Consumer expectations for Christmas with eBay Advertising
Consumer sentiment in Germany is a reflection of sales potential for many sellers. This becomes especially important during the most sales-strong and busiest time of the year: the pre-Christmas “peak season.” But what is consumer sentiment like in Germany this year? Will more be spent on Christmas gifts than in the previous year — or rather less?
To answer this question, Felix Marum from the eBay Advertising team returns and brings the results of a representative survey of German consumers.
He also explains how you can stand out from the competition during this important time and which new advertising solutions can help eBay Advertising take your business to the next level of success.
We hope you enjoy listening!
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**Mentioned Podcast Episodes**
** Chapter markers **
- 00:00:00 to 00:01:55: Intro
- 00:01:55 to 00:08:32: What is consumer sentiment like in Germany this year?
- 00:08:32 to 00:13:19: We asked around: Peak season tips from successful eBay sellers for your business.
- 00:13:19 to 00:20:37: How do I stand out from the competition during this time?
- 00:20:37 to 00:24:48: What new features does the Advertising Cockpit bring?
Lisa Haak: Already spotted the gingerbread at the supermarket? Sellers can’t think about the pre-Christmas season too early, because business is booming in the online retail high season. But what is consumer sentiment like in Germany this year? Will more or less be spent on Christmas gifts? A brand-new representative survey from our eBay Advertising team provides the answers to these questions. You’ll also learn how eBay Advertising showcases your products perfectly and which new features can take your business to the next level.
Felix Marum: As I just hinted at briefly, you can see that consumer sentiment is generally declining. Yes, that’s the maybe not-so-good news. The positive news is that every second buyer in Germany still plans to spend the same amount or even a little more on Christmas gifts, and I think that continues to be a very good indicator that the Christmas season is simply still a very, very relevant season for retail and, so to speak, a good driver of sales.
Isabell Butterwege: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of "Alles top. Gerne wieder" the eBay podcast about retail and e-commerce. My name is Isabell Butterwege, and I’m hosting this episode together with my colleague Lisa Haak. Hi Lisa!
Lisa Haak: Hi
Isabell Butterwege: As you already heard in the intro, today everything is about the peak season around the Christmas period. We also like to call this "peak season." Today we’ll take a look at consumer sentiment in Germany and answer the question of how you can stand out with your offers in a highly competitive environment during exactly this peak season. To join us, we welcome Felix Marum in the studio. Felix is Advertising Partner Manager at eBay Advertising Germany and supports commercial sellers in making their offers on eBay even more visible at the right time. So hello and a warm welcome, Felix!
Felix Marum: Hello Isabell, hello Lisa!
Lisa Haak: Felix, you’ve been on our podcast before, in the episode Visibility and search engines, where do Germans search? If anyone wants to listen again, we’ll link you to it in the show notes. In addition to the insights Felix will share with us today, we have another update for you. For this episode, Isabell and I asked a selection of eBay sellers for their best tips for successful selling during the high season, and they sent us voice messages. So definitely stick around! Felix, let’s start with an opening question. What’s the situation with consumer sentiment in Germany?
Felix Marum: Okay, so at the beginning of Q1 and Q2 it still looked fairly positive, but now we’re seeing consumer sentiment decline a bit. And yes, we know that when consumer sentiment drops and supply stays the same, that can lead to increasing competition. And here, I think it’s important that whoever positions themselves early and thinks early about the visibility of their relevant inventory has better chances of marketing their own products successfully.
Lisa Haak: So that means you can see, also through the survey you conducted or the numbers you’re seeing, that we have to prepare for consumer sentiment being a little more cautious, and that’s exactly why you should now deal with the business at hand during peak season.
Felix Marum: Exactly, that could be an advantage.
Isabell Butterwege: So in the survey you conducted, you looked specifically at consumer sentiment again to better understand what the market actually looks like right now. What exactly did you examine?
Felix Marum: The question was whether buyers plan to spend more or less money on Christmas gifts this year. The whole thing was created in collaboration with Civey, a well-known polling institute, and is a representative survey for Germany. As I just hinted at, you can see that consumer sentiment is generally declining. Yes, that’s the maybe not-so-good news. The positive news is that every second buyer in Germany still plans to spend the same amount or even a little more on Christmas gifts. And I think that continues to be a very good indicator that the Christmas season is simply still a very, very relevant season for retail and, so to speak, a good driver of sales.
Isabell Butterwege: So can I understand that as meaning that generally people in Germany are spending less money or consuming less, but those who still do, that is, one in two, actually want to spend more on Christmas gifts?
Felix Marum: Yes, exactly!
Isabell Butterwege: Are there differences by age? That’s always especially interesting for sellers to know, of course, because it affects their target audience.
