Advertising Spend % - 10%+???

[retrogames10000]

What percentage advertising do you use?  Do you change it up? 

Do you promote at the recommended ranges?

I generally promote both of our stores at 9%.

I do notice a drop off when I go to 7% or less.

I've tried 12% once for a day on second account and did not notice more activity (much smaller account..700 items)

I want to double my sales.  My recommended ranges are from 9% to 12% or more - usually 12.

Do you truly notice more sales when you meet the recommended ranges?

Is this going to transform my business?  

Am I going to get greatly reduced sales if I am not in the recommended range?

I already feel it is difficult to absorb the 9% additional FVF, and worry about going to 12%

I do still get sales if I drop to 2% or no ad spend but basically just one a day or something small.

How can I increase my business?  I can lower prices by approximately 25% on the whole store but I am often running sales to bridge that gap and suffer from thousands of long-tail or never items.  

Do you experiment with advertising spend?

[klhmdg]

I refuse to pay to play.

If everyone pays than everyone is the same.

As a buyer I pass right by "promoted" listings.

Just lower your prices. 

[sin-n-dex · Accepted solution]

@retrogames10000 

I do 5% maximum on my listings, but limit it to 2% if the margins are tight.

I have a lot of items that are uncommon, so I'm on page 1 a lot anyway, but doing the promoted listings puts them in my current listings as advertising for other things. if I don't do this, someone else's items will appear instead. That's why I have gone along with paying promotion fees... however only half my items are promoted. I will promote more items when things have been there for a while or sales are slumping... just to see if I can improve that.

C.

[retrogames10000]

Unfortunately, 

In my experience so far, I have better luck promoting than not at all. 

I will definitely promote items at at least 2%

My question is for sellers who are promoting already and understand more than me.

You can see from this data that without promoting, I would definitely experience many days without sales

Here is more data - many sales are small items so it is much not impressive.

I do pay a lot for high numbers that's for sure.. 

[retrogames10000]

I have thought about doing the variable approach to which items receive additional advertising spend.

I find it quite difficult to include/exclude parts of my store without much effort, so up until now I have gone with every item being promoted at the same rate.  I should optimize this process for sure and exclude certain high demand items

Thank you for your feedback

[sapphire_studio]

I don't see the point of promoting at lower percentages especially when they introduced the Halo program that means if the buyer has seen any of your other promoted listings within 30 days it's going to charge you your promoted fee you have set even if they found you organically.

I say the best method is to pick and choose the items that need promoting that are highly competitive. People selling vintage one-off items really don't need to as much as maybe a mascara I'm trying to sell where 50 other people are trying to sell it and I'm not the lowest price. I also sell plenty of makeup where I am only one of like five people selling it then I try to be the lowest price and not promote at all.

If I make the decision to promote something I set a cap at 15% but I use a sliding scale and let eBay choose the percent that is needed in order to actually earn the advertising spot.

Picking and choosing which items to promote takes more work than just blanket promoting everything at like 5%, but I think is much more efficient if you have the time to go through your listings.

[inhawaii]

I use 0% and I don't change it up.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I never have and never will use promoted listings. So basically 0.

[gb58]

I don't promote my listings. I am already paying listing fees and store fees, how many multiple layers of fees do we need. I don't believe promoting your listings lead to any greater sales anyway, it is just tossing more money down the well in the hopes it will improve sales.

[dbfolks166mt]

     There is no way to prove that the use of PL improves or increases sales although there are claims it does. You can never be sure if your item sold because of PL or it it would have sold without the use of PL. If you want to experiment try reducing your price by the percentage you are promoting at and remove the promoted listings. 

     I seldom buy on eBay these days since I can generally find the item cheaper elsewhere but when I do I always search by price + shipping lowest first and I totally ignore all the popup's I get from eBay or the items that are splashed over almost every page you go to in eBay.