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Thanks for the great feedback and all the social sharing on Part One of this series where we put the kibosh on the faulty idea that it’s possible to really succeed in online sales without any advertising at all.

Welcome to Part Two where we’re going to move on and talk about where to advertise and how to get customers to take action! At the end of this part, we also share just a little bit more about the big new advertising opportunity we’re going to release tomorrow here on EverythingEtsy.com!

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Getting Customers To Take Action — Kim Layton, EverythingEtsy.com, August 2014

When I started selling on Etsy I was already pretty busy. Crazy busy, really. I had two sons in elementary and middle school, a husband to take care of, and a job to do helping him run a construction company from our house, which I also tried to keep at least somewhat clean. I’m sure there are a few of those funny cards on Pinterest that would paint the picture pretty clearly.

But once I got that first Etsy sale, I was hooked and so was my husband Tim. The years since have seen us dive into online business full time, selling enough on Etsy to generate a fair amount of income and blogging like maniacs for the rest. Now, in 2014, we love it and we see more opportunity ahead than ever.

But it hasn’t been an easy road and sometimes the sales have been so slow I could just cry. It’s frustrating to do everything you can think of and still not get sales. I’m going to try to help you avoid that by sharing some important lessons I’ve learned and pointing you towards solutions I know will help you right now.

Getting Customers to Take Action

Customers and action… after your business is set-up and you have a way for people to pay you these are the two things you need most.

You get them by advertising.

This isn’t really a shocker right? You already knew this and so did I. What I didn’t know was where to advertise and I had very little understanding as to what made people take action online. I’ve had to learn them both the slow way. Maybe I can save you some time.

Where to Advertise

The sheer number of “opportunities” to advertise online is a major problem! There are so many choices and they have so many sub-choices to make inside them that it is totally overwhelming. Who has the time to figure all that out? And (as it turns out) who has the budget for most of those options anyway? What seems like a “cheap” ad on a huge platform turns out to only be cheap if you don’t mind them only showing it to your mom. At least they’ll show it to her over and over again so you get that brand recognition! If you actually want to get that ad “out there” then you’re going to need a budget in the upper hundreds of dollars, if not thousands or even more. Big $$$.

They know this and they do that on purpose because there are boatloads of people and companies who DO have that budget. I’m not one of them. Are you?

Here’s what works on a smaller budget…

1. Advertise on Etsy {If you have an Etsy Shop, that is}

Etsy advertising gets lots of mixed reviews, but I can tell you from experience that it can work. I’ve never felt like it was a huge win for us, but the truth is that I don’t know for sure. We’ve had some major big wins in our Etsy shop marketing over the years and all of them came from the same core source “exposure”. Our stuff was out there and the right people found it and shared it. Maybe an Etsy ad did that?  Maybe not.

But some sales are clearly identifiable as coming from an Etsy ad and those alone have usually been enough to at least pay for themselves. So at worst it’s been break even but I think it’s been better than that. That’s the thing with advertising, you just have to do it… you don’t always know exactly which advertising dollar resulted in a sale but you can be sure that somewhere it’s going to pay off. {Yay!}

An ad that breaks even is not a bad result. A bad result is an ad that costs you a fortune and you can’t see any real return at all. Zip. Nada. That’s a fail. But a break even ad is getting your name out there and building your customer list without breaking your bank.

Etsy ads are showing to the right people at the right time, which is a massive step in the direction. And besides, doesn’t it just make sense to support the ecosystem you’re a part of? Lots of sellers will go on and on about how Etsy already makes money on listing fees, and how they already take a cut of every sale. That’s true, but those fees are nothing compared to what you get in return.

The simple truth is this: If you’re selling on Etsy then you want Etsy to make money. It’s good for sellers. If sellers aren’t selling then Etsy is dead in the water. You’re on the same team.

2. Advertise on Blogs

Blog advertising is easy, it works, and it’s good for the community. It’s also very affordable which, for a small business, is pretty important!

Blog Advertising Is Easy

Bloggers by nature are easy to approach. If they didn’t want to talk, they wouldn’t be blogging. Once you find a blog you like all you have to do is look for an “advertise here” link or a “contact me” link or form. When you contact the blogger keep it short and sweet because they (we) get tons of unsolicited emails from scammers working in a dark hole somewhere offering “advertising” opportunities which are really just attempts at buying links, which good bloggers won’t sell.  So make it clear you’re the owner of the business, not a consultant or anyone who is being paid to get the business exposure.

If you can’t find an “advertise here” link and find yourself sending an introduction email, something like this would work:

Hi (use their real name),

I’ve been reading your blog for (amount of time more than a few minutes) and I feel like you’re speaking to the same audience I need to reach for my small business. I’d like to advertise on your blog and I need to know if you sell ad space and if so, what it costs. My budget isn’t huge but I’m not looking for free advertising.

I want to advertise for my (website, Etsy shop, eBook, etc) and the link for the ad would point here: (the specific link you want your ad to point to).

Let me know!