Felix Marum: Yes, there are differences, and they’re quite easy to see. What’s interesting, for example, is that the younger target group aged 18 to 29 is still quite in the buying mood. Almost 15 percent of respondents in this age group want to spend more on Christmas gifts this year. In the next age group, the 30 to 39-year-olds, it’s still 7 percent. In this age group, most respondents are planning at least the same budget as before, despite the declining consumer sentiment in Germany. The older respondents are a bit more frugal, especially those between 50 and 64. Here, hardly any additional spending is planned. But again, there’s positive news, because almost half of all survey participants in this group are also planning with the gift budget from 2023 or even a little more.
Lisa Haak: Super interesting that especially the young potential buyers are willing to spend more. I wouldn’t have expected that. And if we look not at age but at regional differences. You said the survey is representative for all of Germany, can you identify regional differences?
Felix Marum: Yes, there are also differences if you compare, for example, Lower Saxony with Saarland. I heard that many of our big sellers also come from Saarland, yes. In Saarland, people are a bit less willing to spend more, but in Lower Saxony significantly more — in numbers, that means Lower Saxony is at 4.4 percent, whereas Saarland is only at 1.2 percent.
Lisa Haak: In Saarland, people sell and buy less. When we hear that, consumer sentiment is declining, but you can still stand out well. Are there strategies you’d recommend to sellers to somehow maximize sales during peak season?
Felix Marum: So in general, it’s always difficult to give broad tips, because every assortment and every market you operate in is different. But in general, sellers should make sure that the parts of their assortment that could be most relevant from a Christmas perspective, for example, also have maximum visibility, so that they’re simply easy to find and clearly visible. Then of course you can also look at how things stand with external visibility. So, when I’ve looked at eBay, how can my products actually be found? Maybe just switch on the browser’s incognito mode and run a search query. That’s certainly not scientifically representative, but at least I can see: okay, at what position do my offers appear? And from that I can infer, okay, is there still room for a better placement, for more frequent display? Etc., etc., exactly. And if I’ve checked that on eBay, just enter the search term in the search engines and see whether an eBay ad is also shown there or not, and then simply use the solution eBay offers. And just test a bit — think ahead about where I want to increase my visibility? On eBay? On the search results page? Do I want to bring a bit more external traffic to my eBay shop or to my eBay offers? Exactly which offers do I want to increase visibility for — for a complete inventory or only certain parts of my inventory? And yes, once I’ve defined that, just launch external ads, maybe try shop ads to route traffic more toward a certain category. Exactly.
Lisa Haak: What I find super interesting is that you’re highlighting this now in terms of being well positioned for peak season. That can be applied quite well to eBay in general. And what we mustn’t forget is that for many sellers, peak season is a completely different season. Isabell, I think now is a really good time to listen to the pro tips from our sellers.
Isabell Butterwege: Absolutely.
Lisa Haak: First, we’ll hear from Carolin Langer from LaCaTho. She sells native insect-friendly flower seeds on eBay. How she prepares herself for peak season is what she tells us in this clip.
Carolin Langer: My name is Carolin from LaCaTho, and I sell native bee-friendly flower seeds on eBay. I have three strategies for coping with peak season. One is good preparation in the social media area. We plan the posts there weeks in advance so that during peak season the staff only has to deal with customers in the campaign and has time for that, and doesn’t have to worry about images or copy anymore. Furthermore, in the warehouse we have special employees who focus on replenishing stock if items are sold out. For us, it happens that items vary in popularity from year to year, so sometimes we have empty stock, and these employees then contact the suppliers and kick off production so the items are available again for our customers as quickly as possible. The third strategy is that we have special stand-ins in shipping. They step in if a colleague is unexpectedly sick, but also if, for example, there are input errors, house numbers, or PostIdent numbers, and then take care that these items or orders can also be delivered to the customer as quickly as possible.
Isabell Butterwege: Great tips! Thanks, dear Caro! Next we’ll hear from Sven Syré from tubeshop24. He sells replacement parts for tube radios and special electronic measuring devices on eBay. Sven has the following expert tip for you for peak season.
Sven: Hello, dear listeners! I’m Sven from Duisburg, active on eBay since 1999, and under tubeshop24 I sell replacement parts for old tube radios and special electronic measuring devices. My tip for you if you want to maximize sales in peak season: roll out eBay vouchers exactly at that time, and feel free to include the voucher with shipments. I’ve found that vouchers are very popular and generate repeat buyers, nicely packaged, maybe with a small extra included. That goes down very well with customers. I wish you great success, fantastic sales, and above all joy in your work.
Lisa Haak: We wish that for our sellers too, of course. Thanks, Sven, for your great tip, and now let’s hear what Michael Atug wants to pass on to us. He’s not only a digital rockstar in e-commerce, but has also been selling tools on eBay himself for over 23 years. Step into the spotlight!
Michael Atug: My name is Michael Atug, and I’ve been selling tools on eBay for over 23 years. If you want to take as many orders and as much revenue as possible at Christmas, then of course you should pay attention to a few things. One very important thing, I think, is to create a cheat sheet where you write down everything that needs to be considered for Christmas. So there you already have the first tips, info, an editorial plan for when to start with what, and really keep updating it every year. That saves an enormous amount of time and work, because then you don’t have to start all over again every time and rethink everything from A to Z, and so on — it really makes a difference. And definitely run ads beforehand, because the days when people ordered at the last minute are really over. So it’s fine to start turning things up a bit already, gradually, and above all don’t forget retargeting, and I think then you can get a lot out of it.
