Last week, we covered the best eBay SEO tools for getting you to the top of the search results. But, SEO and front page ranking takes time – time that you don’t have to waste. This week we’re looking at running a successful eBay advertising campaign to get you to the top of the search results in 10 simple steps.
What is an eBay advertising campaign?
An eBay advertising campaign features your eBay listing in prominent locations across the platform, along with a “sponsored product” tag. 
Also known as Promote my listings, eBay sellers using this marketing channel can increase visibility by up to 40%, while jumping ahead of their organic placement in the search results.
The benefits of an eBay advertising campaign
Increasing your listings’ visibility through an eBay advertising campaign results in significant benefits to your eBay business. Benefits including:
Views
Your listing jumps to the top of relevant search results, related search results and item pages – across all eBay platforms. This increases the number of views your advertisement gets.
Clicks
The more shoppers viewing your ad, the more chances that they’ll click through to your listing.
Sales
The more clicks through to your listing, the more chances of shoppers buying your product.
Awareness
The more views, clicks and product purchases your listing generates, the more people that become aware of your brand.
Talk
The more people who are aware of your brand, the more people who are out there recommending you.
Engagement
And finally, the more people that are recommending, clicking, viewing and buying your products – the better your organic SEO.
Overall, it’s an extremely cost-effective way to generate sales – especially as this is is a cost per sale (CPS) advertising campaign – you only pay when someone buys.
Running an eBay advertising campaign
The benefits of running an eBay promoted listing are simple enough – and getting started is even simpler. In fact, you can do it in no more than 10 steps. Let’s go:
1. Eligibility
First, you must be eligible for eBay’s Promote your listings. This requires you to be an active eBay Shop subscriber or an Above Standard/Top Rated registered business seller.
To find out more about becoming an eBay Shop subscriber, take a read of our Starting an eBay Business UK blog.
2. Optimize your listings
Fingers crossed, you’re going to get a lot of traffic to your listings – therefore you want to make them shine beforehand. Do a spring clean of your listings (using our best eBay listing tool guide to help), including:
? Using a clear and descriptive title;
? Uploading professional and hi-quality photographs;
? Writing an engaging and informative description;
? Pricing your product competitively; and
? Choosing the best category for your listing.
3. Sign up
Now you’re ready to sign up. Log into your eBay seller account and go to Promote you Listings.
4. Adopt a campaign
Before selecting your products, you need to decide the type of advertising campaign you’re adopting. There are six broad types:
Continuous – a campaign that is always running and never-ending.
Boost – a short-term campaign to kick-start sales.
Best selling – a campaign promoting your best selling items.
New product – a campaign introducing a new product to the market.
Seasonal – a campaign boosting seasonal items.
Sale – a campaign announcing sale items.
5. Select your products
Now you know your campaign’s direction, you can select the products to include. These products must be fixed-price listings and cannot include products in the categories: Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles and Property.
For your first campaign, we suggest selecting one or two highly performing products – giving you some room to play around with. If you’re unsure, don’t worry – eBay highlights the listings most likely to succeed with a green Recommended tag.
6. Choose your rate
Next, you need to select the percentage of sales you want to promote your listing at. This is the fee that will be charged when a click results in a sale. If you’re unsure, you can use Bay’s trending ad rates from sellers across different categories.
Some points to note:
? The ad rate is a percentage of the item’s final sale price, excluding shipping and sales tax.
? The more competitive your ad rate, the more chance you have of winning visibility.
? You only pay when a buyer clicks your ad and buys within 30 days.
? The fee is in addition to any listing and selling fees.
While a competitive ad rate is important, eBay will also look at relevancy and sales when deciding which ads to display.
7. Review and launch
Next, you’ll be asked to review your ad and confirm its launch. Congratulations, you are now live! But that’s not all.
8. Edit
If you need to edit your eBay advertising campaign, head to the promoted listings dashboard and click Actions > Edit > Edit campaign. You can also perform a bulk edit by downloading the edit campaign file.
9. Analyse
It’s important to analyse the results of your eBay advertising campaign so that you can make any necessary tweaks. Through the Promote my listing dashboard access real-time reports, campaign-level reports and seller level reports.
The key metrics you should be looking for are:
Impressions – the number of times your ad has displayed.
Clicks – the number of times your ad has been clicked.
Sold – the number of items sold through your ads.
Fees – the fees based on the ad rate set.
Sales – the number of items sold within 30 days of a click.
10. Relax
Well, we couldn’t finish on an uneven number. Sit back, relax and watch the sales roll in.
Final advertising thoughts
eBay advertising campaigns are the perfect way to boost your visibility before your SEO takes hold and after. They can attract new customers, strengthen your brand and make selling online even easier.
About Expandly
Expandly multi-channel management software makes selling on eBay easy. Upload listings, manage orders, control inventory, print shipping labels, send orders to Xero and run reports – for eBay and everywhere else you sell.