Using eBay Marketing Tools to Increase Your Sales

By Marsha Collier from Starting an eBay Business For Dummies, 4th Edition

eBay offers its vendors who have an eBay store some promotional aids, located under the Marketing Tools heading. You can perform many tasks that help bring customers to your store. You have the option of clicking a Summary page, which gives you a quick look at how your store's marketing features are currently set. You have a lot of other options in this area:

Email marketing: When you want to design an e-mail campaign to your buyers, you have all the tools here. Create an e-mail newsletter, create one for sending later, and manage your subscriber lists.
Listing frame: Select this option once you get an eBay Store. The custom listing header display is one of the best tools you can use to bring people into your store. If you want to avoid cluttering up your listing pages with a lot of graphics, use the option to have a store invitation message appear above your description when someone visits. Click the link and select the option to Show Your Custom Listing Header on all your eBay auctions and fixed-price sales. This encourages shoppers to visit your eBay Store when they browse your eBay listings. When customizing, you can include your store logo as well as a store search box.

eBay has added some excellent ways to promote your store. As an eBay Store owner, you have access to promotional tools that other sellers can't use:

Cross-promotions: The cross-promotion box appears after a buyer places a bid on or purchases an item from an eBay seller. The beauty of having an eBay Store is that the cross-promotion box appears twice: once with your regular listings and again with a different assortment of items (if you want) after someone buys an item. Best of all? You get to select which categories' items are selected from to display with your individual auctions.

You can set up the promotions so that they default to show other items from related store categories. Again, every listing has two sets of options: one for when a user views your listings, and the other for when someone bids or wins your item.
Markdown Manager: By clicking here, you can select items to put on sale. After they've been marked down, they'll appear branded as "On Sale."

As a store owner, you can customize just about everything that you do on eBay. In Logos and Branding, you can add a store banner and a personalized message (if you'd like) on your end-of-auction e-mails and on your eBay checkout invoices.

If you haven't already created an eBay About Me page, do it now! The About Me page becomes the About the Seller page in your store. This page is a primary tool for promoting sales. (You can put this page together in about ten minutes with eBay's handy and easy-to-use templates!)