There are hundreds of ways to promote and market your Etsy shop to increase your traffic and sales. Keep reading for a list of 15 different ways to market your small business.
How To Create Your Marketing Strategy
Just because you have endless options for promoting your business, doesn't mean that you should include all of them in your Etsy marketing strategy. Here are my top tips for creating a marketing strategy that you love and can be consistent with:
Pick one priority: Don't try to be on every platform at once. You'll burn out and quit.
Create a reasonable schedule: If you can't post once a day, don't try to force it. It's better to be consistent in the long run.
Pick a platform you enjoy: You'll be more likely to stay consistent if you pick a platform you actually like spending time on.
Test, test, test: Social media platforms are known for changing up the algorithm. You may find a strategy that works, but that doesn't mean you should stop testing new tactics to stay on top of the trends.
Variety is the spice of life: There's nothing I hate more than seeing an Etsy seller who only posts product photos on boring backgrounds with a caption that always says nothing other than “Link in Bio.” Nobody wants to follow you unless you are giving them some value. So change it up and see what your people resonate with.
Don't forget to sell: The only thing I hate more than boring product photos in every single post is when a small business never sells its products. Your marketing strategy should make you money. That means you have to sell a lot.
On Etsy Marketing
There are a lot of ways you can promote your Etsy shop on the platform. Check out these 5 Etsy marketing strategies.
Etsy SEO & Your Listing Quality Score
The best thing about Etsy is your ability to get bound by their 95 million annual buyers. You do that through your Search Engine Optimization or SEO. In the simplest terms, it's all about finding relevant keywords and optimizing each listing to get found in those search results. Then would be buyers do a search on Etsy and your listings are served up to them!
Click here to learn more about Etsy SEO and how to optimize your listings.
Your Listing Quality Score is an important part of the Etsy algorithm. Having a good conversion rate, getting good reviews, and providing great customer service can all help improve your Listing Quality Score and your Etsy search ranking. Learn more about your Listing Quality Score here.
Etsy Free Shipping Guarantee
Buyers on every platform love free shipping and Etsy is no exception. Use Etsy's Free Shipping Guarantee or offer free shipping to help increase your conversion rate and move you up in the search rankings.
It also ensures you appear in more searches when buyers use search filters as shown below.
Etsy Ads
Etsy ads are a great way to get more traffic as long as your listings are converting well. Advertising the listings that are converting the best ensures that you stay profitable, even as you are paying for additional traffic. Click here to learn more about Etsy onsite ads.
Etsy Off-Site Ads
Off-site ads are much different than paying for Etsy search ads. There is a higher fee for these promotions, but you are only charged when you make a sale. Click here to learn more about Etsy offsite ads and how to make them profitable for your business.
Etsy Explore
Etsy Explore is a newer feature on the Etsy app that allows buyers to browse video content almost like you do on TikTok or with Instagram Reels. The videos then link directly to your Etsy listings.
While this feature is currently not heavily used by buyers, it is easy to re-purpose video content that you have already created for this use. Click here to learn more about using video in your Etsy shop.
Social Media Accounts
When you talk about how to promote your Etsy shop, social media marketing is probably the first thing you think of. While it is a popular choice for small business promotion, it's not your only choice.
Either way, most Etsy shop owners will be on social media. It's important to pick a platform that fits with your marketing strategies.
Facebook certainly has a lot of options when it comes to marketing your small business. You can have a Facebook page or group. You can also choose to market in other people's groups or use the Facebook marketplace.
Click here to learn more about Facebook marketing tactics.
Instagram is great for product businesses on the Etsy marketplace because it so heavily relies on visual content making it easy to show off beautiful products or lifestyle images.
Many Etsy sellers find it easier to reach new customers on Instagram compared to Facebook through the use of hashtags or Instagram Reels.
TikTok
While the days of hopping on TikTok and immediately gaining a large following are gone, the platform still has a lot to offer especially for sellers wanting to get out of the Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram.
Consider using the TikTok Shop to get more visibility.
