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Etsy is a highly competitive marketplace, and many sellers struggle with low and inconsistent sales, and a lack of brand awareness.
With 2.16 million Etsy sellers and over 60 million products listed, how do sellers stand out from the crowd?
Well, it’s not easy and 82% of Etsy sellers are eager to grow their stores as the average conversion rate is only around 1 to 3%.
But you don’t have to settle for those low conversion rates – many sellers have turned this side hustle into a full-time job and so can you! – by using some of the best Etsy marketing strategies that are proven to bring in the bucks!
Etsy is expanding, and if you want to get your products in front of the right buyers, you need to be innovative with your Etsy marketing campaigns.
We’ve researched the top Etsy marketing strategies for 2024 to take your store to the next level!
Plus, we have real-life examples to show you exactly how to use these strategies.
Ready to turn your Etsy store into a money-making machine?
Let’s get started!
Etsy has experienced tremendous growth over the years, and Covid also impacted how many more shoppers bought Etsy products.
Here are a few key statistics and figures on Etsy’s growth:
Summary: Etsy Growth Overview
Etsy has 89 million active users, and was ranked the fourth fastest-growing eCommerce business in 2021. The year-over-year revenue increase for Etsy is an impressive 34%.
According to Techpenny, 81% of Etsy shoppers are female. The typical Etsy buyer is aged 18 to 35. Among these female Etsy buyers, 15% are under 25 years old.
Based on these Etsy buyer demographics, here’s a few bonus trends on their purchasing behavior:
Summary: Etsy Audience Demographics
The typical Etsy shopper is female (over 80%), between 18 and 35 years old. Only 15% of Etsy’s female buyers are younger than 25 years old.
Source: Kate Hayes
Using Etsy ads is a vital component for successful Etsy stores. And it’s easy to set up an Etsy ad campaign! These are the steps you can follow:
Etsy ad campaigns help users find your items. Your ads will appear on Category and Market pages and Etsy searches. Sellers also have control over who sees their ad campaigns for maximum reach.
But what makes a results-driven Etsy ad campaign is how you manage your budget. You may not have the means to set your budget to $50 daily. $1 to $2 may be more financially feasible.
In this case, don’t promote all your listings on such a tight budget. Pick your best-selling items and advertise those. As you generate more income, you can increase your budget.
Using this strategy prevents you from blowing through a wad of cash trying to sell on Etsy. And that can quickly happen without controlling how much you invest in ad spending compared to how much profit you generate.
Here’s what Etsy’s ad dashboard looks like:
Brie Moore, the owner of Breezy Tee, used an Esty ad campaign to help her shop reach its ultimate potential. She was eager to turn a profit and spent $1 to $2 advertising 30 listings. But she didn’t get the reach she expected because her budget was far too little for marketing all those items.
However, Brie didn’t expand her budget but chose to be more selective in what items she promoted. When her best-selling items achieved impressive results for her ad campaign, she increased her daily ad spend budget by 50 cents.
Brie also developed a rule that worked – she would never spend more than 20% of her revenue on her ad budget. To stay ahead of which items made the ad budget cut, Brie measured sales and not just ad clicks!
This frugal approach did the trick. Now Brie has the capital to invest in top-tier models and photography to scale her Etsy store.
Online buyers want convenience, and you must achieve this in your Etsy store. Remember, you don’t just want once-off buyers. You want consumers to have a fantastic experience, so they return.
And to achieve seamless shopping for your Etsy buyers you should:
The owner of Herma May, an Etsy store specializing in signature fragrances achieved success by providing effortless Etsy shopping. She includes freebies in customer orders, uses Etsy store collections, and invests a lot of time in understanding what her buyers want.
This Etsy store seller also provides ideas on how customers could use her fragrances and never leaves out any information about these products. She also includes a “customer care” card for every order, explaining how to use her fragrances for an improved customer experience.
Taking it a step further, this seller uses unique packaging for every one of her fragrances. This tactic makes it easier for returning buyers to choose a fragrance as they’re quickly attracted to distinct packaging they’ve never seen before.
From the fruits of her labor, this Etsy seller now has a five-star rating on Etsy, and most of her consumers are loyal buyers.
Instagram is a bustling social media platform for pretty much every business. And that includes your Etsy store. The main reason is that Esty and Instagram share a significant factor influencing customers’ purchasing behaviors – good-quality images.
