Slow sales got you down? Check out my top 5 tips for increasing sales on Etsy when business is slow.
1. Up Your Advertising Game
When I notice a slow in sales, the first place I always start is in my advertising. If you aren’t advertising on Etsy yet, I would highly recommend it. Advertising increases your listing views, which increases your listing clicks, which… yep, you guessed it, increases your sales!
To start advertising on Etsy, click on the marketing icon in the sidebar on your Etsy shop manager (it looks like a megaphone). Here, you can select your daily budget (how much you want to spend per day on advertising). You can also select which listing you would like to advertise when you click on “Change Advertised Listings”).
I currently have my ads set at $5 a day, but feel free to experiment and choose the number that works best for you! You can set a budget as low as $1 a day.
When sales are slower, I also like to go in and change my advertised listings. Sometimes it helps if I turn off some advertised listings. I know what you’re thinking… turn off advertising? I thought you were just telling me to increase me advertising! I still am! But if it’s in the middle of June, odds are I’m not going to get any sales for my Christmas t-shirts. People still may be clicking on those ads, costing me money (you pay-per-click on Etsy), but no one is actually buying. You can get the best bang for your buck by only advertising listings that are relevant for the time of year it is.
2. Run a Promotion
Sometimes all it takes is a 10% off sale to start getting orders again!
Your sales and coupons page is also in the marketing section of your Etsy shop manager. To run a sale on your Etsy shop, click on the black “+ New Special Offer” button on the top right of your sales and coupons page. Here you can select whether to offer a percentage or dollar off discount. You can also select which listings you want to include in the sale, and how long you’d like the sale to run for.
Another awesome marketing tool Etsy gives sellers is targeted campaigns. You can choose to run either an abandoned cart campaign or a recently favorited campaign. I use both, and get great results from them!
Abandoned Cart Campaign
If a person adds an item to their cart and doesn’t follow through with purchasing, this is called an “abandoned cart”. With an abandoned cart campaign, Etsy will send an email to anyone who has an item in their cart from your shop and provide them with a coupon code. This gives some customers that extra push to follow through with purchasing that item they’ve had their eye on! You choose the discount that you’d like to offer. I usually do 10%.
Recently Favorited Campaign
If someone has recently favorited an item in your shop, Etsy can also send them an email with a discount code. Again, this gives potential customers that extra incentive to buy!
3. Send Out an Email Campaign
I hope by now you’ve heeded my advice and started to grow an email list! If not, start now! It’s times like these when that email list will come in handy. Whether you have an email list of 1, 100, or 1,000, you can reach potential customers that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise reach!
Send out an email with the sale you’re currently running, a special discount code, or let people know what’s new in your shop. You might just get some surprise orders out of it!
4. Add New Listings
Etsy loves when you add new listings, and favors shops who are active and consistently adding new products. This means that when you are active in your shop (adding/updating listings), Etsy shows your listings higher in search results! From a pure mathematical perspective, the more listings you have, the more likely it is that you’ll sell something.
5. Update Current Listings
If sales are slow, now is the time to go through all of your current listings and update your photos and SEO. Make sure your photos are clean, crisp, and professional looking. Make sure they show off all of the amazing aspects of your product. Add keywords to your titles, tags, and product descriptions so that you show up higher on search results. I get into more details about SEO in my “How I Made $100,000 in Sales in One Year” and “How to Make Your First Sale on Etsy” blog posts.
Now get to work, girl! Once you implement these 5 sales tips, my wish is that you’ll be hearing that cha-ching in no time! Once you do, drop me a comment and let me know which tip helped the best!