While not a social media website, Pinterest often gets thrown into the same marketing category as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. It's technically a search engine, however.
Pinterest is an amazing option for Etsy sellers due to its visual nature. You can use new photos and graphics to link to a specific Etsy listing or your entire shop.
As a platform, it can take longer to get traffic to your Etsy shop from Pinterest, however. So don't plan to do a few pins and see a lot of progress quickly.
Email Marketing
Email marketing for Etsy sellers is a highly underrated way to increase your repeat customers. Get new subscribers by offering a discount code for first-time buyers, then send a couple of emails a month to promote your Etsy shop. This helps you turn new customers into repeat purchases.
Blogging and SEO
While you can't blog on Etsy, you can certainly set up a simple website for a blog and link your store in each blog post.
Start with keyword research into your niche and make sure to consider with potential customers are searching for when looking for your products.
Local Promotion
If you have a lot of local contacts there are certainly a ton of ways to promote your Etsy shop in your city or state.
Consider sponsoring local events, donating to local charities, getting press from local publications, or marketing in Facebook communities for your area.
Collaborations
Collab content marketing can happen locally or online and takes advantage of sharing audiences. This works best for brands that are similar but not competitive.
If you make candles for example, you could work with someone who designs signs with the same style so that the two products could be used to decorate the same room.
A drinkware maker could work with someone who makes bottle openers, koozies, or drink infusion kits.
A maker who sews baby clothes can partner with someone who makes nursery decor, baby name signs, pacifier clips, or nursing covers.
There are a ton of options out there! To make a list, start by looking at people who favorite your products and thinking about your ideal customers. What else are they favoriting that might make a good collaboration? When they buy your product, what's their next purchase? What other websites are they browsing?
After you get a list of ideas, you can find collab partners on Etsy or Instagram to do a giveaway with, share an email campaign, or do a social media shoutout with.
Paid Advertising
Etsy Offsite Ads are an easy way to get into paid advertising with less risk. When you're ready for more customization for your ads, you have paid advertising options on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Google, and more.
Paid advertising often takes time to optimize, so make sure you can afford to spend your budget for a month or two (or longer) without an ROI.
PR Strategies
Getting good PR can work really well for sellers making unique and giftable products. If you don't have the budget to hire an expensive PR agency, try using Connectively or Qwoted for DIY pitches.
Tactics To Avoid
While there are a ton of good options for promoting your Etsy shop, there are a lot of bad ones too. Here are the strategies to avoid.
Fiverr Promotion
Fiverr gigs that promise to send traffic to your Etsy shop might do just that, but that doesn't mean you'll get any sales from it. These services usually just send bot traffic that tanks your conversion rate, thereby hurting your Etsy shop search rankings. Learn more about Fiverr promotions here.
Etsy Seller Facebook Groups
Etsy sellers aren't your target market unless you're selling craft supplies. So promoting in Etsy seller Facebook groups will usually be, at best, a waste of your time. Spend your time in groups that your target audience hangs out in instead.
Social Media Advertising
Yes, yes, yes. I know I talked about paid ads earlier. They can be really great for brands that are ready for them.
Most Etsy sellers, however, don't have the proper conversion rates or the budget to create social media advertising campaigns that will get enough traffic to send sales.
It can also be difficult to measure your results when directing paid traffic to an Etsy shop. So paid ads on your social media accounts can sometimes be best when you're ready to advertise your own website instead of your Etsy shop.
If you haven't started any paid advertising yet, Etsy ads can be a much better first choice to promote your Etsy shop.
Conclusion
You can promote your Etsy shop in dozens of different ways on dozens of platforms. I recommend picking one of the social media platforms to post regularly to reach potential future customers.
Then add an additional platform like blogging, Pinterest, or email marketing to expand your potential reach and visibility.
Remember to be consistent with whatever platforms you choose to reach more customers and monitor your stats for increasing sales to determine what's working and what's not.
If your marketing efforts aren't successful, analyze why you aren't reaching your target customers more often and consider a different promotion strategy for the platform you're focusing on to increase your shop's visibility.
