August 3, 2023
A Spotlight on eBay’s Promoted Listings Advanced
Staying ahead of ecommerce marketplaces is an ever-important task for thriving businesses. In the UK, Amazon and eBay both dominate this sector, although most would think it’s only the former platform. On average, eBay acquires 298 million views in website traffic each month. This makes up 73% of Amazon’s monthly traffic. So how can businesses take advantage of eBay’s competitive edge and reach even more customers? To accelerate sales, eBay promoted listings advanced may just be the solution.
What are eBay Promoted Listings?
eBay promoted listings is a powerful advertising tool on eBay’s platform which allows businesses and sellers to improve the visibility of their products across search results and category pages. This tool is similar to other pay-per-click tools on other platforms where businesses can bid to promote their product pages and only pay when potential buyers click on these promoted listings. A great thing to note is that sellers only pay for clicks that result in a purchase within a 30-day window.
With a certain type of promoted listing, sellers can choose specific items in their inventory that they wish to promote (not all products are eligible) and set an ad rate, paying eBay a percentage of the sale price when a buyer clicks and makes a purchase. These promoted listings will then appear with a “promoted” label in prominent positions, increasing visibility to buyers. All of these ads and campaign activity can then be monitored and managed via the eBay seller dashboard.
Now, this sounds pretty simple at first. However, eBay actually offers three tiers or versions of this promoted listings tool. Understandably, one size doesn’t fit all, and different sellers may be looking to achieve slightly different outcomes from the use of the feature.
The three tiers of eBay promoted listings are express, standard and advanced. Throughout this blog, we’ll be guiding you specifically on the benefits, costs and key considerations of using eBay promoted listings advanced. However, it’s also good to have a brief overview and understanding of the differences between the 3 versions of the tool.
eBay Promoted Listings: The Difference between Express, Standard and Advanced
eBay Promoted Listings Express
Promoted Listings Express is a basic version of the advertising tool, designed for sellers seeking simplicity and ease of use. With Express, eBay automatically selects listings to promote based on its algorithms, making it a hands-off approach for sellers. While suitable for beginners, experienced sellers might prefer more control over their ad campaigns
eBay Promoted Listings Standard
On the other hand, Promoted Listings Standard allows sellers to handpick specific listings they want to promote. This level of control empowers sellers to optimise their ad campaigns based on their insights and performance data. Standard is essentially a slight step up from Express, offering more customisation options for sellers.
eBay Promoted Listings Advanced:
Promoted Listings Advanced is the pinnacle of eBay’s advertising solution. With this level, sellers gain access to additional features such as customised ad rates, more comprehensive analytics, and advanced targeting options. This level is ideal for experienced sellers who want to maximise their advertising strategies and stay ahead of the competition.
This quick breakdown of the different versions of eBay’s promoted listing solutions should give you a good idea of what each package has to offer for your business. For larger businesses, looking to really scale and grow their performance on eBay, the advanced version is a no-brainer, especially for businesses with a decent amount of experience selling on eBay. However, if the differences between the versions haven’t quite convinced you, here are 4 key reasons to opt for eBay Promoted Listings Advanced:
Advantages of Promoted Listings Advanced:
- Promoted Listings Advanced offers businesses a higher level of customisation compared to the standard and express versions. This means sellers can fine-tune their advertising campaigns such as targeting, bidding, promotion duration and more. This effectively allows sellers to utilise this tool in a way that aligns their advertising strategy more specifically with business goals and marketing objectives. For example, rather than relying on eBay’s algorithm to promote listings, sellers can assign which products to promote or adjust their bids for products based on seasonality, popularity or business goals.
- The advanced version of the tool offers sellers more comprehensive and detailed insights into the performance of their promoted listings. Sellers can access data-driven metrics and analytics, including impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. This detailed performance data enables sellers to make informed decisions about their advertising strategies, identify top-performing keywords or products, and optimise their listings for maximum exposure and effectiveness.
- eBay Promoted Listings Advanced also offers targeting capabilities that go beyond what’s available in the standard and express versions. Sellers can target specific audiences based on demographics, shopping behaviour, location, and other relevant criteria. This sophisticated targeting ensures that sellers’ products are displayed to the most relevant and potential customers, increasing the likelihood of conversions and sales.
- The most important feature of the advanced version of eBay’s promoted listings tool, is the ability to create a stronger competitive edge by leveraging the advanced features available. According to Webinterpret, eBay’s promoted listings have shown to increase product page visits by 60-70%. This, coupled with the ability to customise bidding, targeting strategies and access in-depth analytics, allows sellers to optimise their campaigns more competitively. Standing out from competitors through targeted and data-driven advertising can be a game changer for sellers looking to expand and drive business growth in a saturated marketplace.
