Giving Etsy Search Ads a Try

Last fall my grandmother asked me to sell some of the mittens she was knitting. She is in her 80s and doesn't have much concept of how the Internet works. She assumed that I'd be selling them to friends or co-workers. I knew I'd be trying a site like Etsy.

Getting set up with Etsy is easy. Driving people to the Etsy site is not. Just about the only "free" publicity to be had on Etsy is when you list new items because they appear in a feed. (Once you're a popular seller Etsy may profile you, which is also free, but that's kind of tough to get at the beginning.)

From the beginning I created a Facebook page and also sold mittens on eBay to gain brand awareness. I sold a pair of mittens on eBay for about 60% off the regular sale price. The buyer was so happy with them that she came back and purchased 8 more pairs at the regular price. I'll call that a good investment!

More eyes needed to view the mittens on the Etsy page in order to turn into sales. Etsy has its own ad program that is similar to Google's, but is for the Etsy site only. In a familiar model you can set a weekly budget and choose keywords.

I picked some keywords and set a modest budget of $7 per week, the price of a pair of mittens at that time. The ad wound up costing me around 50 cents a day. Views increased by a factor of 7 and sales increased by about 75%!

Some pros of Etsy ads:

• Setup is simple.
• It's cheap.
• It improves traffic and sales, at least it did in my case.
• The ads can be turned on or off at any time.

Some cons of Etsy ads:

• You cannot segment by audience.
• The ads only display on Etsy.
• Not much information is provided about people who click on the ads although you can plug Etsy into Google Analytics.

I carefully calculated the cost of the Facebook ads I experimented with and found I lost money. Because I hate math I'm not going to do that here, but I know that the Etsy ads were a great investment. They cost just cents a day and were more than paid for as long as I made just one sale per week (or even one sale per two weeks).

Of course, in some cases it may be "okay" to lose money in this way. Say exposure, for example, is more important to you than being profitable right now. Then an ad scenario like this may work for you.

Check out my last blog entry to read more about the Facebook ad experiment!

This post was first published on another blog on 3/13/2013 - it's now only found here on the Marion's Mittens blog!

Experiment #2 - Are Facebook Ads Successful?

About nine months ago I tried Facebook ads using a $50 credit. The experiment didn't turn out so well.

A mid-summer lull in sales (who buys mittens in August - nobody!) left me thinking of new ways to keep the business in people's minds for the upcoming cooler weather. Fall trends were all over fashion blogs and magazines in August. Why not mittens?

I set a modest budget and created my target segments. The ads ran for about a week and did increase the number of likes on the page pretty significantly - by 50%.

Of course, I didn't really expect the ads to generate any sales. But I'm hoping that a few new customers might pop up this fall and that their names will be familiar!

This means I haven't totally written off Facebook ads. I don't really think they're that effective, either. Great for generating likes but maybe not so much for generating action.

Are Facebook Ads Worth the Money?

I'm sure there are a million articles out there that discuss Facebook advertising.  Many will probably tell you what I'm about to tell you.  But I'd like to share my personal experience with advertising on Facebook.

I recently read (and cannot find the link to) an article about how proportionately, smaller businesses are actually more successful on Facebook ads than larger businesses.  This makes some sense to me.  If I see an ad from P&G I think yeah, whatever, I can find the same coupons somewhere else.  But if it's a small, unique-looking store, I'll click because I may never find it again.

My journey with Facebook advertising started in the fall of 2012 when I received a $50 credit.  Score!  I'm never one to turn down something that's free...

I dove in and began to use the credit for Marion's Mittens, the business I run for my grandma.  (If you are looking for quality, handmade mittens, I suggest you check it out!)

Some pros of Facebook ads:

• Setup is straightforward and relatively easy.
• It's really easy to choose an audience.  You can select from many demographics including things you may not have thought of, like new parents or people who recently moved.
• You can set a time frame for the ad based on budget (until the money runs out) or dates.  
• The ad can be tied to a Facebook fan page or an external website. I chose to direct my audience to the Marion's Mittens Etsy page.