To use Instagram marketing to promote your Etsy products, you should:
The owner of the Etsy store, Little Maggie Moo, wasn’t gaining the reach she wanted through Etsy alone. But this didn’t deter her from selling the Esty products she believed in. Instead, she took to Instagram and started marketing her items.
She passionately shares high-quality pictures of her products to attract her audience. Because this Etsy store is all about baby clothes, she uses images of her clothes on happy babies. Doing this creates a visual idea of what her products can deliver.
But that’s not all she does. The owner of Little Maggie Moo interacts with other business accounts she’s passionate about. This Etsy seller also consistently engages with her followers. She shares exciting work and strikes up conversations in her a comments section.
Plus, she also networks with other Etsy store owners offering products related to hers. Once promoting their products and sharing their content, some of these Etsy store owners return the favor! All this effort helped steadily increase her Instagram followers and optimize her engagement.
But what did it do for her Etsy store?
She generated over 4000 sales!
There’s a heck load of competition on Etsy, and you need to cut through the noise! And here’s where trusty ol’ SEO comes in.
Etsy’s search tool is pretty powerful, and buyers can find products in one of two ways:
As you can tell, many technicalities go behind Etsy’s search engine to ensure it helps buyers find the products they’re looking for. This is excellent news for your business, as you can use top SEO techniques to reach more users.
Some of the best SEO tactics for Etsy marketing include:
The founder of an Etsy jewelry store, Ringcrush, has generated over 100,000 sales since her launch in 2016! And guess what she says is her secret? Good SEO tactics like the techniques mentioned above!
This Etsy seller uses SEO to guide what she creates and how she markets her content, based on trending content!
And here’s another example!
A different Etsy shop owner makes $1500 to $2000 per week, thanks to her product sales. She chalks this up to her efforts to achieve maximum reach, which was only possible through a sound SEO strategy.
Part of her strategy includes consistent and accurate keyword and hashtag research. She recommends always using these SEO elements in your listing to help stand out from your competition.
Here’s another effective Etsy marketing strategy related to delivering exceptional customer support.
Rather than only focusing on your customer’s experience while they shop, you should also consider the experience you provide after they buy your products. Taking this extra step helps maintain returning customers, and what every successful business needs!
Once customers have bought your Etsy products, keep them engaged through:
Using these techniques above will make your customers feel appreciated by your business. And if you know anything about customer appreciation, it certainly adds to brand loyalty!
Owning two Etsy stores, Unmeasured Designs and Unmeasured Events, Tash uses a hands-on approach to maintain returning buyers. She’s been on Etsy since 2017 and has racked up over $112,000 in sales.
The work behind her success boils down to keeping engaged with her customers after they’ve made a purchase. She does this through email newsletters. Her buyers now have a point of contact to send her queries or concerns about her products.
Thanks to this approach, Tash keeps her consumers closely connected, and in turn, loyal to her businesses.
Etsy analytics are very telling, and you shouldn’t ignore them! If you don’t know how to access Etsy analytics, here’s how:
With access to all this valuable information, you can modify your approach to people interested in your Esty listings. You may find that you’ve been targeting the wrong buyers, or the products you’re investing in advertising aren’t the best choices.
Also, based on your analytics, don’t be afraid to remove listings. If you see an item isn’t performing well, you can try to optimize it, But if this problem persists, find a more profitable product.
To amp up your Etsy analytics, you can integrate Google analytics into Etsy. There are also many more tools and software you can use for more robust Etsy reporting.
Here’s an example of Etsy stats:
Amy Yee, the owner of Maeven Vintage, took full advantage of Esty’s stats. She evaluates customer data like buyer locations, and purchasing habits while searching for keywords to inspire her products. Amy also uses Etsy to find popular vintage items and how much they sell for.
She used this information to develop a long-term plan on how she would set her budget, market her store and create her items. With a foolproof business plan developed on the foundation of Esty stats, Amy Yee could expand her Etsy businesses into several pop-up shops around New York.
And, this also helped her land in many publications and magazines!
This may seem like general knowledge, but for some sellers, it isn’t! Late orders are against Etsy’s seller service standards, so it can harm your ability to sell on this platform,
And not forgetting, buyers will give you bad reviews, making you less of a contender to them and Etsy’s search engine algorithm.
If you don’t think this is a common mistake, then let me help prove it:
It takes about 3 to 7 working days to get Esty products, and you should do everything possible to make this happen. In an instance where something super unforeseeable happens, let your buyers know and make it up to them.
You could give them a discount or a freebie as a way to apologize. Doing this will show you are sincere about a late delivery, and defuse angry customers!
