Ready for the Christmas business with tips from eBay Ads

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Read that right: Christmas is already on at eBay! This year too, sales of Christmas items on eBay.de started rising in September, before reaching their peak around Cyber Week.

So that our listeners know how to prepare for the strongest selling season, we invited our colleagues Stephanie Tschirner, Marketing Manager CSEU at eBay Ads, and Matthias Neubauer, Head of Ads Partnerships Electronics and Home & Garden, from the eBay Ads Team Germany. They have the latest Christmas report with them. It is based on a representative survey in cooperation with the polling institute Civey.

Together with our podcast host David Philippe, they take a look at how buyers on eBay are preparing for this year’s Christmas business: Which gifts are especially in demand? Is it even worth taking special measures in the current economically tense situation, and how do I quickly spruce up my eBay shop?

This episode is an absolute must-hear for anyone who wants to dive into the revenue potential of the busiest time of the year. Enjoy listening!

**Important links**

** Chapter markers **

00:01:40 to 00:04:11 - Survey: Christmas consumption
00:04:11 to 00:09:00 - Increase visibility on eBay through ad formats
00:09:00 to 00:16:31 - Additional ways to create visibility on eBay
00:16:31 to 00:17:30 - eBay Ads Marketing Calendar (Christmas Edition)
00:17:30 to 00:19:29 - Which categories benefit in eBay Christmas business?
00:19:29 to 00:22:55 - New features at eBay Ads

David: Gingerbread in the supermarket means only one thing: the Christmas season is starting in retail. In e-commerce, such clear signals are unfortunately rare, so we took a closer look. Two real marketing pros tell us in this episode when the festive season starts at eBay and how merchants can spot it. Stefanie Tschirner, Marketing Manager at eBay Ads, and Matthias Neubauer, Head of Ads Partnerships, Electronics and Home and Garden, from the eBay Advertising team in Germany, are our guests today. The two of them have also brought along a few clever tips that merchants can use to switch on the proverbial festive lighting for their listings.

Matthias: What is definitely clear to me is that competition for customers will increase. So the importance of marketing and advertising will of course become even more important this year, in this Christmas business, and more visibility for the end consumer, the end consumer, certainly can't hurt, in my view.

David: Welcome to a new episode of "All top! Gladly again" the eBay podcast about retail and e-commerce. My name is David Philipp. I am Seller Engagement Manager at eBay Germany, and as mentioned at the beginning, I’m not sitting here alone, but have Steffi and Matthias with me in the studio, and we’ll be mentally unwrapping the presents in just a moment, which is why I’m very happy that you’re here. Hello Matthias and Steffi!

Matthias: Hello!

Matthias: Hello, and I’m noticing there aren’t any cameras here at all. I even went for a teeth cleaning yesterday, but I could have skipped it.

David: We’ll take photos later, so it’ll still work out.

David: Great.

David: I have to say, we’re now in September as we record here. Yes, I only got back from my summer vacation a week and a half ago, and now, Steffi, we’re talking Christmas prep. What’s going on? Why now?

Stephi: As you may have already noticed, the Santa Clauses, especially the chocolate ones, are somehow taking over the supermarkets right now. In offline retail, i.e. brick-and-mortar retail, the Christmas business is getting started. And of course we also have to look online at what’s happening, and we found that from mid-September onward the Christmas business for online retailers, including on eBay, really starts picking up speed. So people are searching for gifts, and that’s why it’s super important to be present as a seller.

David: When you say you found that out, how did you find it out? I can go into my store and take a look? Oh yes, because they’re mine online, it’s a bit more difficult.

Stephi: Exactly, we naturally dug through our data and looked at a few things. What is being bought more, what are people searching for, and we were able to draw good conclusions that the Christmas business really starts now. We found that this applies across all categories. So you can’t say it’s only in the fresh food area, for example; it happens just as much in electronics, in home and garden, where people are searching for decorations, for example, yes, and that’s happening now.

