4 Effective Ways to Promote Your Business on Etsy

Once your Etsy shop is up and running, you should start promoting it. Below you will find information focused on some of the most used marketing activities that you can adopt for your business. The options you choose are entirely up to you and should be based on your available resources, your target audience, and the items you will be selling.

Word of mouth works best

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1 Word of mouth works best

If you can impress your customers, get them excited about what you have to offer, and provide them with world-class service, one of your rewards as a salesperson is that they can speak favorably of you with their friends, co-workers, and family. Also, if your buyers become loyal to you and what you sell, they can also give these people positive references about your company and your products.

An even bigger payoff is that some of your customers may be inclined to share information about you and your business through their social media, which could quickly reach a much wider audience. When you receive courtesy calls or emails from buyers, be sure to quickly thank them, politely ask for a favorable review on Etsy, and tell their friends on social media.

Positive ‘word of mouth’ serves as a reliable referral and can be more powerful than any ad someone sees, because they know and trust the source of the recommendation, whether it be from a friend, co-worker or member of the community or family.

Focus on getting existing customers back to do business with you

Once you figure out how much time, effort, and money you can spend driving traffic to your store, you’ll find that repeatedly generating business from already satisfied customers is much easier and requires much less effort.

Maintaining communication and a favorable relationship with your customers is one of the easiest ways to generate recurring business. However, you can help ensure repeat business by taking several approaches:

Offer a discount on recurring orders that is exclusive to returning customers.
Reward shoppers for every peso they spend in your store. For example, for every 100 pesos in purchases, they automatically receive a gift card worth 10 or 20 pesos.
Encourage customers to sign up to receive a weekly, biweekly, or monthly email with special discounts and promotions, as well as helpful information that will prove valuable to them. For example, you can share practical information related to your products, as well as offer exclusive previews of new or soon-to-launch products.
Post a blog and promote sales or special discounts to existing buyers.
Create a ‘birthday club’ that allows existing customers to receive a special discount during their birthday month or within seven days of their birthday.
Run a referral promotion where the existing buyer receives a discount every time someone they refer places an order in your store, and at the same time that new customer also receives a discount for being a new buyer (referral).
Interact and share information with your customers through your social networks and promote special offers only online among your friends and followers online.
Give your current buyers the opportunity to purchase new items from your store before the general public.
Create and distribute codes and coupons for your existing or potential customers, offering a percentage discount on their next order, free shipping or savings of a fixed amount.

Trust your positive ratings and reviews to increase your credibility

Getting and displaying positive ratings and reviews from your past customers is a powerful tool for turning your Etsy shop visitors into paying buyers. As you will quickly discover, positive reviews give your business instant credibility. These same reviews also allow your future customers to see first-hand the experiences of your previous buyers.

Your potential customers can quickly find out exactly what other people think about what you sell. The ratings and comments you receive are automatically displayed and prominently displayed in your Etsy shop , there is no way to hide them. That is why it is extremely important to do your best to provide top-notch customer service, to always be honest with your buyers, to sell only the highest quality products, to fulfill and ship your orders promptly, and to take steps to build strong relationships with Your clients.

Once customers receive their order, it is up to them to decide if they want to write and post a review about your product (s) and your business. This is a purely optional activity on your part, but there are simple steps you can take to encourage your buyers to post a positive review of your product (s), without appearing pushy or unprofessional.

Just as good reviews can help your business, getting bad ratings and reviews can literally destroy your business. Never underestimate the importance of Etsy’s ratings and review system as you decide how you will run your business and ultimately how you will treat your customers.

Take advantage of Etsy’s own SEO tools

One of the easiest ways to attract potential customers to your store is to take advantage of Etsy’s SEO tools . When creating your Etsy shop , and again when creating the file for each product, you will be asked for keywords (keyworsd, labels or tags) that clearly, precisely and briefly describe your company and your products. Your goal is to include words that you think your potential customers will use in the Etsy search field when they want to find products similar to what you offer.

When the tags you include match a prospect’s search words, your store or one of your products appears in search results with a direct link to your store or that product.

Etsy determines the ranking of search results based on a number of factors, which it does not fully disclose to sellers. These factors will likely include the number of search words or tags the prospect typed that match the ones you provided, as well as how long you’ve been in business and your average ratings.

Ultimately, once you start driving traffic to your store, Etsy gives you detailed insights and analytics on those visitors. This data includes the keywords that were used to find and visit your store or product listing. Tracking this information is a quick and easy way to determine which of your keywords are attracting the most traffic and which should be adjusted or replaced with more commonly used ones.

Be active on social media

On any given day, billions of people around the world spend time on social media such as Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Pinterest, and YouTube . They are using social media to get the information they want or need in a highly personalized format that is presented to them on demand.

Social media has now become a place where business operators can communicate freely and informally with existing customers, seek out and attract new buyers, and establish an interactive online community around your company and / or products.

As an Etsy shop owner , it’s not about whether or not you should be active on social media. You absolutely must! What you should consider, based on your target audience, your availability of time and resources, and what you are selling, is which social media services will best meet your needs.