Cross-Border Trade (CBT) Handbook

Chapter 3:
Optimizing CBT selling potential

There are two main ways to increase visibility for your CBT listings and potentially grow your business on eBay. To drive growth and sales, you can use eBay’s seller marketing tools, and to increase visibility on your international listings, you can use Promoted Listings to help your listings stand out. Which tool you use depends on which type of seller account you have, whether you have a shop or store subscription, and whether you create your CBT listings actively or passively. Let’s take a closer look at the tools you can choose from.

1. eBay Seller Marketing Tools

eBay’s seller marketing tools are all available in Seller Hub. You may already be using them with your local listings. You can also use them with your international listings. Here’s a quick overview of the seller marketing tools offered in Seller Hub:

Offer to buyers

Order Discount

Multi-buy

Coded coupons

Sale Event + Markdown

Freely available to sellers via Active Listings

Available from the Marketing tab in Seller Hub and requires a shop/store subscription

Use Offer to Buyers to help turn watchers into buyers by privately offering them a reduced price on your items.

Use Order Discount to offer a price reduction at checkout when buyers purchase complementary items from you.

Use Multi-buy to increase sales, and potentially reduce your costs, by offering a discount to buyers when they purchase more than one of your items.

Use Coded coupons to create and share your own discount codes with both your own buyers and potential customers.

Use Sale Event + Markdown to showcase your sales and display your discounts to potential customers.

2. Promoted Listings Campaigns

You can use eBay’s Promoted Listings (PL) marketing tool to set up campaigns designed to help your international listings stand out and generate more sales, just as you may already be doing with your domestic listings. Here’s an overview of the types of Promoted Listings campaigns you can set up. Be sure to visit the pages linked below to learn more about each type.

Promoted Listings Standard

Promoted Listings Standard displays your listings in prominent positions across the eBay network, which helps increase visibility and your chances of making a sale.

Promoted Listings AdvancedBeta

Promoted Listings AdvancedBeta gives you high visibility and control and can help you drive traffic to your listings by placing them in the top slots in search results.

Promoted Listings Express

Visit this page to learn about Promoted Listings Express, a new way to increase visibility for your auction-style listings.

General information about Promoted Listings

Visit this page to learn about the many ways you can promote your listings on eBay.

Which seller marketing tools you can use depends on which of the four methods you use to create your international listings. Let’s look at each one.

International listings created directly on international eBay sites:
You can activate the promotional tools you’d like to use directly on the international eBay sites where you create your listings. The tools work just as they do on your domestic eBay site. From Seller Hub, click the Marketing tab to access the marketing tools available, just as you usually do on your domestic eBay site. Please note, however, that the Marketing tab isn’t available for Ireland .ie, Malaysia .com.my, the Philippines .ph, Poland .pl, or Singapore .com.sg. If you sell internationally on ebay.co.uk, the Marketing tab is available here.

Domestic listings with international shipping enabled:
Marketing tools don’t work with basic CBT (except Offer to Buyer). This means, if you add international shipping to your domestic listing and use a marketing tool, for example Multi-buy, the discount will only appear on your domestic eBay site. For example, if you create a promotion on .de, it will only be visible on .de even though you enable shipping to the UK or other markets.
However, if you use Offer to Buyer, you can reach out to all watchers, including the ones that saw the listing on international sites. For example, if you add international shipping to a listing on ebay.co.uk, and someone starts watching that item, they’ll receive your offer, even though the listing was created on ebay.de.

Listings translated with Webinterpret
Marketing tools aren’t currently supported for listings translated with Webinterpret. Marketing tools activated on local listings aren’t copied to the translated listings and don’t appear on international sites.

Listings with eBay’s Global Shipping Program (GSP)

Marketing tools aren’t currently supported for items you ship using GSP.

How you use Promoted Listings depends on how you create your international listings. Let’s look at the different options.

International listings created directly on international eBay sites:

Promoted Listings works the same way on international eBay sites as it does on your domestic eBay site. Your Seller Hub Advertising dashboard displays just your local listings. So, if you’re connected to ebay.de, your Advertising dashboard will only show your German listings.

Domestic listings with international shipping enabled:

Promoted Listings Standard can be used with listings that have enabled international shipping. For example, if a listing on .de includes shipping to the UK and it’s being promoted on .de, that listing can also be promoted on .co.uk.
Promoted Listings AdvancedBeta can be used with listings that are managed actively. Promoted Listings AdvancedBeta cannot be used with domestic listings that have enabled international shipping.

Global accessibility of Promoted listings

Promoted Listings Standard is available in 9 markets: Asia-Pacific, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US and the UK.
However, if you’re based outside of these markets, you can still go directly to those eBay sites and use Promoted Listings there. For example, a seller in Poland can go to ebay.de and use Promoted Listings with their international listings in Germany.

We’re currently rolling out Promoted Listings AdvancedBeta, so it’s not yet available in every market.

Promoted Listing & Webinterpret

Sellers who use Webinterpret to translate their listings can manage their Promoted Listings campaigns with the Webinterpret dashboard. This service is provided to sellers at no additional cost as part of the European Sales Booster (ESB) program for international listings. Sellers can adjust ad rates, view their reports and more in one centralized location.

To help sellers, large and small, beginners and pros, better understand how they can market their online businesses and grow the activity on eBay, eBay created eBay Academy, a free online course that shows you everything you need to know to harness the power of online marketing, quickly and easily.

Visit the eBay Academy site to learn more and sign up