Some cons of Facebook ads:

• It was expensive (for me).  Based on the demographics I chose, my ad cost about $1.08 per click.  (Back in April 2012, the average was also around $1.08.)
• I had a low click-thru rate (CTR) of 0.008%, the average being 0.04%.  In plain English - my ad was displayed 396,025 times and clicked on 33 times.

These 33 clicks turned into three sales.  Here's how much the ad "really" cost:

Advertising:  $39.04

Mittens Bought:  $30

Etsy & PayPal Fees:  $2.30 (approx.)

So I lost $11.34.

Of course, in some cases it may be "okay" to lose money in this way. Say exposure, for example, is more important to you than being profitable right now.  Then an ad scenario like this may work for you.

That's not the direction I want to take this business where profit margins are already incredibly small.

Next time I'll look at using ads through Etsy.  It seemed to be more cost effective but I'll have to do some calculations to see if that's actually true!

Read about my second experiment with Facebook ads.

This post was first published on another blog on 12/21/2012 - it's now only found here on the Marion's Mittens blog!

Color Trends for Fall 2013 in Fashion and Accessories - Like Mittens!

Pantone is an authority on color. For me, Pantone mostly comes to mind when thinking about paint, but it's so much more. The company I work for requires the use of specific Pantone-numbered hues for its logo and font formatting. Sephora releases annual nail polish and makeup collections based on Pantone's "color of the year."

So yes, Pantone is an authority on color. I read the fall 2013 Fashion Color Report with interest. A number of designers weighed in and shared their colors for fall and the inspiration behind those colors.

How do the colors in Marion's Mittens' shop match up with what Pantone says will be popular?
  
Pantone's color of the year for 2013 has been Emerald. It's a great hue. There's nothing that exact color in the shop although I own a vintage pair of emeraldesque mittens! We also had this seafoamy color last year that's quite similar to Pantone's Emerald:

   

Here are all of the Pantone picks for fall 2013:

image courtesy of Pantone

Mittens for ladies and kids in Persimmon are quite close to Koi:

These Fuscia Sparkle Glitter mittens in an adult size look Vivacious.

And we have a few colors that sold out but should be back in stock soon!  Wine Country reminds me of Sambra and Pagoda looks a lot like Mykonos:

      

Stay tuned - we've got a forest green pair coming to the shop soon that look just like Deep Lichen Green!

Thoughts on Fanchimp for Automated, Targeted Facebook Marketing

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to promote my products online. The other day I discovered a new venue for online sales (more on that next time). I read about the new place on the Fanchimp blog, which prompted me to explore the Fanchimp website to learn what the service is all about.

Essentially, Fanchimp connects a storefront (like Etsy) with social media (like Facebook). You choose the products you wish to promote, Fanchimp suggests related news stories, and those two types of content are published to your Facebook page at optimum times.

Fanchimp has a disclaimer on its page that this will not be very successful if you don't have a lot of fans. So it's important to have an audience to blast content to before trying.

This could be why my experiment fails. Marion's Mittens only has 45 likes on its Facebook page. (Care to help us out? If you like mittens and sales, visit our page and click Like!)

Here are some first impressions.

Likes:

1. Fanchimp is smarter than me when it comes to knowing the best times to post content. Apparently it's mostly at night; I'm an early bird.
2. Works with a number of platforms including Etsy and eBay.
3. They don't require a credit card to sign up a start a free trial. This is awesome!

Dislikes:

1. There weren't really any news stories that I thought were relevant to mittens or knitting. I might do better searching on my own.
2. Fanchimp wants to publish content more frequently than I'm comfortable with. Four posts a day? Maybe if you're a megabrand, but not a small grandma/granddaughter mitten shop.
3. At $9.99 a month Fanchimp would cost significantly more than my current marketing expenses. Again, better for a more established company with a (slightly) bigger budget.

Fanchimp offers a 30-day free trial. I made it through one day before turning the service off. The frequent posts (which you can dial back by manually canceling some) and irrelevant stories don't work for me. 

I can see where the service would be valuable for someone with a less niche product, like jewelry or fashion accessories. This is a brand I will keep an eye on and maybe test again in the future if my circumstances change!

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