Each eBay marketplace is a unique ecosystem.
However, some universal sales rules apply to each of these ecosystems. The trick to building a presence on a new eBay market is to know which rules best fit the market you’re entering.
For instance, creating a limited-time offer can increase sales of a specific product in your store by over 30%, but failing to deliver the item quickly to the buyers can result in negative reviews that could potentially hurt your brand’s image.
So, to avoid dealing with negative reviews, you must determine whether shoppers on a specific eBay market value fast or free deliveries over price and check your capacity to fulfill a high volume of orders quickly before launching a limited-time offer for one of your listings.
Consequently, aligning your sales strategy to the market demands will enable you to gradually build your customer base and strengthen your presence on a new eBay market.
Let’s explore more sales strategies that could help you expand your business to multiple eBay marketplaces.
Download our free eBook and start exploring the global eBay growth strategies!
Online sales statistics international sellers on eBay must know
- The likelihood of purchase for products displaying five or more reviews is 270% higher than the purchase likelihood of products without reviews.
- More women (53.4%) shop online than men (46.6%).
- 84% of online shoppers are interested in personalized offers and would spend more to get them.
- Upselling and cross-selling on eBay can increase a store’s revenue by up to 30%.
- Over 70% of mobile shoppers on eBay are between 18 and 34 years old.
What is a sales strategy, and how can you use it to attract new customers on eBay?
Although it can seem overly complex, a sales strategy is a fairly simple concept that outlines a brand’s target audience, a plan for reaching them, and a way to spark interest in its products.
Hence, market research and competitive analysis are cornerstones of any viable sales strategy for online and offline markets.
The sales funnel is the most common overarching strategy ecommerce businesses utilize to gain a competitive advantage over their key rivals and reach the ideal buyers for their products.
The strategy guides the potential buyers through the sales funnel’s Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action stages. Implementing this strategy on a platform like eBay requires some nuance because sellers don’t have complete control over the customer’s journey.
Nonetheless, the strategy’s core principles are vastly used across all of eBay’s marketplaces.
The platform gives sellers access to tools that allow them to raise awareness about their brands or specific products, generate interest with engaging visual content and captivating product descriptions, and make taking action straightforward for the buyers.
Rethinking your online sales strategy to expand your customer base
Revising and expanding the sales approach occasionally can be beneficial for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, you shouldn’t assume that a strategy that’s effective on one market, like the US, will be equally efficient on eBay’s UK or German markets.
Researching the market and closely observing consumer behavior, competition, and all other factors that could potentially affect your business’s performance can help you make informed decisions when rethinking your online strategy for a specific eBay marketplace.
Combine two or more overarching sales strategies
A sales strategy isn’t a static structure but an ever-evolving guideline for your brand’s approach to an online marketplace.
That’s why focusing exclusively on the funnel approach doesn’t always produce the desirable results. Expanding this strategy to include the elements of other relevant sales strategies, like the flywheel sales approach, can help you make your strategy more customer-centric.
Combining these two strategies can work particularly well on a large digital marketplace like eBay, where product reviews are essential for the listing’s and seller’s overall performance.
For example, if you’re entering a new eBay market, you should explore ways of using the reviews to raise brand awareness and grow your brand’s customer base.
Improving sales on eBay’s international markets
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a core element of an online sales strategy that allows sellers to track their short-term and long-term performance on a new market.
Click-through rates, sales quotas, conversion rates, and revenue targets are some of the KPIs retailers use to monitor the performance of their listings on eBay and other platforms.
These metrics can also signal that you need to tweak your sales strategy to remain competitive in your niche.
Revamping your advertising approach, intensifying the localization efforts, or expanding the scope of your offers can all boost your sales on eBay’s international markets.
In addition, you can improve your eBay store’s performance by:
- providing customer service in the market’s local language,
- expanding the delivery and payment options
- focusing on building lasting relationships with your customers
Most importantly, you should strive to understand the market’s internal laws, adapt to the latest trends, and do your best to anticipate market fluctuations to avoid sales slumps.
5 sales strategy tips to boost your cross-border sales on eBay
There are no one-size-fits-all sales strategies.
Each strategy must reflect the brand’s image and values to resonate with the target audience. Hence, attempting to utilize uniform sales strategies on all eBay markets could potentially hurt your chances of establishing a strong presence on any of the markets your brand is targeting.
Creating a sales strategy tailored to different eBay markets makes it easier to modify your approach based on customer feedback and data.
