Learning how to promote an eBay listing is a skill that will help turn eBay sellers into highly successful business owners.
A promoted listing is a great way to generate traffic, interest, and sales, making it a relevant marketing strategy for your eBay store.
There’s no question that eBay is still a force in online selling.
There are 147 million active buyers on eBay as of 2021’s 4th quarter count, making the marketplace one of the biggest online selling platforms in the world still.
But how do you get your eBay listings in front of as many buyers as possible?
In this article, you’ll learn all you need to know about eBay promoted listings and eBay advertising strategies that will help you get more eBay sales with less advertising costs.
Let’s get started.
How to Promote an eBay Listing
For those who want to learn how to get more views on eBay, promoting your eBay listing means paying ad fees to boost your listing’s visibility on the online selling platform.
Over 1.2 million sellers use eBay’s promoted listings, quickly making it a seller’s go-to strategy. When done well, you’ll get a great advertising investment return.
Where Do eBay Promoted Listings Appear?
So how does a promoted listing boost a product on eBay?
The primary way is by having your listings appear on certain places as “sponsored” products. These placements will potentially bring in more eBay sales for your business.
Here are the three sponsored placements where your promoted listings appear on the eBay platform.
1. The Top of Search Results
The central place where you want your eBay-promoted listings to appear is at the top of eBay’s search results.
To do that, you’ll need to improve your listing’s quality and bid for relevant keywords at a competitive ad rate.
The goal is to get as high as possible so more buyers see you. If you get to the number one spot, that should bring many potential buyers to your listing. If you land between #2 and #5, that is still a big win.
2. Everywhere Else on Search Results
When you pay for ads with other search engines, like Google Ads on Google search, you’ll only show up in a few places. Fortunately, eBay is a bit more generous with visibility to advertisers.
Your eBay-promoted listings will also appear in different places across search results. Sometimes, you might appear in the middle of a search page or at the end.
Wherever it may be, you’ll have many chances to get in front of your target customers across search results.
3. Next to Non-Promoted Listings
Your product could also appear next to an organic listing besides relevant searches. Your sponsored ad will often be related to the product it’s next to, which makes for great search intent.
Promoted listings don’t always guarantee sales. But if you follow tested advertising strategies and create eBay-promoted listings as standard ads that convert, you should see great results for your eBay site.
How Do Promoted Listings on eBay Work?
Before you learn how to advertise on eBay, you should understand how a promoted listing’s features work to your eBay store’s advantage.
Here are a few things you should know before promoting listings on eBay.
Eligibility
It would be chaotic if anyone could just run an eBay-promoted listing without following certain rules. So understandably, eBay has set up some eligibility guidelines for sellers to run ads on eBay.
Here are a few rules you should follow to be eligible to run a promoted listing.
- Keep a good track record. You need an “Above Standard” or “Top Rated” status on eBay to run a promoted listing. Do this by regularly fulfilling, getting good customer feedback, and serving your buyers.
- Stay active. You only get access to promote listings when you keep your eBay store moving by continually adding listings. Make sure your information is all up-to-date.
- Promote fixed-price listings. eBay-promoted listings aren’t allowed for eBay auctions.
- Only promote listings in allowed eBay categories. eBay doesn’t allow sellers to promote products in categories like Vehicles, Real Estate, Everything Else, and some Travel categories.
Ad Rates
A crucial concept you should know about before running a promoted listing is the eBay ad rate. These are the ad fees you’re willing to pay to promote your listings. Ad rates significantly affect how much traffic and clicks you’ll get from your promoted listing.
Unlike other advertising platforms, eBay will charge you based on the final sale price of your listing. You can set an ad rate between 2% to 100% of your item’s sale amount.
Things like item attributes, seasonality, past performance, and competition will also determine the ad rate of your listing.
Another plus for eBay is you only pay an ad fee if a buyer clicks on one of your ads. When you start running ads, you’ll also get a suggested ad rate to know the best ad fee to pay to get the best results.
Appearance
So what do eBay ads look like? The answer is critical because you want to design your ads based on how they appear on eBay’s platform.
In principle, eBay’s promoted listings are great because they look exactly like organic listings. The only difference is your promoted listings will have a small tag at the top that says “sponsored.”
On top of appearing on organic search, your promoted listings will also show up in sections like:
- Similar sponsored items
- Related sponsored items
- Sponsored items based on your recent views
- Sponsored items from this seller
- Explore more sponsored options (by product type)
These tabs throughout the eBay network give a promoted item more reach and visibility. They’re great ways to appear in front of potential buyers looking for a product like yours.
How Much to Promote an eBay Listing?
So how much does it cost to run promoted listings on eBay? The promoted listings cost you’ll have to pay depends heavily on a few factors:
- Your ad rates
- Your category’s competitiveness
- How rare or common your product is
When you pay for promoted listings, you’re bidding on a position. These bids operate based on the trending ad rate of a product.
For example, the trending video game ad rate might be around 4%. That means you’ll want to bid higher than that to get a more favorable position on ad spots.
The beauty of eBay-promoted listings is that you set the ad rate. You can start with as little as 2% of your final price and then work your way up as you validate the effectiveness of your ads. You can follow a suggested ad rate or even lower if you like.
How to Set up a Promoted Listing
Now that you know why promoted listings are great, it’s time you learn how to get your eBay listing to the top by setting up promoted listings.
Before doing that, make sure that your listing is in order and visible. If your eBay listing is not showing on the search results, make sure to fix the problem.
Once everything is in order, you can get started.