Jess Yuda, the owner of Planner Peace, makes over $12,000 per month from her Etsy store. But this is possible because of how seriously she takes customer service, and in turn, on-time deliveries.
This Etsy seller does her best to deliver products within 3 to 5 working days. And to achieve this, she works with reliable delivery providers she’s built rapport with. At any time Jess can’t fulfill her quick delivery turnaround time, she informs her customers and sends them freebies!
From this strategy, you can see how a small example of Etsy marketing contributes to a generous profit.
When your Etsy store starts to take off, you must employ stricter organizational methods. Quickly losing count of your orders, revenue, expenses, and inventory will set you back from success.
Hands-on organization will also help you scale your business, as you have more resources to draw business proposals and plans.
To organize your Etsy store, you can do the following:
Once you apply these Etsy organizational techniques, you’ll find it much easier to scale and manage your store!
The owner of an Etsy store, Jenna Crucitti Designs, proves the power of good organizational skills for Etsy’s marketing success.
Once hitting 2700 Etsy sales and earning more than $10,000 in profit, this Etsy shop owner decided she needed to organize her strategy for maximum results and productivity. As this transformed into a full-time job, it gave her even more reason to get organized!
So, Jenna took to QuickBooks to document all her monthly finances. And helping her process, she separates her personal finances from her store’s spending and earnings.
But wait!
It gets even better!
Now, Jenna also uses her organizational techniques to help her claim tax deductions and gain tax benefits!
We briefly glanced over this while exploring Instagram marketing for selling Etsy products. But exceptional photography plays a huge role in Etsy, and deserves to be a strategy on its own.
If you use good-quality images on Etsy, you stand a greater chance of closing a sale.
Here are the top reasons why Etsy sellers need top-quality images:
You don’t have to hire a professional photographer to take your Etsy product pictures. I mean, that would help, but it’s not necessary when you’re starting. All you need is a great camera (it can be a phone’s camera), beautiful lighting, and as many tries as it takes, to get that “WOW” angle.
If you’re struggling, YouTube has loads of resources on how to take amazing pictures using a phone!
They call her Etsy’s most profitable seller, and her name is….Alicia Shaffer! Alicia racks up $70,000 worth of sales every month, and pins her success on fantastic photography.
Rather than only photographing the product, she showcases how it looks as part of an outfit. And she also exchanges the simple white background for various outdoor settings as this compliments her items.
To develop the perfect eye for her products, this OG Etsy seller evaluated her competitors’ images and checked what worked and what didn’t.
As she’s achieved quite a bit of success, Alicia now uses top-tier photographers, models, and sets to put her products at the forefront of her competitors.
Email marketing is an excellent communication channel to include in your Etsy marketing strategy. When you use email, you build better relationships with your buyers and excite them about your products.
Email newsletters for an Etsy marketing campaign also effectively remind your buyers about your brand. Successful Etsy marketing relies on repeat buyers, and email newsletters achieve this.
Using email newsletters to engage your Etsy buyers, take steps like:
Don’t forget to include your branding and brand voice in your email newsletters. You want to leave an impression on your buyers so they know what to expect from your business!
After sending a drawn-out series of bland email newsletters, Cassie Uhl, an Etsy shop seller, noticed she’s not getting her ideal response. But this isn’t where she stopped. Instead, she started sending emails that went beyond trying to secure sales.
Cassie Uhl focuses her newsletters on connecting to her buyers and making them feel like family. She shares her blog content, suggests products that add more value to her buyers, and ultimately, brings her readers into her creative process.
Another smart move from this Esty seller is that she aligns her content calendar with her email newsletters, so sharing relevant information is easier. Because of this wholesome approach, Cassie Uhl developed loyal customers and stronger brand-to-consumer relationships.
You don’t have to stick to one item for your Etsy store. You can diversify your offerings based on what you’re passionate about and how all these products relate to each other. But you don’t want to promote items that are too unrelated as this may confuse your buyers.
For example, if you’re selling handmade football balls, you could also sell handmade quirky socks and silly football T-shirts.
When you diversify your offerings, you create multiple revenue streams, leading to higher profits.
If you want to diversify your products consider factors like:
And here’s another aspect to consider – you can also open another Etsy store to sell products that don’t relate to your current store. Obviously, this will take work, but it’s still welcoming another revenue stream.
Vana Chupp opened an Etsy store offering custom silhouettes. But she found her passion didn’t end there and started a second Etsy store offering graphic design art and providing coaching to women aspiring to become business owners.