Isabell Butterwege: Thank you very much, dear Micha. Those were some great tips for peak season. Now we have one last tip for you, from Thomas Panke, the Held der Steine, cue the audio!
Thomas Panke: Greetings, world, I’m Held der Steine in Frankfurt am Main, in the heart of Europe, and I deal in wonderful building blocks. And right now in the height of summer I basically do classic market observation and look at who currently either has something great quickly available from a product perspective or is still coming out in the fall with a new item that will really take off at Christmas. And of course the Christmas season in the building-block world is absolutely the main season. That means I definitely want to be able to stock up well, I don’t want to run dry, then have to handle different lots, and I don’t want to have to raise prices later because I was too stupid to calculate properly. How many do I need, at what price do I really want to keep them? I want to spare myself that embarrassment. Accordingly, I’m now carefully watching the market. I try to tease out a bit: What do customers like right now? What are they talking about? Which product might they want to use to give someone a gift? And then I look at those things closely, of course also with the added bonus of what I personally like, where I can also steer customers a little, and then it’ll be a superb holiday season.
Lisa Haak: Did you recognize the voices from the audio messages? They’ve all been on our podcast before too.
Isabell Butterwege: We’ve now heard some tips that can help our listeners prepare for peak season. As Michael Atug just said, competition is especially strong during Christmas time or peak season. Felix, how can I make my offers on eBay even more visible now? You already mentioned a few tips and levers in broad strokes, but maybe we can go into a bit more detail.
Felix Marum: Okay, so generally speaking, with the Advertising tab, we have a solution that gives sellers the opportunity to actively influence the visibility of their own offers. Of course with the goal of selling more, i.e. generating more revenue. A lot of people will have already seen it. There’s been a redesign. There’s a new cockpit and many new functionalities that we’ll still go into. But broadly speaking, there are three formats: first, ads for offer visibility within eBay, which are further divided into basic ads. Long-time eBay sellers will remember these as standard ads, and premium ads, formerly extended. In addition, to boost shop traffic, there are shop ads, or for placement outside eBay, external ads. Exactly, and these three solutions make it possible, as I said, to actively influence this and increase offer visibility in the relevant place, in order to create the chance for more sales.
Isabell Butterwege: Exactly, I think it’s very important to say up front that, of course, I can only promote an offer that already has the basics down. So a well-structured offer can then generate even more visibility through ads, and that’s exactly what we want in peak season. How does your team help sellers find the right target audience for the ads?
Felix Marum: There are several recommendations for that. Some are attempted automatically. That means, for the premium ads, there are so-called trend-based campaigns. Yes, eBay tries to identify peaks in its own search queries and match them with the sellers’ inventories. And if there is overlap, eBay creates a trend-based campaign for premium ads with the recommendation to please advertise that inventory now. We’re seeing increased demand here, and then it could make sense to serve that with increased visibility of your own offers too.
Isabell Butterwege: Okay, so I’d set a budget and everything — the selection behind it is automated. I don’t have to worry about that.
Felix Marum: Exactly, exactly. Of course it still makes sense to take a look at it as well. But to take a seasonal example: if you sell fans, then the probability is high that there would be a trend-based campaign for items in that category right now, because we’ve just seen that demand has risen with the increasing temperatures.
Isabell Butterwege: And for the Christmas season, would that probably be more gift-like items?
Felix Marum: Exactly. In addition, it’s definitely very useful to take a look at the search query reports for premium ads, because there we basically give an overview of which search queries led to product placements, for example for active premium campaigns. And then I can see which search queries led not only to impressions, but also to interaction, i.e. clicks, and which ones ideally also led to a purchase. Sifting through that accordingly also helps to better understand the target audience and to see exactly how my customers actually search for my products and then align the strategy accordingly.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, that’s super interesting if I want to dive deeper as a seller. But I also have the option to promote my eBay shop even more, right?
Felix Marum: Exactly. Shop ads basically give me several options. I can choose category-based once and decide in which category I want to have more visibility for my inventory. Then I define the category, for example, and appear with a corresponding placement on a competitor’s product detail page, yes.
Isabell Butterwege: Right on the item page?
Felix Marum: Exactly on the item page, and in addition, this is a new placement and very, very cool, I think, the so-called top of search placement. That means when I go to the search results page, I basically have the option to appear above the search results at the top with a banner.
Isabell Butterwege: With my shop then?
Felix Marum: With the shop banner, yes exactly, and to attract attention accordingly and route the potential end customer into my shop or have them click one of the offers displayed there, and that is very, very new. I think it’s super cool because until now that was actually only available to advertisers with very, very large budgets, and now it has been made accessible to all sellers.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, that’s great, I didn’t know that either. I can imagine that some of our listeners are using advertising products for the first time now during peak season, or at least are considering using them for the first time. What tips would you give for the very first campaign?
