Classified Sites

eBay has made some forays into the classified ads space and enjoyed some good success. In the UK, you’ll see gumtree.com, worldwide take a look at kijiji.com and (for an example of an eBay owned classified site that is beating the traditional eBay site) in Holland take a look at marktplaats.nl. Take a look too at craigslist.com, of which eBay owns, 25%.

I think one of the principles of successful online marketing is to ‘follow the traffic’. And these online communities and sites provide new environments with which to interact with buyers. Search the sites and see if you might be able to advertise your sales, website, or individual items there. I think most sellers on eBay can find something to do there. Don’t forget that these sites index really well in search engines.

Comparison Shopping

Sites such as Kelkoo, Shopping.com and other major Comparison shopping sites have often proved a difficult environment for eBay sellers to penetrate. Not only are small businesses competing with big businesses who are typically getting better rates, but the it can be technologically challenging to plug-in and publish your inventory. The pricing model, pay per click rather than pay per sale, is also risky for smaller businesses with tight margins and a need for certainty.

But do take a look. They’re definitely not suited to all sellers, or indeed many, but there could be something that intrigues.

I think that every seller dependent on the eBay monster needs some sort of independent online presence. It could be just a blog or a single webpage but for many I reckon that a full-blown ecommerce enabled site is a very good idea. At the very least your own site is good cyber-squatting and also good marketing sense. At best, it will come to eclipse your eBay sales. Bottom line: you can’t rely on eBay. She may not be malicious but she can be a cruel mistress, unintentionally. Moreover, if you’re making a success of eBay you can replicate that success with your own website.

If you start now and spend a bit of cash, by Christmas 2008 you could be selling a lot of stuff from your own site, in your own way. It’s worthy of serious thought. Depending on the path you choose (and I’m hoping for lots of comments from people who’ve already had a pop), I reckon that even a relatively small outlay of £500 will pay for itself within months. Hopefully, there will be some perspectives on good packages and services too.

eBay delivers a lot of things. When it comes to buyers and traffic, nobody does it better but there are other ways of getting sales. So why do it? I think that every eBay seller can find greater profits. It’s crazy to depend on eBay alone and a website is a really good step towards diversification.

Some benefits:

You’re in charge: No more fussing over what eBay will do next. Build a site and you’re the boss. Organise how it looks and feels, take charge of the findability and create the buying experience that you think your buyers like.

Fees will be lower: Your site will have costs associated with it but they will in all likelihood be cheaper on a per item basis.

Incremental sales: website sales will hopefully be additional to those you’re already making on eBay and not cannibalising them to any real extent (unless you want them to!).

Building loyalty: For a seller, a website represents a good opportunity to build relationships with regular buyers. If they like what you’re selling and like how you’re selling, then in all hope, you can migrate them to your own platform.

There are two particular advantages of using this channel. Firstly, it’s free from eBay’s gaze. You are free to market your own website, or indeed, anything you like, without fear of eBay taking umbrage and slapping your wrist. Secondly, when buyers get their parcels they are excited and hopefully in a good mood. This is a good time to encourage them to come back for more. A satisfied customer is ripe for the picking.

At the very least you want to make sure that you’ve got some marketing bumf inside your parcel. Simply including a PayPal or eBay print-out isn’t enough. Look at creating either a professional leaflet (you’ll find some very affordable print deals on eBay) or doing your own custom despatch note. You’ll obviously want to thank your buyer and probably encourage them to contact you if they have any bothers, but otherwise it’s a blank canvas.

You don’t need reams of text, just stick to a few important messages: visit my website, check out these deals, try my Shop for these complementary items. Brand the leaflet/flyer in your colours and make it congruent with your on-eBay presence. Don’t forget to use images!

Some of the more imaginative marketing and branding I’ve seen has been on the outside of parcels. Stickers and ink stamps can be very striking and effective. You might even want to get your jiffy bags custom printed for a very professional finish.

About Me Page: Just about nothing is free on eBay and yet this free option isn’t taken up universally. Your About Me page is a freeform page that you can customise, design and brand. Buyers do, it seems, like the About Me page and take a look as they peruse eBay for things to buy. Two things. You can include a link to your website on this page, so do that. You’ll get a bit of trickledown traffic via that link (and it’s always a case of the more the merrier) but it’s also another link in to your site and good for your Google sexiness. Secondly, don’t cobble together an About Me page in minutes, taking a bit of time to ensure it’s a functioning part of your marketing is best practice.