How Much Does it Cost to Use eBay Promoted Listings Advanced?
Much like any other pay-per-click model or platform, the cost of using eBay’s promoted listings feature will depend on several factors, including competition in your niche/industry, keyword popularity, targeting and bid strategy.
One of the primary factors influencing the cost is the level of competition in your niche. If your product category has many sellers vying for visibility, the bidding competition can drive up the cost per click. It’s worth being intuitive and creative in the way you position your product listings to be discovered by your ideal customers. If your industry is saturated, consider providing as much product detail as possible in your product listings. For example, think about using location-based search terms to drive local sales. This may be effective for certain businesses which have location-based customers such as eBay customers who are Manchester based looking to buy football club merchandise or memorabilia.
Another significant factor that affects the cost is your business bidding strategy. While your campaigns will only cost when someone clicks on your promoted listing, it’s important to remember that sellers can set the percentage of the final sale price they are willing to pay as a fee to eBay when a buyer clicks on their promoted listing. The higher the bid, the more likely your listing will be displayed prominently, but it also means a higher cost per click.
It’s crucial to set a budget that aligns with your business goals and carefully monitor your campaigns to avoid overspending. By being strategic with bidding, monitoring performance closely, and adjusting your approach based on the data, you can make the most of eBay Promoted Listings Advanced while controlling costs and achieving your desired business outcomes.
How to Maximise Results on eBay Promoted Listings Advanced:
To make the most of eBay Promoted Listings Advanced and maximise results, businesses need to deploy a strategic approach to utilising all of its features. After all, they’re there for a reason. Here are 5 ways to improve performance:
Keyword Research
Thorough keyword research is essential to discover the most relevant and widely used keywords by your customers to get them to convert on your product listings. On the other hand, you might want to conduct thorough keyword research to uncover long-tail keywords that competitors aren’t bidding on. Some great free keyword research tools include Google Keyword Planner; while this is primarily used for bidding on keywords for Google search campaigns, these keywords may also be relevant and translate to ecommerce platforms such as eBay.
Alternatively, another free tool that can specifically generate keywords for the eBay platform is KeySearch. This tool uses eBay’s ‘auto-suggest algorithm combined with search volume data to find the most popular keywords for specific topics on eBay’. Not only can this be used for bidding on the eBay promoted listings advanced feature, it can also be used to optimise organic ebay listings for SEO.
A/B Testing
Experimenting with your ad formats, visuals and copy is another key way to improve the conversion rate of your promoted listings. By analysing the performance of various elements, you can establish the winning combination that resonates the most with your audience and gets them to click and convert on your promotions.
Optimise Product Listings
On the internet, and definitely on ecommerce marketplaces, great products don’t just sell themselves. You need to ensure your products listings are optimised with high quality images and variations. Provide detail when writing product descriptions, not only highlighting features, but also benefits. A combination of this, and including relevant keywords, will not only increase the potential visibility of your products, but actually compel potential customers to make a purchase.
Budget Allocation
While we’ve already touched on the importance of setting a reasonable budget for your campaigns, we can’t emphasise the importance enough. Due to the unique nature of eBay Promoted Listings Advanced, and the fact that you not only pay for a click but also a percentage share of purchase, budget allocation for your listings needs to be strategically set to ensure you’re increasing conversions and purchases, whilst still making a profit.
Be sure to calculate how much you can afford to spend on clicks, what percentage you can afford to share with eBay for purchases made, along with other costs affecting profit margin for your products, so the use of this advertising feature can be effective while controlling costs.
On-going Monitoring
Last but not least, regularly monitoring the performance of your campaigns is vital to optimise performance. This is not an add-on to your organic listings which you can simply switch on and keep running to see the best results. You will need to track key metrics from your eBay dashboard, identify trends, insights and discrepancies in the performance of the campaigns, making data-driven adjustments where necessary, on an on-going basis.
Work with CSP Commerce
eBay Promoted Listings Advanced is an indispensable tool for businesses who want to gain a competitive edge on a top 2 leading ecommerce marketplace. Its advanced features, customisable options, and robust analytics can significantly impact your success as an eBay business. However, like any advertising strategy, it requires careful planning, monitoring, and optimisation to yield positive results.
Partnering with CSP Commerce, an ecommerce consultancy agency specialising in eBay marketplace management, can provide you with the expertise and support you need to make the most of eBay Promoted Listings Advanced and achieve your business objectives.