David: And just with a view to the economic situation. Yes, it feels like there’s a belt-tightening program everywhere. Especially now, do our merchants also have to prepare for the fact that Christmas business may not go quite as well as planned or hoped, as last year for example.

Stephi: We asked ourselves that question again too. We already had it last year because of this economic situation. We did a survey, i.e. with a major polling institute, to find out exactly this issue, and found that around 50 percent of consumers plan to spend the same amount on gifts as last year, so at least they don’t want to reduce it, but 20 percent also say they want to spend less on gifts and for the Christmas season. Of course, that’s due to the fact that we still have a certain amount of economic uncertainty. We can see that price is the decisive factor. So if I get a good offer, I’m very happy to grab it.

David: Matthias, does that mean somehow less Christmas, i.e. less good business during the so-called "peak season" for our merchants.

Matthias: Yes, yes, for me it’s always a bit of a question: is the glass half empty or half full? We’re still talking about the fact that half of those surveyed are planning unchanged Christmas spending. It was a representative survey, so it does have some significance. But the mood picture can of course change again, maybe shortly before Christmas. What is definitely clear to me is that competition for customers will increase. So the importance of marketing and advertising will of course become even more important this year, in this Christmas business, and more visibility for the end consumer, the end consumer, certainly can't hurt in my view. And what we also found in the survey is that there are actually two target groups that are planning to spend more. One is families with children; I might count myself among them. I still need to think about whether I’ll spend more, and young adults, which I’m no longer part of. That’s the age group 18 to 29.

David: Mm-hmm, so that means: the topic of increasing visibility. Yes, that keeps coming up for us; we’ve already had a podcast episode about that too. But that should then be our merchants’ main focus when they, when they’re preparing for the Christmas business, and you as experts, what recommendations have you brought along to maximize the visibility of your products here?

Matthias: Exactly, so there are, maybe most listeners already know this, two ad formats that we offer at eBay Advertising; one is standard ads and the other is advanced ads. Maybe let me briefly outline the two advantages again. With standard ads, as a seller on eBay you only pay the ad fee when you actually sold the advertised item. I thought about it for a long time and did a bit of research. So I’m not aware of any other marketplace that offers such a seller-friendly ad model. We’re even fair enough that if there’s a return from the buyer, we also refund the advertising fee, so it’s truly completely risk-free. You get visibility on all eBay pages. So it’s not just the search results page you know, but also the product pages in My eBay, in the app, on the mobile web, so you’re shown everywhere, and that is, I’ve tried it myself, which is why I can confirm it, really super, super easy to set up and monitor. And in addition, we have our, let’s say relatively new ad format, called advanced ads. Most people probably know this from competitors, from other marketplaces, from search engines. The idea is that you pay per click, i.e. a cost-per-click model, or CPC in modern terms. That gives you much more control options, lets you target the potential audience more granularly. You can say, I’ll set a daily budget first. Start with €10, start with €100. When the clicks have been delivered in this context, the campaign pauses until the next day. So you really know exactly and can plan exactly how many euros you want to spend per day for more visibility.

David: That’s not a surprisingly high bill for that.

Matthias: Unless there’s a system error, which I don’t expect, there shouldn’t be any surprises, or there are no surprises, exactly. And the great thing about advanced ads is that they give you the opportunity to appear in top placements, i.e. relatively far up or right at the top of our search results page, and you know it yourself from Google and the like: you usually scroll little or not at all, but rather what’s in the visible area. There’s a very good chance you’ll click on that too. So, yes, that was a lot of content from me, a lot of talking. There’s also a step-by-step guide; we’ve included it in our eBay Ads blocks, and I think we’ll find it in the shownotes, as they say?

David: Definitely in the shownotes.

Matthias: Shownotes is a term I always have to learn, yes.

David: And is it very complicated to set up such an ad campaign, or once you’ve got the hang of it a bit, can you do it relatively easily?