My World: In some ways My World is simply a souped up About Me Page. But it’s the ‘social’ features that mark it apart and make it useful. And when you write a blog entry, review something or write a guide it’s not being sociable that really matters. You’re a actually talking to an audience of one: Google. Setting up your My World to match your Shop and listings need only take a few moments and you can easily add or remove boxes you’re not using.

You can blog about anything you like, but for the full benefit of indexing well in search engines (which eBay My World and the blogs functionality do) make sure you’re writing about your business, what you sell and related topics. Write a couple of reviews about items you sell and pen a guide too.

Shop Headers: Ensuring that your Shop items, and the whole of your catalogue, is adequately exposed include your Shops header, and maybe your category lists if you like, in all your listings. A buyer might not necessarily want to buy the item they land on so let them know about everything else you stock. The Shops header, replete with logo, is also a great bit of branding.

Email Footers: How many emails do you send out a week? Hundreds without really trying, I bet. Make sure that every mail you send out, eBay-related or not, has a shameless plug for your Listings or Shop. Those clicks here and there add up.

What should you be considering?

Colour Scheme and Logo: Having a recognisable and consistent colour scheme is the most obvious branding option you have. Think of big brands like Harrods, Tesco or Boots the Chemist. You know exactly what their colours are and you can replicate a bit of that immediate recognition by adopting colour schemes that are reflective of what you sell and permeate all of your eBay activities. A striking logo is also a must. Make sure it projects the kind of business you are and tells your customers something about you and what you sell. An ultra modern logo for a business selling purely antique goods doesn’t send the right message. It’s not necessarily pricey to get a designer to knock something up that you’ll like and it does look good.

Tone of Voice: The way in which you speak to your customers influences them. Compare, for instance, adverts for Cilit Bang and Marks and Sparks. The words and the way they are spoken is a million miles apart but both do the job of getting their messages across and helps us understand the products for sale. Most of your communications will be written but tone is still vital. Examine what you’re saying and whether you’re happy with it.

The Message: Do you have key messages that you want customers to absorb? Are you the cheapest, the fastest, the nicest, the most reliable? You might want everyone to know that you’re a long-established family business off-eBay. Or that you source fairtrade goods and greener packaging. Whatever the message, make sure you are getting it out forcefully and consistently. Consistency? That feels like where I came in…

I like to think about selling on eBay in contexts that are familiar. Think about a fruit market, a car boot sale or even the shops on the High Street. You’ll have outlets that don’t need to market to you. You go there anyway. You trust and know them. But everyone else will have to tempt you in with their goods, offers and messages. That’s all it is and why it’s important.

Branding is stating who you are and what you stand for and being recognized for those things. Marketing is capitalising on your brand and projecting messages that will attract customers. So what does this mean for an eBay seller?
Even if you are tut tutting under your breath as you read this, believing it to be bovine excrement, whether you like it or not, you’re marketing and branding already. Your brand is expressed by your Feedback and listings and buyers are already making judgments. You’re also already marketing: what else are your listings?

It might already be out there but for many it’s incoherent. Getting the marketing and branding right on eBay is part of being competitive because it marks out a great seller from a good one and helps you attract those all important multiple purchases and repeat buyers.

Over the next few days I want to look at some topics related to branding and marketing on eBay.

Being as efficient possible with stock levels and shifting those slow lines is a key part of your profitability. Here are some thoughts:

Keeping Stock Costs Money
For any retailer, keeping the stock itself is part of the cost of doing business. Of course, it might not be a pressing cost if you have ample cheap premises or operate from home. But even then remember that slow moving stock might be preventing you from stocking new goods. Have you got a batch of stuff that been lingering? If so, it’s efficient to try and get rid of it.

Something is Better than Nothing
You might have a price in mind for the stock that’s not moving that you need to achieve to make a profit or break even. If you’ve been failing to get that, it’s possibly worth considering whether your price is unrealistic. You can leave that stock safely stowed because you don’t want to make a loss or sell it (and make only a hopefully small loss) and then at least it’s putting something back into the business. If it’s gathering dust it’s a dead loss.

