Is your Etsy store not performing so well lately? Take advantage of the holiday season to drive your Etsy sales to the roof! Discover with us 5 great ways to increase your Etsy holiday sales. Start implementing these tips as early as possible, to make sure you get the best results.
What is Etsy seasonal shopping?
Seasonal shopping is a big trend on Etsy that you need to know about. The platform encourages sellers to run sales in celebration of certain events, like Halloween, Labor Day, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, and so on.
But by far the most thriving seasonal shopping period is in the months before Christmas. Everyone is looking for Christmas gifts for their loved ones, and many people start their Christmas shopping early. This way, they can make sure the presents arrive on time.
In order not to miss these eager early customers, we suggest you implement the strategies below as soon as September or early October. By doing so, you give your potential customers time to get acquainted with your products, and you make sure they get them on time.
Now let’s look at 5 ways to increase your holiday sales on Etsy, by taking advance of seasonal shopping trends and of the huge build-up before Christmas.
5 Ways to Increase Your Etsy Holiday Sales
1. Introduce Christmas-related keywords
Use Christmas-related keywords in your titles, tags, and descriptions, to make sure your products show up in Christmas-related searches on Etsy.
As you may already know, Etsy works like a search engine. Customers use keywords to search for specific products on the platform. Naturally, when searching for Christmas presents, you will use key-phrases like “Christmas gifts for him”, “Christmas gifts for her”, “Wife / Husband Christmas gift”, “Personalized Christmas gifts”, and so on.
Now, you need to establish which of these keywords would make sense for your product. For example, if you’re selling handmade earrings, you should probably focus more on women – “wife / girlfriend / sister / mother / etc. Christmas gifts”. If you’re selling baby clothing, stick to your niche: “newborn / baby / new mom / etc. Christmas gifts”.
You can use some Christmas-related keywords at the end of your product title, in 1-2 tags, and try to include them somewhere in your product description.
Hot tip! Introduce these keywords early (in September – early October). In this way, the Etsy algorithm will have enough time to do its job and include your products in Christmas-related searches. Keep them until the end of December – early January. It’s not good to change your titles and tags too often on Etsy, because the algorithm needs to time to process these changes.
2. Follow and run seasonal sales on Etsy
As mentioned before, Etsy encourages sellers to run sales for particular occasions. And there are lots of celebrations taking place before Christmas. You may have heard of the famous BFCM, which refers to Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales. While these sales were originally intended for technology-related products, now they seem to apply for any type of product. Especially on Etsy.
Cyber Monday even turned into Cyber Week, and so on. So use these occasions when people are so eager to shop to give them some incentives. Run a sale – 15-20% OFF for some of your products. The Etsy algorithm will bump up in searches the products that are on sale in those particular time periods. So make the most of it!
3. Do a seasonal photoshoot for your Etsy store
Select a few of your products that you think would make great Christmas gifts and do a seasonal photoshoot. You don’t need to invest in many props or equipment to shoot some Christmas / seasonal content.
Either use a festive background (like wrapping paper), or introduce some red or green elements (like red ribbon, some Christmas ornaments, fairy lights, whatever you can find around the house that looks festive). This is particularly easy to do when you sell a product of small dimensions. Check out the example below:
Photo by Natali Hordiiuk on Unsplash
Then, it’s time to introduce some of these photos to your Etsy product listings. In this way, you’ll attract a lot more seasonal shoppers.
Also, make sure to use these photos on your social media channels to promote your Christmas products. Which takes us to the next way to increase your Etsy holiday sales…
4. Use social media to drive traffic to your Etsy store
If you’re not investing much time in your social media accounts, fall/autumn is when you need to start making an effort. Take a day to work on a Christmas photoshoot that includes some of your best products. Especially those that would sell well as Christmas gifts.
Use your festive photos everywhere on social media, to drive traffic to your store. Remember, some social media platforms need more time than others to work their magic.
For example, on Pinterest, we start posting Christmas-related content as early as September. Why? Because it takes 1-3 months for a Pinterest Pin to live up to its full potential.
Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash
Instagram and Facebook are more instant. But remember, your customers need to receive their products before Christmas. So think about your shipping times, if you sell physical goods. If your product takes 2-3 weeks to be delivered, or more, it’s not too early to start posting Christmas content in late October- early November.
Hot tip! If you’re afraid of how your social media audiences might react if you post Christmas-related content too early, use your copywriting skills to help you with this. For instance, you can write something like “Do your Christmas shopping early with us! All orders placed before November 14th are guaranteed to arrive before Christmas.”
5. Consider investing a small budget in Etsy ads
Although we try to invest as less as possible (or nothing at all) in paid ads, we have to admit that a well-targeted Etsy ad campaign will show results. And what better period to experiment with some Etsy ads than in the build-up before Christmas?
It’s the season when people are actively looking to buy things. So take advantage of this shopping spree to create some ads and see what works best.
Hot tips! When working to create a paid ad, 1) always consider your target audience, 2) always focus on very specific keywords that would describe your product, and 3) set a small budget at first. Finally, once you start monitoring your ads for some time and see which perform best, only then it’s time to stop the ones that don’t work, and invest your ad budget in the ones that do.
These are just 5 simple ways to increase your Etsy holiday sales…
If you want to learn how to grow your Etsy store, get more traffic and sales, make sure to check out our Etsy blog section. There we give you a lot of free tips and resources on how to grow your Etsy business.
If you’re new to Etsy, make sure to get our Ultimate FREE Guide to a Successful Start on Etsy - a free workbook that will take you step-by-step through the process of opening your Etsy store and listing your first product:
Have you used any strategies to increase your Etsy holiday sales? Let us know in the comments what has or hasn’t worked for you!