~ Your Name

your other contact info… a phone number would be good to prove you really aren’t a scammer

A contact like this will get you in touch with most bloggers and if you don’t get a response, try again in a few days with a follow-up. It’s possible that they missed your email or that it ended up in spam. (the word advertise can cause that, but it’s kind of necessary for what you’re talking about!)

Blog Advertising Works

Blog advertising is super smart because you’re in front of the right people! You are part of a community. Your business is part of a community. If you sell wedding products then you’re part of the “wedding community” which is huge. Find a place where lots of wedding related web traffic hangs out. You can usually find these through your own natural web browsing.

Here are a few ways to find good blogs in your niche:

• Pinterest Search
• Pinterest Boards of other people in your niche, especially “influencers”
• Google Search (less reliable than it used to be, so be prepared to go a few pages in)
• Twitter streams of people in your niche
• Blogrolls found on some blog sidebars
• Other publications both online and offline… look for links and mentions of blogs

You’ll quickly get the hang of finding blogs that clearly speak to your community. Once you’ve done that it’s just a matter of making a deal.

Your advertisement in front of the right audience will drive traffic to your business. It works.

It’s Good for The Community

Good blogs are a great resource for the community and they’re almost always totally free for the reader. But they don’t just throw themselves together! It’s a ton of work for the blogger to create, build, and maintain a good blog. {understatement}

By helping them continue in that work, you’re advancing the community as a whole, which is good for your business!

Your immediate “return on investment” is the instant brand recognition you’re building for yourself, the clicks from your ad, and the actions those visitors take when they get to your site, but helping maintain the overall ecosystem is a wonderful side-benefit of blog advertising.

Blog Advertising is Affordable

We used to sell an ad space on EverythingEtsy.com for $10.00 a month! Our traffic and ability to drive traffic to our advertisers grew fast and we eventually raised those prices but the point is that you can get great deals on blog ads if you look around a little. There is something for every budget, in every community.

The hard part is knowing whether or not a price is really good. It depends on how much traffic the blog gets and how visible your ad is on the page. The best way to figure out traffic is to ask the blogger how much traffic they get and compare that to the cost of the ad space. The lower your “cost per impression” the better for you.

A word of caution… some bloggers will shut down completely when you ask about their traffic. We used to refuse to share that information. Usually that’s because a blog isn’t all grown up yet and the blogger is afraid that their traffic isn’t enough. But even small amounts of “the right” traffic can work for you so it can be worth it to advertise on smaller blogs, just don’t spend too much to do it.

The bottom line is this: blog advertising works better for less money than other options. So that’s where you should be looking.

How To Get Customers to Take Action

Once you’ve done everything else… you’ve built your shop, you’ve listed your items, you’ve got your products ready to go and you’re in front of the right audience… you need that audience to ACT. Click, buy, enjoy.

This is the art and science of conversion and believe me, there is a whole lot of each involved in getting it just right. Conversion (converting site visitors into paying customers) involves everything from the first moment a potential customer puts eyes on something you control. Here is a short list:

• Your advertisement (quality, colors, logos, offer, call to action)
• Your website/shop (name, logos, colors, presentation)
• Your You (your story, your about page, your pictures, your connection)
• Your items (title, photography, description, story)
• Your offer (price, sale price, discount, coupon, shipping cost, return policy, payment methods)

As you can see, most of the conversion tools live on your site/shop. But some of them are part of your advertising.  You can make giant strides forward with those right away.

Use Coupon Codes to Reach Whole New Levels

We’ve been letting our advertisers know that the quarterly EverythingEtsy.com ad sale is coming soon and we’ve also been hinting at a new way we’re going to start helping our advertisers get customers to take action.

I’ll take that hint one step further now. Two words…

Coupon Codes

You might call it a discount code. No matter what you call it, it’s one of the two most powerful tools in online sales and we’re going to help our advertisers use this tool in a big way this holiday season. (the other powerful tool is free shipping)

EverythingEtsy.com is a five year old (and then some) blog that, on average, will show our site advertisements around a million times every month. Our audience is totally your target market if you’re in the handmade, Etsy, indie community. One of our top search terms for traffic is Handmade Gifts and many of our over 1000 posts have been shared in social media hundreds of thousands of times. (lots of steady traffic!)

Tomorrow (August 29th, 2014) we’re going to open up the shopping cart for this ad sale. It will be open for four days and then closed until the next sale. This is your chance to advertise on one of the most well known blogs in the community at a price you can’t beat.  And once you hear about our new offers and options, you’ll want to jump right in and start your sales flowing asap.

But, one of the golden rules of business is “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” so after you’ve made your purchase with us, go set-up some Etsy ads and find some other blogs to advertise on! Advertising is the key to getting customers that take action.

~ Kim

To get the next article in this series, and to be certain you don’t miss one of our best offers ever be sure you’re on the EverythingEtsy.com Advertising Opportunity Email list…. do that here.

Let’s Talk!

Thoughts? Questions? Hopes? Dreams? Fears?…

Leave us a comment and share your thoughts.  And go ahead and hit that like button while you’re at it! Thanks!

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