What are marketing options on eBay?
There are quite a few different eBay marketing options, and although it’s important to have some, not all of them need to be utilised by all sellers. The tricky bit is deciding where to spend your marketing budget, and there are no set or easy answers to this question, all accounts have to decide on the best way forward for their business. Crucially, whichever options you go for the marketing situation must be monitored and adjusted on a regular basis. Unlike optimising the account and listings, which only needs to be done once and then reviewed occasionally, marketing needs a close eye with much more attention.
All of the options below are pleasing to eBay and will result in a boost in search results – some more than others. Often, they will show in the search results page itself, tempting buyers with a deal.
Some options are only available to shop subscribers – these are marked by a *
Best Offer: This is a popular option with both eBay and buyers. Offers made to these listings can be automated, so that offers received below a certain price are automatically rejected, and those above a certain price are automatically accepted. Buyers will see if a sale has been made through an offer but not the amount.
Multi-Buy: This is when buyers purchase more than one item in the same transaction from the same listing or seller. Multi-buy discounts are usually absorbed by the consequent savings in shipping, so for example 1 item @ £10, 2 @ £9.50 each, 3 @ £9 each.
*Order size Discounts:
Order discounts have mostly been superseded by the Multi-Buy option. They work in a similar way and are promoted by eBay by flash banners on the View Item page.
*Markdown Sale Events: These are where items are entered into a markdown sale for a limited time and show the buyer the original price with a slash through it – eBay also boosts sale event items in search results.
The prominence of sale events has lessened as eBay has introduced different marketing options, but they are still useful to kickstart stale listings or quickly increase transaction numbers.
*Coded Coupons: These replaced the old Codeless coupons and are a more sophisticated version. They work like any other coded coupon, with many options to set a time limit or budget. These can be useful to send to existing to buyers to encourage repeat buyers, although it you have a website you would probably prefer buyers to visit there instead.
Auctions: Although most sales are made on eBay by Fixed Price, or Buy It Now, there is still a place for auctions. eBay is still known as an auction site, and the format can be useful as a marketing tool.
Send Offer to potential buyers
eBay now allows sellers to send an offer to eligible potential buyers on their listings. These will be Watchers, people who have your items in their baskets, or even just people who have clicked repeatedly into a listing. Send Offer to Watchers is only available to individual listings, not Multi Variations.
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