1. Go to Promoted Listings Dashboard Inside the Seller Hub
The first thing you’ll need to do is go inside your Seller Hub. To get to your hub, log in to your account and head over to eBay.
Next, you’ll want to head to the advertising dashboard in the Promoted Listings Standard campaign manager.
When you’re in you’re account, head over to the “Marketing” tab and click on “Promoted Listings.”
2. Click “Create a New Campaign”
In your Seller Hub, head to the area that says “Create Your First Campaign.” You can also access it by heading to “Campaign” and clicking “Create a New Campaign.”
Your goal is to create an ad campaign for your promoted listings.
3. Select Listings Individually or in Bulk
The next step is to select the listings you want to promote. You can select specific individual listings or choose the bulk listing selection. The maximum number of listings you can advertise in a single campaign is 50,000 listings.
4. Apply an Ad Rate
Set your ad rate to your desired budget. You can look at the suggested ad rate or decide your rate. You’ll want to set an ad rate higher than the suggested rates to get a better result so you get more visibility and reach.
5. Name Your Campaign
When you’re ready to launch your campaigns, you’ll have to set a name for it, so it’s easy to go back to your existing campaign to check your listing performance. Once you’ve done that, hit “Launch” and watch your promoted listings go live!
Tips When Running Promoted Listings on eBay
Now that you know how to promote items on eBay through promoted listings, you’ll need to learn how to optimize your promotion strategy to sell more.
Here are some tips to improve the results of your promoted listings.
1. Maximize the Guidance Tools
If you’ve only started using promoted listings, it’s wise to rely on eBay’s automated tools to get more guidance. Features like suggested ad rates, the quick listing tool, and so on.
When in doubt, go beyond the suggested ad rates to appear before more potential buyers. When you don’t see results from those ads, you can switch your strategy or change your content to get more sales.
2. Make Great Listings by Adding Good Copies and Images
Promoted listings are there to help you get more visibility. But the listing quality is what will convert a customer.
Ensure you optimize your eBay listings by creating convincing copies and using excellent images.
If you optimize your listings such that they’d gain organic sales without even boosting, you should get favorable results once you start promoting your listings through eBay advertising.
3. Run Promotions on High-Margin Listings
Running standard campaigns on low-margin listings isn’t optimal for your business. You want to look for high-margin listings so you have more ad budget.
If your margins are low, see if you can increase the product price slightly. When you can’t, try looking for high-margin products that you could offer in your store so you can make more money from every sale made through promoted listings.
4. Check Your Ad Performance
You’ll need to monitor your performance to successfully run promoted listings on eBay. You can do that by going to the Performance tab of your Seller Hub.
You’ll be able to check a whole array of data and metrics there, including your promoted listings campaigns, impressions, clicks, number of products sold, sales amount, ad fees, click-through rate, sales conversion rate, the average sold ad rate, and so on.
When you see your data, you can start adjusting your Promoted Listings Standard campaigns to improve your eBay advertising tactics.
5. Pour in More Budget on High-Performing Promoted Listings
Don’t just sit when you see promoted listings performing well. Consider running more campaigns for the duplicate product listing to milk the opportunity more.
Doing more of what works is a great way to get more results for your business. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel all the time. Use more of the promoted listings that sell to maximize your revenues on paid advertisements.
When Should You Use eBay’s Promoted Listings?
Running promoted listings doesn’t have to be a 24/7 ‘round the clock expense. You can strategically set ad spends for specific occasions.
Here are the best times for you to use promoted listings.
1. When Your Listings Get Pushed Down
This could be because other sellers rank better or pay for sponsored ads. You can create new promoted listings every time you have a new product that needs a boost.
2. When You’re Selling Widely Knowns Products That’s + or – 5% the Price of Others
The first product to offer value wins when you’re at a price war. So you want to appear as many times and be as high on a search rankings page.
3. When You Have a Lot of Positive Feedback
Don’t let your eBay feedback go to waste. Let more people know that you and your products are fantastic!
Don’t worry if you have negative feedback on your store. Make sure you take care of those concerns and respond publicly, so people know you amended the transaction relationship.
4. When You’re Offering a Discount or Sale
Promoting listings to inform people about sales and discount promos on your store is a great idea. Using a sponsored listing to promote a discount or sale could help attract more buyers.
5. When Selling Seasonal Items
There’s a strong scarcity theme to seasonal items. You can capitalize on that by getting in front of people who want seasonal products ASAP. These include products like Christmas decorations, Thanksgiving-themed gifts, Halloween costumes, Super Bowl merchandise, etc.
Are eBay Promoted Listings Worth It?
So, do eBay-promoted listings work? The bottom line is how well you use them.
If you follow all the steps, ensure that you’re running eligible promoted listings, and keep reinvesting into promoted listings that work, then there’s a great chance you should get your money’s worth on promoted listings.
Most eBay-promoted listings increase impressions by 4-5 times that of organic posting. Moreover, visits to product pages also increase by 60-70% on average.
So when you mix a great product with an impeccable strategy and a valuable product, you should start seeing better results on your promoted listings.
Final Thoughts
eCommerce ad spending will reach 20.1% of total digital marketing spending by 2026. The reason why more businesses are using them is that it’s giving them the results they want.
So, if you’re planning to run promoted listings on eBay, this article’s step-by-step guide and tactics should help you get a jumpstart on your eBay advertising journey. Pick out a few strategies and start with that.
If you want to learn how to sell on eBay but don’t know where to start, check out this step-by-step guide on how to create an eBay store.
There’s only one way to see if this strategy will work for you. That’s to use promoted listings yourself and see if they can bring you the desired results.