Matthias: So for both formats it’s relatively easy; for advanced ads there is now almost automatic setup that you can choose. So we already suggest the search terms, suggest the CPC, and of course you can still adjust everything. For me personally, it’s very self-explanatory. The exciting thing, maybe again about advanced ads, is that we’ve seen that the format is especially suitable for seasonal products. Christmas is just around the corner, we just learned. It’s starting now. So maybe that’s also a good hint to try it now in order to get more visibility on the search results page.

David: Definitely. And of course I think it’s always worth trying so you’re ready for the season, right?

Stephi: Exactly.

Matthias: Yes, thank you very much for the classification and also briefly for our listeners: we already published a separate episode on the topic of visibility because the topic is just so important. In it we also talk about additional measures to make the shop listings more attractive, which images you should optimize, text, title, and so on. You can כמובן find the link to the episode in the shownotes too, but back to the topic, Matthias. What other options do we recommend at eBay to get more visibility for listings?

Matthias: Exactly, "Fix the Basics," as we like to say. So it’s about getting the fundamentals right first. Of course, when it comes to selling on eBay, that means having clean product images, ideally uploading five product images or even a few more, making sure they’re cut out nicely, yes, like you know from other shopping channels. Texts, i.e. item descriptions, should be SEO optimized so Google can find them too. Very, very important is the title on eBay. We have 80 characters there. I can only keep telling everyone to really use those 80 characters. That’s extremely, extremely important for our algorithm. Yes, then you can think about it: when you buy something yourself, where are you more likely to buy? Maybe where free shipping is offered, or where you’d rather buy even if there are €3.90 shipping fees, things like that. And fast shipping is of course also very important. You still have a bit of time from September to November and December. But we live in a very fast-moving age, and most people don’t want to wait four or five days for a product they ordered. Exactly! And beyond that there are of course also marketing options at eBay. A relatively new offer feature is the topic of social media. So you can advertise your listings that you sell on eBay on all the well-known social networks, maybe bring in new customers, like Facebook, Instagram, whatever you know, yes. There are the probably familiar volume discounts and multi-buy discounts that you can offer on eBay, so on one chair, if you buy a second one, you get 5 percent or 10 percent off, somehow. You can work with special promotions. Of course you can lower the price, make price reductions relatively easily. What I find really interesting, because I also buy a lot on eBay privately, or and also sell, are price suggestions. So you do have a fixed-price listing, but you’re basically giving the potential buyer the option to submit an offer that is perhaps five euros lower, and I think that can also open up new target groups and buyer groups. And something else that, I don’t even know if it’s that new, but it feels new to me, are voucher codes. That means you as a seller on eBay can say, I’m giving 20 percent off for the next purchase. So for example, you can print that out and include it with the package you send to the customer, so to speak, to trigger repeat purchases. But you can also say that you only want to give it to a certain target group. You can make it public for everyone; there are many ways to give a discount with voucher codes, so to speak.

David: I see there’s a lot coming together there. The basics simply have to be right, because if they’re not, you can’t do much with other actions either. But now let me ask you this: how can merchants apply this strategy to their Christmas preparations, or do they need to pay even more attention?

Stephi: I think that all of these things are very good to use, also with regard to the Christmas business and the coming weeks and months. What’s nice about it is that if you take at least most of these things into account and consider and do them, the customer experience, meaning the buyers’ experience, is all the better too, and accordingly they may also come back to the shop more often. For example, I know that the thing with the vouchers works really well for me personally.

David: I’m also a very welcome victim of that, yes.

Stephi: Um, for example, I like buying Manuka honey on eBay, and after a while it’s naturally gone, and then I’m happy to accept such a voucher, and that really works well. But yes, for the Christmas business, you should definitely keep all those points in mind. What we also asked in our diverse data analyses and surveys was: What is really important for consumers, i.e. what do they want to see in listings? And what’s interesting is, as I mentioned earlier, that price plays a big role, I think, in all things, but quality too, and that of course is something our sellers need to keep in mind. And in turn, when you have these listings and offer things, highlight that it’s a great offer, that it’s good quality, for example include that in the product description. And another thing we found out is that Christmas is and remains an emotional holiday. So people of course want to be with their friends and family, want to have great moments, and accordingly they also want to give emotional gifts. So that it offers experiences, for example, and our merchants could perhaps make good use of that too by presenting products that maybe at first glance aren’t very emotional, like a ski, in a different way, by not only showing the product itself but the whole environment, like how you can go down this slope on these skis, for example.