She started by developing herself as an expert in one area and grew her Etsy store until she could diversify her offerings. Now she also sells various books based on her artworks alongside her graphic design pieces and silhouettes.
While this is certainly a much more complex strategy, it’s best to consider it when you want to scale your Etsy store. And using the “big picture” approach has worked well for this Etsy seller!
Press releases mean more free publicity, and this is what you need to skyrocket your Etsy store sales. The more people know about your store, the better, and you need to secure coverage in online and offline publications and magazines to achieve this.
If you don’t know how to leverage press releases for your Etsy store, here’s how:
Honing your pitch and becoming familiar with the publications will determine if you secure press coverage or not. So, you want to take your time with this and ensure your pitch highlights your best values and proves how you can add value to their readers.
When Erin Flett launched her first Etsy store, she only sold 30 products in her first year. Pretty daunting, right!
But she realized that she needed more publicity. To get her Etsy store out there, she did her homework and found the best publications for her products. Erin started networking with professionals related to those publications through LinkedIn, or email (if she could find an email address).
Erin spent a lot of time understanding the content and voices of the publications she wanted to pitch to, and crafted her messages accordingly. She pitched to all sorts of businesses, and every time, her angle was unique and custom to the receiver. Boosting her chances, she also included photos!
Thanks to all this effort, Erin has earned more than $3000 in sales and has featured on the covers of four of the best-selling magazines in the US!
Branding is vital for your Etsy marketing campaign because you want to optimize customer experience. With consistent branding throughout your Etsy marketing efforts, you can develop a brand identity that customers can become familiar with.
Think about this in your own life: You trust the brands you use because they have an established identity.
To develop branding for your Etsy store, consider factors like:
Once you’ve nailed those elements down, you can build a brand identity and use this across your entire Etsy store and other social channels you choose for marketing.
After Iris Pohlgeers started her vintage Etsy store, she received constructive criticism on her images and style. This feedback inspired her to consider a new approach for her store’s design.
She brainstormed a color palette that encompassed her stores values and used this across her Etsy store. Iris also used her new-found branding to inspire her images and how they looked. She uses a consistent background for all her images so her shop is distinctive.
Iris also ensures her branding is formatted for mobile and desktop! Because of her efforts to develop consistent branding, Iris has experienced exponential growth and confirms that her branding played a huge role.
Summary 13 Etsy Marketing Strategies
Etsy marketing isn’t a simple endeavor with the vast competition this online marketplace has. To get ahead of other Etsy sellers and multiply your profits, use any of these top Etsy marketing strategies that are proven to achieve results.
Etsy sellers should use Instagram marketing, customer-centric email newsletters, and SEO tactics and consider diversifying their sales.
To become a successful Etsy seller, you need to understand the marketplace’s demographics. Fortunately, Etsy has experienced a great amount of growth, giving you even more reason to boost your Etsy store!
The typical Etsy buyer is a female between ages 18 and 35. Most Etsy shoppers buy items for themselves and search for personalized products. Plus, 50% of Etsy buyers aren't motivated to buy from stores that have high shipping costs. Read this full article to find out more about Etsy shopper demographics and how to leverage the best Etsy marketing strategies to stimulate your bottom line.
Yes, Etsy is growing. This online marketplace has a year-over-year growth of 34% and there are almost 90 million active Etsy shoppers. And Etsy generated over $500 million in business revenue in the first quarter of 2022. Read our article for more on Etsy's growth, and the top demographics for Etsy shoppers.
For successful Etsy marketing, businesses should know and manage their ad expenses, ensure they deliver an effortless shopping experience for buyers and leverage SEO tactics. You must take advantage of Instagram marketing, exciting email newsletters and ensure your deliveries are on-time. Read this article for more on the best Etsy marketing strategies and examples of how to execute them.
Business of Apps: Etsy Revenue and Usage Statistics (2024)
Etsy: Gifting and Personalisation Shopping Trends on Etsy and Etsy Shopper Stats: March 2021
Etsy: Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results Report
Semrish: Etsy.com Traffic Stats
Statista: Revenue of Etsy Inc. from 2012 to 2021, by segment (in million U.S. dollars)
Techpenny: Who Buys On Etsy? Audience & Demographics (Statistics)
ThriveMyWay: 42 Amazing Etsy Stats and Facts for 2024
Writer’s Block Live: Etsy Statistics: Buyers Demographics, Revenues, and Sales
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