For maximum SEO impact, you should also include keywords in the title of each product.
2) Organize Your Store With Categories
When you first start uploading Etsy products, it might seem like a waste of time to start organizing your store. But the truth is, placing your product listings into categories is another powerful form of Etsy SEO.
The reason is that people rarely search for very specific terms, such as those you might find in product listings. Instead, they usually search in very broad terms and then browse to find what they want.
For example, Etsy shoppers would rarely search for “large blue vegan leather satchel.” But many will go looking for “bags” or even “satchels.”
By grouping your listings into categories, you can assign to them one of these broader product terms. As a result, your products are more likely to catch the attention of the Etsy search algorithm.
As an additional benefit, you can then create a new Section for each category within your store — making it easier for online shoppers to navigate.
3) Utilize Tags
Etsy actually has a built-in feature that is designed for SEO: tags.
You can add up to 13 tags on any individual product page. If you want to make your listings easy to find, you need to use this allowance wisely.
Specifically, try to focus on long tail tags. This means being more specific, such as choosing “leather satchels” rather than “bags.”
The reason we’re being a bit more specific here is that popular tags come with a lot of competition. Any individual product tagged with “bags” is highly unlikely to appear anywhere near the top of the search results.
In contrast, longer keywords like “gifts for men” and “kitchen accessories” are generally not quite so competitive, while still attracting thousands of searches.
4) Harness Pinterest
Most social media platforms can work well for Etsy marketing. But if you’re only going to choose one, make sure you set up an account on Pinterest.
There are a few reasons why this platform stands out:
- Pinterest is completely visual
- Many people use it for gathering inspiration
- Many users also use Pinterest for creating wish lists
- The demographics of Etsy and Pinterest users are quite similar
- You can actually connect your Etsy store to a Pinterest account
We could write a whole post on using Pinterest, but the key tasks here are claiming your store and setting up mood boards that reflect the style of your products. Post every day, and you should start seeing traction.
5) Build an Email List
Once your store is properly established, we highly recommend that you start building an email list.
The hardest part of Etsy marketing is getting people to visit your store in the first place. If you can make sales while avoiding this task, you definitely should.
By adding new customers to your email list, you have the chance to maintain an ongoing relationship. If you send them semi-regular newsletters or notify these people about new products, there’s a good chance they will return to your store next time they need to buy a gift.
While it’s definitely possible to build your list by asking for opt-ins, it might be easier to use a dedicated email marketing tool like Craftkit or Handmade Newsletter. Both are specifically aimed at Etsy shop owners, and they might make the process much easier.
6) Partner With Other Etsy Store Owners
It’s easy to think of other Etsy sellers as the enemy. But the truth is, very few stores are actually in direct competition with yours. When you take into account product types and pricing, you’re probably only up against half a dozen stores at most.
Smart Etsy sellers recognize this, and are willing to let their guard down in order to build partnerships or even groups of affiliated stores.
The advantage here is obvious: if you share a target audience but you’re selling unrelated products, it makes sense to cross-promote. Both sides benefit, with minimal extra effort.
7) Run Some Promotions
One more great tactic for boosting your Etsy sales is running promotions.
Etsy allows sellers to set up sales and coupons via Shop Manager > Marketing > Sales and coupons.
Here, you have three options:
- Run a Sale — You can either reduce the price of specific items or offer free shipping. Etsy will flag up your items as being on sale when they appear anywhere on the site, which should attract some attention.
- Send Offers to Interested Shoppers — This feature lets you send out a discount coupon to anyone who added one of your products to your cart but never made a purchase. This is a good way to drum up some quick sales.
- Create a Coupon — If you want to promote your store via your email newsletter or through social media channels, this option lets you create a sharable custom coupon. This can be good for bringing new visitors to your store.
Improve Your Product Photography With Pixelcut
Whether you decide to concentrate on improving your product pages or you want to make a splash on social media, it’s really important to have high-quality photos to share.
Available on iOS and Android, Pixelcut is by far the best tool for capturing product photos on your smartphone.
Our app lets you take a snap, remove or replace the background, and add effects in less than two minutes. You don’t need any creative ability to produce pro-level images, and you can export photos in the perfect sizes for Etsy and social media with a couple of taps.
Download the app free today to find out why 10 million small businesses are already using Pixelcut!
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