Felix Marum: Okay, so if we assume that there are basically no performance benchmarks yet for how your own inventory performs, then it’s always a good first step to start with basic ads. So the sales-based model, and distribute it relatively broadly. That means not shying away from promoting 100 percent of my inventory there.
Lisa Haak: So a bit of learning by doing, right?
Felix Marum: Exactly, exactly. So I launch the basic campaign with as large a share as possible and my entire inventory, then define a strategy, i.e. a percentage I’m willing to invest, and then the algorithm basically starts displaying the offers, and you should let that run and look at it for at least three to four weeks. And then there are various reports that tell me, okay, which products benefited from the increased visibility and in what way? Um, exactly, and then use that again as, for the next step.
Isabell Butterwege: Okay, so if you say that after three to four weeks I should take a closer look at my basic ads again to fine-tune my strategy if necessary, that also means I should ideally start before peak season, right?
Felix Marum: Good question! In general, I should of course familiarize myself with the functionalities before peak season. So what does the campaign setup look like? Maybe run a test campaign first, but of course in peak season there’s a different level of traffic, which may then also lead to different competitive situations. So if I start a campaign in the off season, the performance — or the conclusions — probably aren’t transferable 1:1 to peak season, only with a bigger, much bigger multiplier. It can be a different situation again, and yes, we know that around October, mid-October or so, the Christmas business begins.
Isabell Butterwege: Exactly.
Felix Marum: And by then at the latest I should be familiar with everything and ready to join in.
Lisa Haak: There were super, super many hints in there just now, and also super many things you need to get familiar with. Do you also offer training or any resources that I can delve into once I’ve listened to this podcast and think, wow, these are new features for me, and I absolutely want to use them?
Felix Marum: Yes, for example on eBayadvertising.de there’s a large collection of help materials, blog posts. The studies are also published there, otherwise the classic eBay help pages.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, and we’ll also put all the links in the show notes again. Before we talk with Felix about the eBay Advertising Cockpit, we’d love to know from you, dear listeners: what experiences have you had so far with the offers from eBay Advertising? Feel free to let us know via the Q&A features directly in the Spotify app. To do that, just pull the slider up from the bottom of the app and you’re good to go. Or share your experiences with us in the eBay Community or on our Facebook page "eBay for Business Deutschland." We always appreciate your feedback on our podcast there too, and of course a like or even a subscription.
Lisa Haak: Then let’s talk about the news from the last few weeks and months. Some time ago you introduced the new Advertising Cockpit. It’s meant to make it easier for sellers to promote their offers. How does it work, and what’s new about it, Felix?
Felix Marum: Yes, a few days have already passed now. Most sellers may have already noticed it. In general, there was a redesign of the control interface, the user interface, and Advertising has basically been taken out of the Marketing tab and now has its own tab in Seller Cockpit Pro. And here we tried to create a cockpit overview that gives an overall view, for example of the performance of current ad campaigns. That didn’t exist before, so you always had to go through the various formats and look at the performance, and if necessary calculate some average if I wanted to know how it was working overall. That has now become much easier and far, far clearer than it was before.
Isabell Butterwege: I think it’s fantastic how much you took seller feedback into account with the cockpit. There are now several new features, and many more will surely be added to the cockpit. Felix, maybe you could briefly summarize the features that are live right now for our listeners.
Felix Marum: Exactly, so the biggest new thing is certainly that there is now a central cockpit with various sections, and the sections consist of, for example, daily recommendations for existing premium campaigns that try to automatically provide action recommendations that then improve the performance of the respective campaigns. There’s the overall performance at a glance, ultimately. So how are my ads performing across different formats in total? That didn’t exist before. I think that’s a big relief. In addition, the trend-based recommendations already mentioned, but also general recommendations for premium campaigns, and at the very bottom there are a few more, um yes, insights, such as a marketing calendar or help on using the respective formats.
Lisa Haak: We just heard that there’s an extra tab for eBay Advertising, next to the Marketing tab, and that brings us to the topic, Isabell, where you often have a lot to say on the podcast. What exactly is the difference between the two?
Isabell Butterwege: That’s a really good question. Before, the entire Advertising area was part of the Marketing tab. But Advertising was never really a classic marketing product, at least not in the eBay universe. I’d summarize it like this: our marketing products, which we offer sellers with a shop subscription, basically help create purchase incentives and higher sales, while advertising products are more about getting greater visibility in search. So, of course, both can help, but both can also be used in parallel, and that’s the biggest difference.
Lisa Haak: And that then makes it a logical step to separate them somehow. Felix, you’ve been on our podcast before, and you know what comes at the end. What was the last thing you bought on eBay?
Felix Marum: Something very cool, I think, namely a camping espresso machine that works without electricity, called Nano Presse. You just pour hot water in at the top, add powder, and then it basically pumps and builds up the pressure itself, so even in the most remote regions you always have a good espresso while on the go.
