Is it necessary to incur eBay Promoted Listings costs to succeed as an seller on eBay in 2023?
As eBay CEO acknowledged during eBay’s recent Q4 earnings call, eBay’s active buyer base has declined by 9% year over year. Why? Because with COVID mostly in the rear view mirror at long last, shoppers are flocking back to newly reopened brick-and-mortar stores. Ecommerce sites across all platforms are in the same buyer-leaking boat. So let’s turn to eBay Promoted Listings costs and it factors into this landscape.
A huge bright spot highlighted during that call is the growth and overall success of Promoted Listings (PL for short).
PL is the primary driver among eBay’s first-party advertising programs, which collectively brought in an impressive $276 million in revenue during Q4. Most of that is thanks to Promoted Listings Standard (PLS), eBay’s pay-per-sale ad program for eBay sellers.
So what does mean for you and your business on eBay?
It boils down to this: Use PLS (if you aren’t already). But be sure you use it wisely and well. Here’s why you need it — and the savviest strategies for doing so.
Simply put, even with eBay Promoted Listings costs, you need it to stay competitive.
Because you can bet that your competition is promoting their listings! As ecommerce marketing guru Neal Patel states in his excellent article The Keys to Success with Amazon Advertising , “People don’t have the time to search through pages two, three, and four of Amazon’s results. They expect to find the best results at the top of page one, and, if your product isn’t there, then your sales are going to suffer.” The same is true on eBay. So how can you get the maximum bang for your PLS buck?
First, create a great listing.
Start by knowing and following eBay best practices for crafting an effective title: eBay gives you 80 characters for your title; use at least 75-80 of them. Make your title keyword rich (don’t waste characters on punctuation, emojis, or unnecessary verbiage) and be sure to front-load “the noun” — i.e., what your item is, be it a shirt, a vase, or a hubcap
eBay’s search engine, Cassini, uses those keywords to rank your listing in search results. Furthermore, your title is what gets buyers to click on your listing; it’s what they see first and foremost, especially in the eBay Mobile app. And more than 80% of all eBay buyers shop via their mobile device!
For more details on optimizing your listings for PLS, read my blog post eBay Promoted Listings: Your Holiday Superpower!
Second, remember that PLS is PPS (pay per sale), not PPC (pay per click).
Set your ad rate (the percentage of the sale price that you’re willing to pay eBay when your item sells), and then review the data in your Advertising Dashboard. It’s located under the Marketing tab on your Seller Hub Overview page. Keep a keen eye on your dashboard with the changes to how eBay calculates your PLS fees starting on March 30,2023. With eBay including what it calls “Halo” sales in Promoted Listings sales, it is very likely you will see a rise in the PLS fees you pay.
What are your Promoted Listings costs adding up to?
Check your sales, then crunch the numbers. Is spending, say, $120 in PL fees (in addition to your FVFs — final values fees) worth $3000 in sales?
What strategies work with the upcoming Promoted Listing fee changes?
With the addition of Halo sales charges in addition to Direct click sales it’s worthwhile to keep a watchful eye on your Advertising Dashboard. It’s in Seller Hub, under Marketing. My free guide Winning with Promoted Listings spells out the smartest strategies to stay profitable despite these escalating fees. In my free guide, discover a bonus addendum of 4 pages on how best to deal with these upcoming March 2023 changes to PLS.
Download your free guide Winning with Promoted Listings!
The Bottom Line for You and Your Business
eBay sellers have reached a tipping point with regard to Promoted Listings. They’re no longer just a good idea; they’ve become standard operating procedure. So factor in ad rates as part of your COGS (cost of goods sold) and sell, sell, sell!
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