eBay marketing
You've heard the old expression, “Build it and they will come.” That may be
true, in some cases. But as any savvy marketer will tell you, there is often
more money to be made in going to where the market has already gathered.
For many industries, there is a large and active market available 24 hours a
day, seven days a week. eBay –
once simply a burgeoning online auction site – is now an indispensable part of
goods and services distribution worldwide.
If you're about to skip this article because you don't think eBay is for you,
let me slip in one quick thought. There are thousands of businesses using eBay
that really don't care whether they sell anything there or not. To them, the
world's largest auction is simply a way of connecting with their audience and
generating traffic to their sites and retail stores. More on this later.
You probably realize that most people using eBay use it as a way to sell
their goods online. But you might be surprised to know that personal and
business liquidation auctions are not the only reasons to list your wares for
sale on the site. There are entire businesses that depend on eBay for their
distribution. They’re not all small operations, either. eBay’s PowerSellers are
those that consistently conduct a large number of transactions through the site.
To reach the highly respected Platinum PowerSeller status, you must sell more
than $150,000 per month for a minimum of three consecutive months!
In roughly half a decade, eBay has grown to become an all-encompassing
merchandising and distribution system. The site publishes guides to help
neophytes learn the ropes, provides plenty of statistics on what does and does
not sell, and offers expert information on shipping and financing. There is even
an entire section of the site that provides advice and assistance with
international trading rules and regulations!
The beauty of eBay is its transparency. It's easy to monitor other sellers
and determine what’s really of interest to the millions and millions of people
who visit eBay every day. One of the quickest ways to get a feel for what sells
is to do an advanced search on eBay specifying “Closed Auctions” only. This
gives us cheap, quick, and easy access to metrics we just can't get in the
“real” world.
When you find some sellers that seem to have it together, make note of the
features and benefits they promote, the average bid, the average shipping &
handling fee charged, and the amount of traffic they get.
This is terrific competitive intelligence that will help you determine how
your own product must be positioned to compete. What price, value, features and
product bundles must you include to succeed?
If there is sufficient demand to warrant a test, add an auction of your own.
See how much traffic you get. Within a week or two you’ll know if there’s a
strong enough market to make this worth your while.
Now, back to those that do not actually intend to build a business on eBay.
There are marketers who will use the online auction to list one of their
products for a ridiculously low price in order to generate traffic, and then
promote heavily within the ad in order to drive people to their web site. Their
goal is to sell product outside of eBay, and they are really only tapping in to
eBay as a lead generation tool. When used in this way and measured against other
media, eBay ranks as one of the most cost-effective promotional tools available
to marketers today. Maybe there’s a place for eBay in your marketing plan.
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