Lisa Haak: Then the only question left for me is: was it an offer that was advertised through ads?
Felix Marum: That’s a good question. There definitely was, I just don’t remember. There was definitely a price suggestion from the seller, which I accepted.
Isabell Butterwege: Very nice, and with that we’ve already reached the end of today’s episode. Thank you so much, Felix, for joining us in the podcast studio and for all the helpful tips for our listeners, and of course also to Caro, Micha, Thomas, and Sven for their voice messages and tips in between. I’d say the peak season can come now.
Felix Marum: Thank you for the invitation and hopefully see you next time.
Lisa Haak: We’re glad you were here, and until next time!
Felix Marum: As I just hinted at briefly, you can see that consumer sentiment is generally declining. Yes, that’s the maybe not-so-good news. The positive news is that every second buyer in Germany still plans to spend the same amount or even a little more on Christmas gifts, and I think that continues to be a very good indicator that the Christmas season is simply still a very, very relevant season for retail and, so to speak, a good driver of sales.
Isabell Butterwege: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of "Alles top. Gerne wieder" the eBay podcast about retail and e-commerce. My name is Isabell Butterwege, and I’m hosting this episode together with my colleague Lisa Haak. Hi Lisa!
Lisa Haak: Hi
Isabell Butterwege: As you already heard in the intro, today everything is about the peak season around the Christmas period. We also like to call this "peak season." Today we’ll take a look at consumer sentiment in Germany and answer the question of how you can stand out with your offers in a highly competitive environment during exactly this peak season. To join us, we welcome Felix Marum in the studio. Felix is Advertising Partner Manager at eBay Advertising Germany and supports commercial sellers in making their offers on eBay even more visible at the right time. So hello and a warm welcome, Felix!
Felix Marum: Hello Isabell, hello Lisa!
Lisa Haak: Felix, you’ve been on our podcast before, in the episode Visibility and search engines, where do Germans search? If anyone wants to listen again, we’ll link you to it in the show notes. In addition to the insights Felix will share with us today, we have another update for you. For this episode, Isabell and I asked a selection of eBay sellers for their best tips for successful selling during the high season, and they sent us voice messages. So definitely stick around! Felix, let’s start with an opening question. What’s the situation with consumer sentiment in Germany?
Felix Marum: Okay, so at the beginning of Q1 and Q2 it still looked fairly positive, but now we’re seeing consumer sentiment decline a bit. And yes, we know that when consumer sentiment drops and supply stays the same, that can lead to increasing competition. And here, I think it’s important that whoever positions themselves early and thinks early about the visibility of their relevant inventory has better chances of marketing their own products successfully.
Lisa Haak: So that means you can see, also through the survey you conducted or the numbers you’re seeing, that we have to prepare for consumer sentiment being a little more cautious, and that’s exactly why you should now deal with the business at hand during peak season.
Felix Marum: Exactly, that could be an advantage.
Isabell Butterwege: So in the survey you conducted, you looked specifically at consumer sentiment again to better understand what the market actually looks like right now. What exactly did you examine?
Felix Marum: The question was whether buyers plan to spend more or less money on Christmas gifts this year. The whole thing was created in collaboration with Civey, a well-known polling institute, and is a representative survey for Germany. As I just hinted at, you can see that consumer sentiment is generally declining. Yes, that’s the maybe not-so-good news. The positive news is that every second buyer in Germany still plans to spend the same amount or even a little more on Christmas gifts. And I think that continues to be a very good indicator that the Christmas season is simply still a very, very relevant season for retail and, so to speak, a good driver of sales.
Isabell Butterwege: So can I understand that as meaning that generally people in Germany are spending less money or consuming less, but those who still do, that is, one in two, actually want to spend more on Christmas gifts?
Felix Marum: Yes, exactly!
Isabell Butterwege: Are there differences by age? That’s always especially interesting for sellers to know, of course, because it affects their target audience.
Felix Marum: Yes, there are differences, and they’re quite easy to see. What’s interesting, for example, is that the younger target group aged 18 to 29 is still quite in the buying mood. Almost 15 percent of respondents in this age group want to spend more on Christmas gifts this year. In the next age group, the 30 to 39-year-olds, it’s still 7 percent. In this age group, most respondents are planning at least the same budget as before, despite the declining consumer sentiment in Germany. The older respondents are a bit more frugal, especially those between 50 and 64. Here, hardly any additional spending is planned. But again, there’s positive news, because almost half of all survey participants in this group are also planning with the gift budget from 2023 or even a little more.
Lisa Haak: Super interesting that especially the young potential buyers are willing to spend more. I wouldn’t have expected that. And if we look not at age but at regional differences. You said the survey is representative for all of Germany, can you identify regional differences?
Felix Marum: Yes, there are also differences if you compare, for example, Lower Saxony with Saarland. I heard that many of our big sellers also come from Saarland, yes. In Saarland, people are a bit less willing to spend more, but in Lower Saxony significantly more — in numbers, that means Lower Saxony is at 4.4 percent, whereas Saarland is only at 1.2 percent.
