Choose Initial Products To Advertise
To choose your initial group of products to run Etsy ads, I would recommend products that fit the following criteria:
- Bestsellers
- High profit margin
- In many shoppers’ carts
- Recently sold items
- Low views but good conversion rate
Choose 10-20 products to start advertising.
Test For At Least A Week
I would recommend testing the initial group of products with a daily budget of $5 for at least a week. If possible, testing a higher budget or a longer period of time would give you more accurate results.
Many sellers set the budget too low or the testing period too short, making it impossible to make informed decisions to improve their Etsy ads performance.
Analyse Data
Once you have enough data, we can analyse it and make necessary changes.
First, go to your Etsy ads dashboard (change to the detailed view mentioned in the previous chapter). Here are what you should do for each of these scenarios.
High Views, Low Click Rate
This likely means your thumbnail photo is not eye-catching enough. Improve your photos for these listings.
High Click Rate, Low Orders Or Conversion Rate
For these listings, most likely there are something preventing shoppers from buying. Focus on these areas to improve:
Low Views, Low Click Rate
These are the products that have lower listing quality score and therefore not chosen by Etsy for ads. Improving them and seeing changes may take a while. So I would recommend turning the ads off for these products.
High Conversion Rate
These products are the winners. Definitely keep the ads running for them. If you want, you can click ‘search terms’ and disable irrelevant ones. But be careful not to overdo it as it can hurt the ad performance (If you are unsure whether it’s relevant, keep the search term).
Make Necessary Changes From Previous Step
From the previous step, make any improvements and necessary changes. Mark down the date when you make changes to the advertised listings, so that the next time you analyse the data, you can choose only the period after the changes (Etsy ads dashboard → Filters → Date Range → Custom)
Add New Products To Test If Necessary
This is also a good time to add some new products to test. Here are some ideas:
- Products that are in season (Halloween, Easter, Christmas, etc)
- New products
- Products on sale
- Products recently sold
Rinse And Repeat
Repeat the previous steps again for this new group of products - Test for at least a week, analyse, make improvements and choose the winners.
Scaling Up
With all the previous steps, you should have your highest performing products running Etsy ads, giving you the best chance in increasing sales and profit.
It’s time to increase your Etsy ads budget and scale up.
There will be diminishing returns for Etsy ads. This is when your conversion rate drop after increasing the daily budget. So when you make any changes, as previously mentioned, mark down the date of change so you can analyse the data in the future.
Even if you don’t change the budget or products, you should review once every few weeks to make sure everything is working properly. Repeat previous steps to improve Etsy ads performance if necessary.