Marketing Tips - Part 1 - Banners and Avatars

You've opened your shop, you're all excited to get that first sale and hover around the computer checking your views, your hearts and wondering if the sales fairy will come while you're asleep. Sound familiar? There are so many wonderful shops on Etsy, which makes it pretty hard to stand out amoung the crowd to potential customers.

You spend so much time taking photos, editing them to make them perfect, putting as much detail into your listing as possible and finding the right tags so people can find you by doing a search. Not to mention the time and creativity making your product. If you haven't already done so, now is the time to give your shop the one thing that will make you stand out, a banner and avatar. Imagine if you will, you went to a mall, and every storefront had the same look, not very interesting. How would you define the difference between them? Large companies know that marketing is the key to success in a world where you can purchase just about anything whether it be from a brick and morter store, or a website.

If you have a photo editing software program, you can easily make your own banner and avatar fairly easily. For Etsy the banner size is 760 x 100 pixels and the avatar is 75 x 75 pixels. Don't have the time? Not computer saavy? Not to worry, there are tons of shops where you can get a great banner with matching avatars! A few tips on what to look for when researching graphic designers for the perfect look. There are plenty of shops that offer premade banner sets, one thing I would suggest is to check the listing or ask the seller if the item will be relisted and resold to anyone else. Remember, the key is to make your shop unique, why pay for something that any other seller could have? If you know exactly what kind of look you are going for, have a custom set made.

Your banner is your first introduction to your customers, the last thing you want is for someone to happen upon your shop and find a banner that is blurry, almost illegible because of font choice or size and unappealing. Once you have your awesome new banner and avatar, it's a good idea to keep them consistant. Constantly changing the look of your shop is fun, but once you start promoting in the forums and on different sites such as Myspace, Twitter and Facebook, you want your customers to immediately recognize you. You can easily have matching sale, vacation and holiday banners and avatars made up as well as listing graphics that can be used for custom orders, reserved listings and feedback.

Stay tuned for more great marketing tips on image editing, business cards and product tags, the benefits of joining Twitter and whatever else pops into my crazy little head!