Lisa Haak: In Saarland, people sell and buy less. When we hear that, consumer sentiment is declining, but you can still stand out well. Are there strategies you’d recommend to sellers to somehow maximize sales during peak season?
Felix Marum: So in general, it’s always difficult to give broad tips, because every assortment and every market you operate in is different. But in general, sellers should make sure that the parts of their assortment that could be most relevant from a Christmas perspective, for example, also have maximum visibility, so that they’re simply easy to find and clearly visible. Then of course you can also look at how things stand with external visibility. So, when I’ve looked at eBay, how can my products actually be found? Maybe just switch on the browser’s incognito mode and run a search query. That’s certainly not scientifically representative, but at least I can see: okay, at what position do my offers appear? And from that I can infer, okay, is there still room for a better placement, for more frequent display? Etc., etc., exactly. And if I’ve checked that on eBay, just enter the search term in the search engines and see whether an eBay ad is also shown there or not, and then simply use the solution eBay offers. And just test a bit — think ahead about where I want to increase my visibility? On eBay? On the search results page? Do I want to bring a bit more external traffic to my eBay shop or to my eBay offers? Exactly which offers do I want to increase visibility for — for a complete inventory or only certain parts of my inventory? And yes, once I’ve defined that, just launch external ads, maybe try shop ads to route traffic more toward a certain category. Exactly.
Lisa Haak: What I find super interesting is that you’re highlighting this now in terms of being well positioned for peak season. That can be applied quite well to eBay in general. And what we mustn’t forget is that for many sellers, peak season is a completely different season. Isabell, I think now is a really good time to listen to the pro tips from our sellers.
Isabell Butterwege: Absolutely.
Lisa Haak: First, we’ll hear from Carolin Langer from LaCaTho. She sells native insect-friendly flower seeds on eBay. How she prepares herself for peak season is what she tells us in this clip.
Carolin Langer: My name is Carolin from LaCaTho, and I sell native bee-friendly flower seeds on eBay. I have three strategies for coping with peak season. One is good preparation in the social media area. We plan the posts there weeks in advance so that during peak season the staff only has to deal with customers in the campaign and has time for that, and doesn’t have to worry about images or copy anymore. Furthermore, in the warehouse we have special employees who focus on replenishing stock if items are sold out. For us, it happens that items vary in popularity from year to year, so sometimes we have empty stock, and these employees then contact the suppliers and kick off production so the items are available again for our customers as quickly as possible. The third strategy is that we have special stand-ins in shipping. They step in if a colleague is unexpectedly sick, but also if, for example, there are input errors, house numbers, or PostIdent numbers, and then take care that these items or orders can also be delivered to the customer as quickly as possible.
Isabell Butterwege: Great tips! Thanks, dear Caro! Next we’ll hear from Sven Syré from tubeshop24. He sells replacement parts for tube radios and special electronic measuring devices on eBay. Sven has the following expert tip for you for peak season.
Sven: Hello, dear listeners! I’m Sven from Duisburg, active on eBay since 1999, and under tubeshop24 I sell replacement parts for old tube radios and special electronic measuring devices. My tip for you if you want to maximize sales in peak season: roll out eBay vouchers exactly at that time, and feel free to include the voucher with shipments. I’ve found that vouchers are very popular and generate repeat buyers, nicely packaged, maybe with a small extra included. That goes down very well with customers. I wish you great success, fantastic sales, and above all joy in your work.
Lisa Haak: We wish that for our sellers too, of course. Thanks, Sven, for your great tip, and now let’s hear what Michael Atug wants to pass on to us. He’s not only a digital rockstar in e-commerce, but has also been selling tools on eBay himself for over 23 years. Step into the spotlight!
Michael Atug: My name is Michael Atug, and I’ve been selling tools on eBay for over 23 years. If you want to take as many orders and as much revenue as possible at Christmas, then of course you should pay attention to a few things. One very important thing, I think, is to create a cheat sheet where you write down everything that needs to be considered for Christmas. So there you already have the first tips, info, an editorial plan for when to start with what, and really keep updating it every year. That saves an enormous amount of time and work, because then you don’t have to start all over again every time and rethink everything from A to Z, and so on — it really makes a difference. And definitely run ads beforehand, because the days when people ordered at the last minute are really over. So it’s fine to start turning things up a bit already, gradually, and above all don’t forget retargeting, and I think then you can get a lot out of it.
Isabell Butterwege: Thank you very much, dear Micha. Those were some great tips for peak season. Now we have one last tip for you, from Thomas Panke, the Held der Steine, cue the audio!
