Something I’ve noticed increasingly in the past few years is that many of you feel disappointed that your marketing efforts aren’t paying off as quickly as you want (or need!) them to.
And that’s understandable, because when you work really hard doing all kinds of things on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever social media or marketing platform you use, and you don’t see it paying off in terms of traffic and sales to your shop just yet, it’s really disheartening.
So in today’s article I want to talk about how long marketing takes to increase your Etsy sales.
We’ll start with setting realistic expectations . . . and a word of warning, I may go on a bit of a mini-rant about some things that frustrate me (and as always feel free to disagree in the comments below and we can have a respectful discussion about it!).
Then I’m also going to share my thoughts about how long you should realistically expect it to take to get results for your marketing – both for organic strategies and strategies using paid ads, and I’ll give you my best advice on how to get results as fast as possible.
The first thing I want to talk about is why I think most people have unrealistic expectations when it comes to marketing— and this is something that may send me on a bit of a rant!
We all know that there are many amazing, wonderful things about the internet. And over the last decade – and especially the last few years – we’ve seen the world of “online education” and “knowledge as a product” blow up.
More and more people are selling their knowledge online (and I’m one of them!) – and the internet has become a fantastic way for us all to share our expertise and experiences and help each other this way.
But with more and more people selling their “expertise”, there is a lot of competition between experts out there who are trying to sell products or services around… you name it: Instagram marketing, Pinterest marketing, or any other marketing tactics.
Now I obviously love the online education industry and I think it’s helped a lot of people get access to information we couldn’t have before— it’s pushing everyone to teach better, give better advice — it’s positive for many, many reasons.
But the downside of it, and the part that triggers me, is that a lot of people are pushing on their sales page and in their marketing copy how quickly and amazingly you can get results – by highlighting the top 3% of people who get results the fastest.
Which is fine but NOT if it’s made to sound like everyone can expect such fast results – which is sadly often the case .
And so what you end up seeing the most are stories from the top 3% of people who get results the fastest, and it’s easy to start thinking that this is the norm and that this is the kind of result that you can realistically expect too.
I think you’ve all seen them, things like
“How I grew my Instagram following to 20,000 followers in three months!”
or
“How I took my blog from 0 to 10,000 visitors a month in one week using this simple Pinterest trick!”
. . . all these kinds of very clickbaity promises that make things look a little bit too good or too easy.
Now I’m not saying that these results don’t exist and that they don’t happen but my problem with it is that as much as we should talk about the top 3% of people that get results fast to show what’s possible, we shouldn’t do it without also having an honest conversation about what “average” or “normal” results look like.
We also need to talk about the experience that the remaining 97% of people have and normalize what “average” or “normal” results look like on each platform.
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If we don’t, it’s only fair that everyone starts having unrealistic expectations about the kind of results that can be achieved with any organic or paid marketing strategies.
And when you compare yourself to something that’s not the norm – you start to think that if you don’t get the same kind of results crazy fast that all of your hard work isn’t paying off and that you’ve wasted your time and money, which is so discouraging and disappointing.
You start thinking there is something wrong about you or you keep changing strategy because “surely the next thing will work” but it just makes the problem worse because jumping from one strategy to the next gets in the way of being consistent enough with one strategy for it to actually work.
Now I don’t want to dwell on this issue too much longer because I could chat about this for hours and I want to get to the part where I share with you what “normal” and “realistic” expectations look like instead, but I’ve written a full article about this called “where smart handmade shop owners get stuck” for you to read after you finish this one. It’s a good one if I do say so myself 😉
I guess my point is – I think that having an honest conversation about how long it actually takes is much more helpful, and that’s what I want this article to do for you so let’s get into it!
First of all, we’ve got to talk about the fact that some of you have time to work on your shop and grow it. Others have time AND money.
Now, I’m not saying that you need to have money to be able to invest in paid ads to get results – in fact, I think that even if you have money for ads you should not start with ads straightaway.
I think you should start by first seeing what works organically and then boost what you have found to be working with ads.
But there is something to be said about the fact that once you start seeing results organically, having a budget for paid ads can, when done well (I insist: when done well!), really help you with the results that you’re seeing organically and get results faster.
So although it’s not a guarantee, it certainly can be of help and that’s certainly something you need to factor in if your goal is to get results as fast as possible.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about what an average or normal timeline to get results might look like if you are only using organic strategies, with no money to pay for ads.
Obviously, this is just a guideline because it depends on so many things like the platform that you’re using and your skillset, how much of a learning curve you have to go through and a bunch of other things . . . but broadly speaking, all the biggest platforms, like Instagram, Pinterest, all of that – will fall under the guidelines I’m about to share with you.
First let’s define “results” so that when I say “how long to get results” we’re all on the same page.
I define results by regular sales of your products. I am not talking about follower growth, engagement, or even traffic to your store, I am talking about actual sales.