Matthias: So something else would appeal to me with skis: at the après-ski bar, the skis are in the snow and there’s a drink in my hand.

David: So that means working with images and also doing something in the product description, or just the pictures.

Stephi: Both, so text, product description, in the title you might also pick up something that points in that direction, and of course the images are, at first glance, what conveys a lot.

David: Okay, I understand, so you can stage an entire experience through the product description and, well, photos, title, and so on. Should merchants perhaps also think about images like people unwrapping this product under the Christmas tree, so that you really go all in on this Christmas theme? Is that an idea? Would that make sense? Of course it’s more work, but.

Stephi: So, I would definitely recommend trying that out, because I think images convey the most in that case, more than 1000 words as the saying goes, and I can very well imagine that it works and brings more attention. And especially if you’re already aiming your marketing at getting more visibility, then please do it with nice images too.

David: I think that’s a very interesting idea for Christmas. I think you can certainly apply it to other seasonal times and events too, and it’s also a good idea to set yourself apart from the competition, right?

Stephi: Okay, that’s a great keyword: seasonal, other events and times. We actually created a marketing calendar, already at the beginning of the year for the whole year, where merchants can clearly see what other seasonal periods and important holidays there are in Germany that they should still keep in mind.

David: So in the calendar you can see exactly, okay, then and then this and that comes, so that every merchant can prepare in time and be ready when the season starts.

Stephi: Exactly, we even showed in which major categories which lifts can be seen in certain areas.

David: That is definitely very exciting. We’ll definitely link it in our shownotes too, because it’s really helpful and Matthias, I’d now of course like to come back to eBay shoppers again. Yes, you always keep a special eye on eBay shoppers. For which categories are these opportunities to increase visibility that we just discussed particularly suitable, with Christmas now in view.

Matthias: Yes, exactly, so it’s... it’s starting now, it starts in September, and then we see, too, Steffi sitting next to me. She always provides all the great, helpful data for us. So in general it starts across almost all categories. A few things I’ve remembered, now also for the podcast, are digital cameras, somehow.

David: Okay.

Matthias: I was like, okay, who actually still buys digital cameras? But Stephi.

Stephi: So, I definitely have two digital cameras, and I also know many people in my circle of friends and acquaintances who really use digital cameras and of course the equipment for them. So then you also like to switch lenses and everything.

David: Lenses and everything.

Stephi: The lens.

Matthias: Okay, then I’m just outside that target group. I always do everything with my phone, but then the classics: it’s getting colder, clothing, jackets, sales figures go up. We also saw a lot of fireplaces last year. We assume it will behave the same way this year too. Bath accessories, après-ski, I’m thinking again that you can also go there with a snowboard somehow. Generally, craft items, and that basically all culminates in Cyber Week at the end of November and then continues a bit further until just before Christmas, and I always have to think of a very old ad. You can probably also estimate how old I am roughly from Franz Beckenbauer, our Kaiser, who said, yes, is it Christmas already today? I think so.

David: So it really starts now! So everyone listening to our podcast now should also get started and get ready.

David: That’s the keyword now, exactly.

David: Okay. Beforehand, you also revealed that you brought some news for our merchants. What, as a little present, I almost said, what can our merchants look forward to?

Stephi: Yes, our product team, the eBay Ads product team, has been very busy over the last few months, so we’re always trying to optimize a lot of our tools, and there are now external ads for our merchants.

David: Very briefly, if you say external ads, that means not on the eBay.de page.

Stephi: They are of course created in the seller cockpit, the campaigns for external ads, but yes, the ads are then played out on the big well-known search engines, and just like advanced ads, it’s a cost-per-click model, and you can just as easily set your budget for how much you want to pay per click. So that gives good control over your own budget, and it really creates even more reach for your listings.