Thomas Panke: Greetings, world, I’m Held der Steine in Frankfurt am Main, in the heart of Europe, and I deal in wonderful building blocks. And right now in the height of summer I basically do classic market observation and look at who currently either has something great quickly available from a product perspective or is still coming out in the fall with a new item that will really take off at Christmas. And of course the Christmas season in the building-block world is absolutely the main season. That means I definitely want to be able to stock up well, I don’t want to run dry, then have to handle different lots, and I don’t want to have to raise prices later because I was too stupid to calculate properly. How many do I need, at what price do I really want to keep them? I want to spare myself that embarrassment. Accordingly, I’m now carefully watching the market. I try to tease out a bit: What do customers like right now? What are they talking about? Which product might they want to use to give someone a gift? And then I look at those things closely, of course also with the added bonus of what I personally like, where I can also steer customers a little, and then it’ll be a superb holiday season.
Lisa Haak: Did you recognize the voices from the audio messages? They’ve all been on our podcast before too.
Isabell Butterwege: We’ve now heard some tips that can help our listeners prepare for peak season. As Michael Atug just said, competition is especially strong during Christmas time or peak season. Felix, how can I make my offers on eBay even more visible now? You already mentioned a few tips and levers in broad strokes, but maybe we can go into a bit more detail.
Felix Marum: Okay, so generally speaking, with the Advertising tab, we have a solution that gives sellers the opportunity to actively influence the visibility of their own offers. Of course with the goal of selling more, i.e. generating more revenue. A lot of people will have already seen it. There’s been a redesign. There’s a new cockpit and many new functionalities that we’ll still go into. But broadly speaking, there are three formats: first, ads for offer visibility within eBay, which are further divided into basic ads. Long-time eBay sellers will remember these as standard ads, and premium ads, formerly extended. In addition, to boost shop traffic, there are shop ads, or for placement outside eBay, external ads. Exactly, and these three solutions make it possible, as I said, to actively influence this and increase offer visibility in the relevant place, in order to create the chance for more sales.
Isabell Butterwege: Exactly, I think it’s very important to say up front that, of course, I can only promote an offer that already has the basics down. So a well-structured offer can then generate even more visibility through ads, and that’s exactly what we want in peak season. How does your team help sellers find the right target audience for the ads?
Felix Marum: There are several recommendations for that. Some are attempted automatically. That means, for the premium ads, there are so-called trend-based campaigns. Yes, eBay tries to identify peaks in its own search queries and match them with the sellers’ inventories. And if there is overlap, eBay creates a trend-based campaign for premium ads with the recommendation to please advertise that inventory now. We’re seeing increased demand here, and then it could make sense to serve that with increased visibility of your own offers too.
Isabell Butterwege: Okay, so I’d set a budget and everything — the selection behind it is automated. I don’t have to worry about that.
Felix Marum: Exactly, exactly. Of course it still makes sense to take a look at it as well. But to take a seasonal example: if you sell fans, then the probability is high that there would be a trend-based campaign for items in that category right now, because we’ve just seen that demand has risen with the increasing temperatures.
Isabell Butterwege: And for the Christmas season, would that probably be more gift-like items?
Felix Marum: Exactly. In addition, it’s definitely very useful to take a look at the search query reports for premium ads, because there we basically give an overview of which search queries led to product placements, for example for active premium campaigns. And then I can see which search queries led not only to impressions, but also to interaction, i.e. clicks, and which ones ideally also led to a purchase. Sifting through that accordingly also helps to better understand the target audience and to see exactly how my customers actually search for my products and then align the strategy accordingly.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, that’s super interesting if I want to dive deeper as a seller. But I also have the option to promote my eBay shop even more, right?
Felix Marum: Exactly. Shop ads basically give me several options. I can choose category-based once and decide in which category I want to have more visibility for my inventory. Then I define the category, for example, and appear with a corresponding placement on a competitor’s product detail page, yes.
Isabell Butterwege: Right on the item page?
Felix Marum: Exactly on the item page, and in addition, this is a new placement and very, very cool, I think, the so-called top of search placement. That means when I go to the search results page, I basically have the option to appear above the search results at the top with a banner.
Isabell Butterwege: With my shop then?
Felix Marum: With the shop banner, yes exactly, and to attract attention accordingly and route the potential end customer into my shop or have them click one of the offers displayed there, and that is very, very new. I think it’s super cool because until now that was actually only available to advertisers with very, very large budgets, and now it has been made accessible to all sellers.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, that’s great, I didn’t know that either. I can imagine that some of our listeners are using advertising products for the first time now during peak season, or at least are considering using them for the first time. What tips would you give for the very first campaign?
Felix Marum: Okay, so if we assume that there are basically no performance benchmarks yet for how your own inventory performs, then it’s always a good first step to start with basic ads. So the sales-based model, and distribute it relatively broadly. That means not shying away from promoting 100 percent of my inventory there.
Lisa Haak: So a bit of learning by doing, right?
Felix Marum: Exactly, exactly. So I launch the basic campaign with as large a share as possible and my entire inventory, then define a strategy, i.e. a percentage I’m willing to invest, and then the algorithm basically starts displaying the offers, and you should let that run and look at it for at least three to four weeks. And then there are various reports that tell me, okay, which products benefited from the increased visibility and in what way? Um, exactly, and then use that again as, for the next step.
