Careful with Promotions

[tarotfindsandmore]

I know a lot of people here don't like the various promotions (listings, store, and off-site) that eBay offers sellers.  Generally speaking, I do like them.  I'm a one woman operation with a small store and no social media presence so they work for me.  That said, I learned a slightly painful lesson today with the new "store promotion" and I want to pass on the lesson for folks who are considering creating a store promotion campaign of some kind.

In short, be very careful about going near that "Advertising" pull-down on your dashboard.  I created a coupon (something I regularly do) without realizing that coupons created via that route will cost you, regardless of whether you get a sale or not.  You will pay for clicks and you will pay dearly.  I wasted nearly 40 bucks over the past three days before realizing the coupon was the cause of the loss. 

I had set up a store promotion on Thanksgiving which was intended to run through this past Monday.  On Monday I created a coupon for items over 50 bucks which was to begin after the general store promotion ended.  Well, little did I realize that coupon, having been created in "advertising", was going to cost me even more than my store promo had. 

So, the long and long of it is be careful about using these glorious products that eBay offers.  Some of them are great, others are just headache inducing and costly.  I will probably run another weekend store promotion between now and Christmas, but you can bet your bippy all coupons will be created in Marketing (NOT Advertising) from here on as I have no intention of paying eBay to have customers give me less money!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@tarotfindsandmore  I'm trying to understand what you did here. It sounds like you went to Marketing and created a storewide discount "sale event" which was to run from Thanksgiving to Monday. That is a "sales event", not a "Store promo". 

Then you went to Advertising (NOT Marketing) and chose "Promote Your Store", apparently without understanding how that ad campaign works? First, it is a PAY PER CLICK campaign, just like Priority Ad Campaigns. So, yes, you were charged for clicks. There are two things you can actually promote with this: either a store coupon or a store/ebay category. Since you had not already created a coupon, you were instructed to create one. Once you did that, the coupon became the basis for the ad campaign. You set a daily budget and so forth, right? And then clicked "launch"? So the coupon was promoted in various places on ebay, and every time someone clicked on that ad for your coupon, you were charged. That's how Store Promotion Ads work. 

If you want to create a public coupon and run it basically like a sale event, you do that from the Marketing tab. If you want to advertise the fact that you are offering that coupon, you do that from the Advertising tab using "Promote Your Store".

So, you learned a somewhat costly lesson. And hopefully your post will help others avoid the same mistake.

[tarotfindsandmore]

Nope, that's not quite right.  The store promotion campaign was created in Advertising and the coupon was as well.  The store promotion was intentionally created there, as I wanted to try out this "new" feature over the holiday.  The coupon was, unintentionally, created there as well.  On Monday when I went to check the stats for the store promotion I decide to create a new coupon at that time and completely failed to consider I was still in Advertising.  

I'm quite familiar with coupons and how to create them, but the "new" Advertising tab is new territory for me and I appear to be making some stupid mistakes as a result.  I was hoping to  share this information to help others avoid the same sort of errors. I guess the bottom line is Advertising is an added expenditure so the best bet is to stay in Marketing when creating any kind of discount (since your net income will be less anyway).  Obviously many of the people here are far more savvy and intelligent than I am, but for those who are less on the ball (like me), this post is just a head's up.  Basically, it's a reminder to look both ways before crossing. 🙂

[fbusoni]

@tarotfindsandmore 

Thank you for sharing that experience.

I use the "marketing" tab exclusively to offer sales and create coupons.  I am pretty sure I have never been charged extra by eBay for doing so.

When I see the word "advertising," I think of paying for a service.  So I avoid that tab like the plague.  😊

[meme6253]

Thanks for the information, Good to know.

[valueaddedresource]

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@tarotfindsandmore wrote:

Nope, that's not quite right.  The store promotion campaign was created in Advertising and the coupon was as well.  The store promotion was intentionally created there, as I wanted to try out this "new" feature over the holiday.  The coupon was, unintentionally, created there as well.  On Monday when I went to check the stats for the store promotion I decide to create a new coupon at that time and completely failed to consider I was still in Advertising.  

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@tarotfindsandmore I'm curious about this as well, would you be able to recreate what you did and take screenshots (of course without actually launching the ad campaign)?

Not doubting what you are saying but it's very common with eBay that different people may see different things for a variety of reasons (phased rollouts or testing, browser differences etc.).

From what I've seen, the campaign set up for "Promote Your Store" on desktop/Seller Hub does not allow you to create a coupon within the Ad set up flow - if there isn't already a coupon created under Discounts in the Marketing tab, the coupon option is greyed out/not able to be selected and it explicitly says you have to go to the Marketing tab to create a coupon.