David: So I understand that correctly. Through the seller cockpit you can create ads that then appear on search engines, where I’m of course not only limited to those who happen to be surfing around on eBay right now, but also to people searching search engines for suitable items.

Matthias: Exactly, exactly that’s how it is.

David: I find that very exciting.

Matthias: Exactly, a second topic we brought along is a relatively new project that we at eBay Ads take care of: brand sponsorship for advanced ads. That means if you as a merchant work with your manufacturers, i.e. with the big manufacturers from whom you source products that you then sell on eBay, there is now the possibility for the manufacturers to pay for you on eBay as part of an advanced ads campaign.

David: Okay, interesting.

Matthias: That means there are no costs for you. It is billed directly between the manufacturer and us, the eBay Ads team. The manufacturers are happy if they go to eBay and search for their products. Then their products can appear right at the top of the search results page, maybe with a nice authorized seller logo. So if you are an authorized seller from the brand side, that will of course also be shown. And you simply benefit from more visibility and more sales at no cost. Because what we saw in our figures is that when you advertise products via advanced ads, you see on average 50 percent more sales compared with products that you do not advertise via advanced ads, and I think 50 percent more.

David: That’s definitely something you can do. How can merchants do this with their brands? Do they contact eBay, reach out to us, or do they need to speak with their brands? So how does it work?

Matthias: Many roads lead to Rome. They can of course speak directly to the brands and then gladly pass on our contact details. Then we’ll go into talks with the manufacturers, ideally always together, also with you, the merchants, and of course we’re also out and about, at major events, at trade fairs, talking to manufacturers ourselves, so that we are very happy to take the route via you, so to speak. I think you certainly have an interest in getting advanced ads from us free of charge, and at the same time we also seek the path via the manufacturers at major events.

David: I think that’s super exciting and of course also a nice opportunity, maybe for Christmas now. Especially then, the manufacturers naturally have even more interest in being visible, and then separately, what.

Matthias: Absolutely, yes!

David: Before I say goodbye to you both in a moment and you know what’s coming now, you’ve both been here before, but of course I still wanted to celebrate the podcast tradition, and that is, I’d like to know from you both: what did you last buy on eBay?

Matthias: So, I bought a perfume, for myself.

David: For you?

Matthias: For me.

Stephi: Not as a Christmas present for your wife?

Matthias: If she’s listening to the podcast, no.

Stephi: For me, it was actually a cat mat.

Matthias: I ask quite a lot of questions, what is a cat mat, Stephi? I don’t have any pets.

Stephi: Um, exactly, I’m not just a mom, but also a cat mom, and we have two cats who are still indoors at the moment, and for the litter box you need a mat so that the cat litter doesn’t lie around the whole house.

David: Yes. Learned something new again.

Matthias: Yes, we also have relatives who have two lovely cats. I think you could cover the whole apartment with such a cat mat, because they don’t always find the litter box, the cat toilet.

David: Yes, Steffi, Matthias, it was very nice to have you here in the studio again. Many, many thanks for your insights and the great tips for our merchants, and I would say, fitting for the episode: Merry Christmas. So I wouldn’t have thought I’d be wishing that already in September, but yes, see you next time and then hopefully Merry Christmas!

Matthias: I’m going to get some gingerbread at the supermarket now.

Stephi: Yes, we wish all our merchants a successful Christmas business, and it was a lot of fun. Thanks.

David: Yes, many thanks also to our listeners for tuning in to today’s episode, and as always, we love your feedback in the eBay Community or on our Facebook page eBay for Business Germany. Let us know whether you’re already in peak-prep mode or how you’re approaching the whole thing. We hope you enjoyed the episode, and of course we’d be delighted if you leave us a subscription or a like wherever you’re listening to us right now, because that definitely helps our podcast grow. I’m already looking forward to the next episode, and if we don’t hear from you again before then, Merry Christmas, in September!