And not just the one-off sale and then nothing, but sales that start coming in pretty regularly to your store from that platform.
With that in mind, I wouldn’t expect results for the first six months on any platform organically, and it still would be average or normal for it to take a year.
Key word: “expect”.
Again, not saying it’s not possible because I certainly know it is but remember we are looking at what the majority of people experience here, not the top of the class.
And you’ll get other results before that. You’ll get engagement. You’ll get followers, growth, you will start getting some traffic to your website or store as well.
But I’m just really looking at sales here because that’s the end goal, right?
I think that it’s more realistic to have that in mind and to aim at getting sales in under three months, so that you push yourself and push yourself and really try and be that top free person. But — if you’re getting results just after six months or a year, you’re also not stressing yourself out thinking that you’re not normal.
Now – let me share WHY it can take a while to get sales in the first place by breaking down the different stages of organic growth.
The first three months are pretty much just a learning curve and about implementing the strategy that you’ve decided to go for. So you’re just really getting started.
Then, month three to six you’re starting to figure out what worked and what didn’t for the strategy that you have in place. You’re starting to see clear patterns as to what works best for you and your business on that platform. The type of content that gets the most engagement, the type of content your potential customers resonate with the most.
And so you start doing more of what works and less of what didn’t, and at this point your results really start stacking up.
This is typically when you start seeing nice results ON the platform you’re using, for example follower growth and engagement on your posts or pins or videos. I call this “platform results.” We’re starting to see healthy progress towards our end goal… which remember is sales of your products.
Then month six to nine is usually when you start seeing results that go outside of the platform and start flowing onto your website or store. You’re generating traffic, sending visitors away from social and onto your store. I call this “traffic results.”
We’re getting much closer to your end goal of making sales, and at this point you might start getting a sale here and there but you’re not seeing regularity with your sales yet — because remember, if an average conversion rate in the ecommerce industry is sitting at around 2%, you’ll need an average of 100 visitors going to your store each month to get 2 sales.
So although you are driving people away from say Instagram or Pinterest and onto your website, it might not be enough of them just yet . . . but things start to snowball from there. Which is why…
…after that – months 9 to 12 and beyond – is when that traffic continues to grow and gets to the level where you start generating sales from that platform more regularly.
You can see how each step is necessary and how there’s this gradual growth that happens: first ON the platform you’re using, then overflowing onto your web store. You can’t really skip any step because they each need to happen in that order.
Now … can you speed it up? Let’s see…
Earlier in this article I did say you don’t NEED paid ads, and it’s true. But if you did have a budget for paid ads, I do think that it can be a great way to shorten that timeframe from the 3 to 6 months mark.
Pretty much as soon as you start seeing “platform results” and know what type of content works best for you on that platform and generates engagement, you can start putting money behind those “tried-and-tested-organically” posts to grow your audience on the platform more quickly.
From there, it’s a faster snowball effect than with organic alone because your audience grows faster on the platform you’re using, the traffic you generate to your store also increases more quickly, you can start adding in some retargeting ads to your strategy . . . basically, all those steps we talked about previously happen more quickly.
It’s less expensive to run ads this way because you’re only putting money behind things that you know are working. And as that starts to snowball and you start to get more followers and more traffic and more sales you can start building on that paid ad strategy and putting even more money behind your ads, and eventually develop more advanced ad strategies.
So remember, everything I shared today does not come from a scientific study right – it’s really just a guideline, not a precise roadmap.
Some of you will be the top 3% and get results within the first 3 months – but I wanted to have an honest conversation about what would also be considered normal, a less glamorous but more realistic timeline.
One last piece of advice you might have heard me share time and time again but I am not afraid of being a broken record because it’s that important:
You can only do so much within the 24 hours you get each day.
And whether you use only organic strategies or you also use paid ads – the MOST important part to get right to speed up your results is that second stage where we go for “platform results” and really understand what works and what doesn’t for you on a given platform. That’s what will create the snowball effect and lead to sales.
And to do that well you have to be REALLY committed to that platform – you can’t try and work this out for Instagram and Pinterest and Tiktok all at the same time.
All this would do is double or triple the time it would take you to figure out what works organically on each platform. You’re MUCH better off focusing on ONE platform to start – master that one, then add another to your marketing mix down the track.
I hope this article gave you some insight about the realistic timeframe it can take for organic and paid marketing strategies to work – and motivates you to keep at it because your efforts will pay off.
You can be the top 3%, and let’s absolutely aim for that, but I want you to have your goals be in the other 97% of people’s results. Because it’s much better to prepare for that and get better-than-expected results vs. feeling disappointed or that you’re a failure because you haven’t gotten those “crazy success story” results.
I have an article that dives more deeply into the pros and cons of using paid ads to promote your handmade or Etsy shop, be sure to check that out next!
Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!
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