Our secret weapon for marketing our shop? The Brilliant Business Planner.


 
Every Wednesday at 1:30 Eastern, Sarah and I hop on Blab with a Brilliant Business Mom to strategize ways she can grow her business.  Last week, we chatted with Julie Fuller of Tokyo Blossom Boutique.  
Julie recently re-branded her shop, and now it's filled with fun, vibrant, colorful knitwear and accessories.  She's truly set herself apart in the knitwear space, and we can't wait to see how she grows.
Topics Discussed on our Etsy Strategy Blab

Branding.  This Fall, Julie re-branded her shop with a palette of 6 bold, beautiful colors.  Now her shop looks and feels cohesive and has a fun feel to it.  The best part about re-considering her products and re-branding?  Julie now feels so proud of her shop!  She's excited to tell everyone she knows about it, and even her friends and family now call it her business - not just her cute little shop.
Tip: Make products you're truly proud of - this is half the battle when it comes to marketing yourself and making sales.
Etsy Promoted Listings.  Promoted listings can be a great strategy for getting found as a new shop.  Some tips to remember: If you're able to get clicks, favorites, and sales on a promoted listing, that extra SEO bump absolutely transfers over into that listing even when it's not promoted.  You will see an improvement in your search engine rankings if your promoted listing does well.
Promoted Listings Tip 2: Etsy seems to favor the more expensive listings - giving them more views and exposure overall.  The theory: Etsy stands to make a lot more off of each sale when a more expensive item is sold.  So consider choosing your most expensive listings to promote.
Promoted Listings Tip 3: If you have an item that is performing well as a promoted listing, you can often bid a super low amount (3 cents per click) and Etsy will continue to promote that listing.  Again, if they know your listing will sell much better than someone else's, they have no problem taking your 3 cents per click because they will still make a better profit overall.
Promoted Listings Set-up: You can choose your maximum budget per day, and choose as low as $1.00 per day.  Then, you get to decide which listings you'll promote.  My recommendation is to promote just a few listings at a time so you can monitor what's working as well as push a few listings to the top of search results versus spreading yourself too thin.  Then, you decide how much you're willing to pay per click for that listing.  You can go with Etsy's recommendation (auto-bid) or you can choose your own bid amount - and that can be either higher or lower than Etsy's recommendation.  One caveat: if you set a high bid and a low budget amount, you may run out of your budget early in the day and miss "prime-time" for buyers.
Promoted Listings Tip 4: My benchmark for a successful promoted listing: getting at least 1 click for every 50 impressions of a promoted listings.  But if your listing only gets 1 click per every 200 impressions, then that product photo may need some work - you're not generating enough interest in that product.
Promoted Listings Tip 5: Promoted Listings is a great way to test which search terms are most effective for reaching your ideal customer.  Etsy will show you which of your terms have high click-through rates.
Promoted Listings Tip 6: You still have to be diligent with your titles, description, and tags
Crochet vs. Knit: In Julie's experience, tagging your items as "crocheted" often attracts other crocheters looking for new ideas versus a customer whose ready to buy.  Julie finds that tagging her items as hand-knit is a much better choice for attracting her ideal customer.
Main Traffic Sources: Julie is getting most of her shop traffic through Instagram and Facebook.  So she's off to a good start with social media marketing.
Facebook Parties: Julie designates an hour where she would have a party on her Facebook fan page. Julie then told a few