Hold a Sale
It’s that time of year and a sale of some sort is a good way of shifting stock. On eBay you have 3 options. In your Shop you can fire up Markdown Manager. There may be some requirements but at least buyers will know they’re getting a reduction. Secondly, just go for the cheap and cheerful 1-99p start price auction. Or finally, rather than sell individual items, sell batches wholesale. This cuts costs and hassle.

Every cloud…
… has a silver lining. Use your sell-off as a marketing event. Be sure to cross-promote and signpost and see if you can attract to your regular items using your cut-price items.

When it comes to email enquiries from potential buyers, I’m curious as to how many result is successful sales. You may know. But even if it’s a low percentage, as you’re now scored and rated with the Detailed Seller ratings in Feedback, you can’t really escape from this chore. Even if it is, as I suspect, often fruitless and unprofitable, it has to be done.

Automate Everything You Can
If you’re using Seller Manager Pro, or indeed any other tool, make sure that everything that can be automated has been. Payment Received and automatic Despatch Notifications put buyers at ease and help you get good grades with the DSRs.

Work the Templates
The vast majority of your emails will have identical, or near identical, content. Once all yours are set up it’s important to review and optimise them over time. You have almost complete freedom so you can tweak them to match the needs of your business. A few moments today working out what many of your emails regard, crafting the text, saving the template and using it again and again will cumulatively save you loads of time over the course of the year.

What are your FAQs?
Are you often being asked the same questions by potential bidders and buyers? Shame on you. Address your FAQs in your listings and also using the FAQ feature to save time. Look back over what you’ve been asked over the past month or two to assess what you could be adding to listings. Needless to say, even a comprehensive listing will still attract questions that you answer very clearly in your published text. But there’s not much we can do about that.

Set Times for Emails
The urge to provide ultimate customer service is a strong one for sellers on eBay. But don’t let the best be the enemy of the good. It’s tempting to ‘just log on for a second and do the emails’ but it is rather inefficient. And if your inbox is empty, it’s a complete waste of time. Have fixed times, stick to your schedule and don’t waste time poring over My Messages. The chances are that it can wait.

Remember too that buyers are sensitive to postage costs. It’s noticeable that eBay are keen to promote items with inclusive P&P. A cynic would say that’s because eBay get their share but it’s more to do with the fact that buyers like the clarity and certainty.

If you haven’t had a look at ‘free P&P’ (and, of course, it isn’t really free, it’s just factored into the item price), it is worth considering. Run an experiment: sell like-for-like items and compare conversion. You may be surprised. It could be that ‘free P&P’ works better for you on certain lines or makes a difference on BINs.

Packaging
There are two ways you can be more efficient with packaging. The first relates to cost and the second to time. Using the cheapest packaging can be a false economy. Crap materials can cost you more in the long-run, once you have to deal with breakages and returns. You should never underestimate the ordeal that the average parcel goes through in transit, so don’t scrimp. Looks for good deals and make sure that your supplier is offering the best value for money, like for like. Buying in bulk will save you money, so if you can, do. I know of one group of PowerSellers who live close to each other and they effectively operate as a cooperative to buy in bulk and save money.

In terms of time, are you using materials that mean that you can pack your despatches as quickly as possible? It’s a serious point because time is money. I remember advising a seller who was selling odd shaped items. He used to make beautiful parcels, using loads of bubblewrap and took real care. But it did take him an age. A box, less bubble, packing peanuts and a bit of newspaper was just as effective and each parcel took him less than half the time to create.

Postage Tips.
I imagine hell is rather like the queue at the Post Office. If you can possibly avoid it, you’ll save loads of time. Find out when your PO is quietest and gun for then and talk to the staff to see if you they can help. Otherwise, if you’re selling loads consider collection, PPI or other services. Time saved on despatching goes straight to the bottom line.

On a slightly different note, make sure you’re paying the right tariff. The size and weight criteria have added ambiguity, and through either malice or ignorance, it’s easy to pay too much. If it fits through the slot, it’s a Large Letter and much cheaper to send. Know the system inside out and make sure you’re not paying too much.