I can see based on this how if you already have an active coupon (so that part wouldn't be greyed out) you could inadvertently choose the Coupon option instead of the Category option and not realize you are paying to advertise your active coupon that was previously created in the Marketing tab....but I don't see how you could create a coupon in this flow, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're describing.

[tarotfindsandmore]

If I possessed the skill to recreate whatever I did to end up paying store promotion fees for a coupon, I certainly wouldn't have done it in the first place. 🙂

[chariot_badges]

tarotfindsandmore

Do tell ... what was the result of your four-day, $40 test?

Sales went off the charts, right?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource @tarotfindsandmore 

It might help to provide a screen shot of your ad campaign's graph.

So, I'll try again. You did NOT run any type of discount sales event from Thanksgiving to Sunday...instead, you set up a Store Ad Campaign through the advertising tab. If that is what you did, and if that did not involve a coupon, then that means you chose "category" rather than coupon. Is that what you did? And then you launched the campaign. And you were charged for any clicks on your store ad between launch and Sunday. None of those charges have anything to do with your coupon.

Then, after that campaign ended, you went back to the store ads page, and saw that you could create a coupon from there, which apparently you did (as @valueaddedresource makes clear, you did NOT create the coupon IN the Ads section....you clicked a link in the Store Ads section which took you to the Marketing tab and created your coupon there.

Now, one of two things happened. You created the coupon and then went BACK to the Store Ads section and launched an a store ad campaign, this time with the coupon choice not the category choice. And so you were charged per click for the ads promoting your coupons. You were NOT charged for the coupon itself. You were charged because you used the coupon as the basis for your store ad. It was the coupon AD you were charged for, not the coupon.

OR.....you are completely misreading what happened. That is, you were in store ads, you clicked the link to create the coupon in the Marketing tab, you created the coupon and NEVER went back to the Ads page to launch another store campaign (this one based on the coupon, not a category) And the fees you are seeing are for the Thursday through Sunday ad campaign, NOT the coupon. That is why it would help to see a screen shot.

Just trying to understand what you did here, because you were definitely NOT charged pay per click fees for simply creating a coupon. You either created a coupon AND THEN launched a store ad campaign based on the coupon...which would result in pay per click fees for the ad OR you are confused about the fees you were charged, and the fees are only tied to your Thursday through Sunday store campaign, and have nothing to do with the coupon.

[tarotfindsandmore]

Actually my sales during the store promo period were quite good (for me).  The coupon days following the store promotion were about typical.  If you look at my solds and compare them to the prior weeks, you can definitely see a difference.  Of course, it was Black Friday so that could be the reason sales were good, as a large portion of my inventory is popular in Q4.

All in all, I would recommend store promotions for small sellers with a variety of items.  Just pay attention to what you're doing with all the new fangled goodies in Advertising.

[fern*wood]

This thread just reinforces why I don't try any of that.  I used to try to keep up, but all the different offerings and ways to get to them has just turned into a word salad for me.   I'm still selling and would just rather not touch the hot stove.

[tarotfindsandmore]

I think this is really the take home.  If you can't figure out what you're doing or how you're doing it (like me), probably best to avoid it.  I have a lifelong history of touching hot stoves unfortunately.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

And just to be clear for anyone trying to follow along here.

There is NO fee for creating a coupon. There is NO extra fee if you get a sale through the coupon. 

The only impact of the coupon is that it will reduce your sale amount by whatever discount you offered in the coupon. But ebay gets nothing extra.

What is confusing is this:

What ebay calls a "Store ad" is really not an ad for your storefront. When you choose to use a store ad you are really advertising one of two things:

A store category. 

A store coupon.

The ad gets placement in certain spots, for example, the top of a listing page or even (if ebay chooses) on ebay's own Homepage. These are pay per click ads. If a user clicks on the ad, you are charged the fee. That is true whether the user ultimately buys the item or not. You are paying per click, not per sale. There is no extra fee if the user buys. 

These pay per click fees are an ad fee. They are not a fee on the coupon itself.

So, if I come to your store and see you are running a coupon sale and I buy something using the coupon, there's no ad fee. Because I did not click on an AD for the coupon. But, if I'm looking at Seller A's listing, and your store ad (for the coupon) is at the top of the page, and I click on that ad, you will get charged the Pay Per Click fee. Same as you would be charged if your store ad was based on a category. 

[iamcara]

The thing about store promotions of any kind, be it cost per click, storefront promotions, or just general promotion is that you reach a new human being with each click. This person may decide to buy from you a week from the time they find your store, to several months or years afterward.

It does seem like people ignore this concept quite often.

Particularly if you have a large store, a store that is focused on one type of product, or your store has some kind of unique quality.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@tarotfindsandmore 

"  If you can't figure out what you're doing or how you're doing it (like me), probably best to avoid it."

This is sound advice.