Here are a few sales strategy tips that could improve your cross-border sales on eBay.
1. People don’t buy products, they buy solutions to their problems
Running a cross-border ecommerce business on eBay can be overwhelming as you must keep an eye on various constantly moving pieces.
As a result, sellers often overlook why shoppers visit platforms like eBay and assume they’re searching for products. However, most people come to digital markets searching for a solution to their problems.
So, if a buyer searches for headphones on eBay, in most cases, they’re not searching for a particular product but a pair of headphones that will help them cancel out the noise in the office or provide an immersive experience while watching a movie or listening to music.
Keeping the search intent in mind while planning your sales strategy and choosing products you’ll list on a specific eBay market can make it easier to reach the audience you’re targeting on a particular eBay market and build a loyal customer base.
2. Know who you want to reach on a new eBay market
Search intent gives international sellers only a partial insight into consumer behavior patterns such as impulse purchases, brand loyalty, or seasonal fluctuations on an eBay marketplace.
Brands considering expanding to a new eBay market should conduct thorough research to determine target groups for their products.
Furthermore, such research can be crucial for the development of buyers’ personas that improve sellers’ understanding of the market’s demographics, the values of their ideal customers, and their lifestyles.
eBay offers sellers powerful research tools that allow them to analyze the market’s seasonal trends and key competitors or explore the products in specific categories shoppers frequently look for.
These tools provide a wealth of information brands can use to create listings targeting specific audiences and monitor their performance across different markets.
However, external research tools might help you get a more comprehensive view of the market’s demographic and plan how to reach them.
3. Use product listings to tell stories and gain competitive advantage
Although it may sound cliche, listing optimization for a new eBay market goes beyond itemizing a product’s features. Each listing you add to your eBay store gives you the opportunity to tell your brand’s or the product’s story.
Most importantly, you should tell these stories in a way that resonates with your audience on a specific eBay marketplace. This involves much more than translating the listings from your US marketplace to, for instance, French word for word.
Aside from enriching the listings with rich media produced in a local language, you can also use the Product Description section to provide potential buyers with a witty and informative overview of the product that reinsures them that a particular item is their best choice.
It’s paramount to consider cultural nuances since an expression or phrase considered witty or funny in one culture can come across as rude or even offensive in another.
4. Give product bundling a chance
Implementing this tip can be tricky because eBay doesn’t offer an easy way to include multiple products in a single listing. Even so, product bundling can be an effective way to encourage shoppers to spend more at your store.
The simplest way to group several products together on eBay is to mention that a specific product comes with accessories or complementary items.
Moreover, you can put in the extra effort to feature your listings in the ‘Customers Also Bought’ section, but this is easier said than done because eBay automatically generates the suggestions in this section.
Optionally, you can consider creating multi-quantity listings for your bundle offers by setting the Pricing format to ‘Buy it Now’ and specifying the number of items included.
5. Raise brand awareness through social media
Anonymity is one of the biggest obstacles sellers expanding to new eBay markets face because the buyers in that market aren’t familiar with their brand or products and don’t know if they can trust them.
Consequently, solutions to this problem should be embedded in your brand’s sales strategy for a specific eBay market from the beginning.
Social media offers a relatively simple way to raise brand awareness among buyers in a new country, provided you have the means to produce social media content in the local language.
Ultimately, you don’t have to promote your brand exclusively through your company’s social media channels. Reaching out to local social media influencers can help attract buyers to your eBay store and boost your sales on a new market.
Ensuring your brand’s continued growth on eBay’s international markets with sales strategies
In the age of information, data reigns supreme.
As a result, the data is the foundation of any successful sales strategy for domestic or international eBay markets.
The platform’s built-in research tools and various external tools can provide you with a comprehensive view of customer behavior, seasonal trends, and all other aspects you need to consider when crafting a sales strategy for a new eBay market.
Still, conducting extensive market research and testing different sales strategies requires considerable resources.
Webinterpret’s eBay solution can ensure your brand’s growth on international marketplaces and increase your sales without the need for extra resources.
About Webinterpret
Webinterpret supports merchants selling on eBay.
Our AI-based solutions enable more effective selling through automated listing localization, advertising, and returns and ensure all products placed on EU markets are GPSR-compliant.
By giving your international customers a full, end-to-end local shopping experience, Webinterpret improves your conversion and helps establish your business globally.