Isabell Butterwege: Okay, so if you say that after three to four weeks I should take a closer look at my basic ads again to fine-tune my strategy if necessary, that also means I should ideally start before peak season, right?
Felix Marum: Good question! In general, I should of course familiarize myself with the functionalities before peak season. So what does the campaign setup look like? Maybe run a test campaign first, but of course in peak season there’s a different level of traffic, which may then also lead to different competitive situations. So if I start a campaign in the off season, the performance — or the conclusions — probably aren’t transferable 1:1 to peak season, only with a bigger, much bigger multiplier. It can be a different situation again, and yes, we know that around October, mid-October or so, the Christmas business begins.
Isabell Butterwege: Exactly.
Felix Marum: And by then at the latest I should be familiar with everything and ready to join in.
Lisa Haak: There were super, super many hints in there just now, and also super many things you need to get familiar with. Do you also offer training or any resources that I can delve into once I’ve listened to this podcast and think, wow, these are new features for me, and I absolutely want to use them?
Felix Marum: Yes, for example on eBayadvertising.de there’s a large collection of help materials, blog posts. The studies are also published there, otherwise the classic eBay help pages.
Isabell Butterwege: Yes, and we’ll also put all the links in the show notes again. Before we talk with Felix about the eBay Advertising Cockpit, we’d love to know from you, dear listeners: what experiences have you had so far with the offers from eBay Advertising? Feel free to let us know via the Q&A features directly in the Spotify app. To do that, just pull the slider up from the bottom of the app and you’re good to go. Or share your experiences with us in the eBay Community or on our Facebook page "eBay for Business Deutschland." We always appreciate your feedback on our podcast there too, and of course a like or even a subscription.
Lisa Haak: Then let’s talk about the news from the last few weeks and months. Some time ago you introduced the new Advertising Cockpit. It’s meant to make it easier for sellers to promote their offers. How does it work, and what’s new about it, Felix?
Felix Marum: Yes, a few days have already passed now. Most sellers may have already noticed it. In general, there was a redesign of the control interface, the user interface, and Advertising has basically been taken out of the Marketing tab and now has its own tab in Seller Cockpit Pro. And here we tried to create a cockpit overview that gives an overall view, for example of the performance of current ad campaigns. That didn’t exist before, so you always had to go through the various formats and look at the performance, and if necessary calculate some average if I wanted to know how it was working overall. That has now become much easier and far, far clearer than it was before.
Isabell Butterwege: I think it’s fantastic how much you took seller feedback into account with the cockpit. There are now several new features, and many more will surely be added to the cockpit. Felix, maybe you could briefly summarize the features that are live right now for our listeners.
Felix Marum: Exactly, so the biggest new thing is certainly that there is now a central cockpit with various sections, and the sections consist of, for example, daily recommendations for existing premium campaigns that try to automatically provide action recommendations that then improve the performance of the respective campaigns. There’s the overall performance at a glance, ultimately. So how are my ads performing across different formats in total? That didn’t exist before. I think that’s a big relief. In addition, the trend-based recommendations already mentioned, but also general recommendations for premium campaigns, and at the very bottom there are a few more, um yes, insights, such as a marketing calendar or help on using the respective formats.
Lisa Haak: We just heard that there’s an extra tab for eBay Advertising, next to the Marketing tab, and that brings us to the topic, Isabell, where you often have a lot to say on the podcast. What exactly is the difference between the two?
Isabell Butterwege: That’s a really good question. Before, the entire Advertising area was part of the Marketing tab. But Advertising was never really a classic marketing product, at least not in the eBay universe. I’d summarize it like this: our marketing products, which we offer sellers with a shop subscription, basically help create purchase incentives and higher sales, while advertising products are more about getting greater visibility in search. So, of course, both can help, but both can also be used in parallel, and that’s the biggest difference.
Lisa Haak: And that then makes it a logical step to separate them somehow. Felix, you’ve been on our podcast before, and you know what comes at the end. What was the last thing you bought on eBay?
Felix Marum: Something very cool, I think, namely a camping espresso machine that works without electricity, called Nano Presse. You just pour hot water in at the top, add powder, and then it basically pumps and builds up the pressure itself, so even in the most remote regions you always have a good espresso while on the go.
Lisa Haak: Then the only question left for me is: was it an offer that was advertised through ads?
Felix Marum: That’s a good question. There definitely was, I just don’t remember. There was definitely a price suggestion from the seller, which I accepted.
Isabell Butterwege: Very nice, and with that we’ve already reached the end of today’s episode. Thank you so much, Felix, for joining us in the podcast studio and for all the helpful tips for our listeners, and of course also to Caro, Micha, Thomas, and Sven for their voice messages and tips in between. I’d say the peak season can come now.
Felix Marum: Thank you for the invitation and hopefully see you next time.
Lisa Haak: We’re glad you were here, and until next time!
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