The Story Behind the Video

December 15, 2016 eBayNerd97 Uncategorized

The Story Behind the Video and What it Took to Make it Happen

Back in June Griff and Shafali were talking about something called Promoted Listings on eBay’s weekly Facebook Live show (every Wednesday at 12:30pm PST). I missed the live show but watched it the next day. I LOVE when eBay takes a few minutes and shows us something cool that sellers probably wouldn’t take the time to seek out on our own. This show definitely highlighted one of those things that had I not watched how easy it was I wouldn’t know about this eBay advertising service or understood what it was. See for yourself….Here’s the link to that broadcast eBay for Business LIVE with Griff and Shefali on Promoted Listings

What I loved most about this service was I didn’t have to pay to advertise my listing unless the promoted items sold because of a promotion. If someone is browsing my store and buys an item that I happen to be promoting, I don’t have to pay the ad fee….that’s just awesome! Having spent 30+ years working in Finance and Operations I’ve never been a fan of advertising and marketing campaigns and hated having to budget for these expenses. The fact that eBay wasn’t charging me up front to run these campaigns was music to my ears!

The next thing I fell in love with was how quick and easy it was to create a campaign. It literally took two minutes and before I knew it I had 25 campaigns and over 750 of my store listings promoted! Within two weeks my efforts were rewarded with 12 items sold, generating me $360 in sales at a cost of $26 in ad fees. Those are the kind of advertising dollars I like to spend…the ones you pay after you have a sale. I was so impressed that I wrote a blog about it with detailed instructions on how to create your first campaign. Check it out here and get your first promoted listings campaign going.

That blog post was read by eBay’s Audrey Tracey. Audrey helps run the eBay for Business social media sites. We exchanged emails, had a few conference calls with Tara Daly, eBay’s Marketing Manager and then met face-to-face at eBay Open in Vegas last July. I was super excited about the success I was having with promoted listings and couldn’t wait to share my success with them. We chatted a bit more and Audrey and Tara told me they had decided they wanted to use me in some sort of marketing campaign for promoted listings and asked me if I would be comfortable doing a video. Ummm, yeah, I guess so.

I let the idea of being on camera settle in and kinda got used to it. I was excited at the idea of eBay wanting to use ME in a marketing video. They were going to come to my home and video me in my surroundings….how fun! I’m not going to lie, one of the first

My office at Club Red

thoughts that crossed my mind was “Seriously? I had an awesome and amazing office for 13 years and eBay wants to come film me six months after I move?” And after I moved into an unfinished house with an office that wasn’t even set up, an inventory room that was a disaster not to mention the 12.25 neglected acres. I had a lot of work to do and I knew I needed to get busy! Audrey told me they didn’t have the budget details worked out yet (yea, I get that) and weren’t sure when they would come, but she wanted to get it done before November so they could use it before the end of the year. I now had the motivation I needed to get busy!

This is what I had to work with going into this project….