Should you be using Google AdWords for items on Ebay?

Should you be using Google AdWords for items on Ebay?

Short Answer: Depends on what you are selling. 

Long Answer:

I have been selling Shiroi Koibito Japanese Chocolate in USA and have been using EBay as primary location for the sale.  I have also being using Google AdWords to attract some more people to purchase the chocolate. But does it worth it?

I have been selling various items on EBay, and what I have noticed is that there is no need to put any advertisement if you are selling well-know items.   For example, I recently posted a DVD for Microsoft Office with a reasonable price.  Within a day, I had a first bid.  I had more than 10 bid at the end of 7 day auction without any other advertisement such as Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.  

According to 2011 Q3 Result, EBay has 98.3 million users worldwide.  Although I was not able to find information on how many users are in USA, that is a significant number of users.  EBay pays for their advertisement so that our items are reachable to as many users/non-registered users as possible.  We are paying EBay for their large audience and their marketing they pay for our items to sell.  Great. Seems that it is a Win-win situation. 

So why do I want to pay someone else such as Google in addition to paying EBay?  The answer depends on what you are selling.  

Ninety eight million users worldwide is a significant numbers, but when it comes to targeting a specific audience; Google and Facebook has far more outer reach.  In my situation, I am selling Shiroi Koibito Japanese Chocolate, I am targeting audience who has either been to Japan or has eaten the chocolate and know that it is a really tasty chocolate worth paying $29 for 12 package.  People who have not tried the chocolate will not understand why to pay such amount for chocolate.   Well, think about Godiva Chocolate.  Godiva is very well-known for their quality chocolate, and my goodness their chocolate is good.   People pay $30 - $100 or even more for their chocolate, and if you have eaten their chocolate you know what I mean.   Now imagine you are trying to sell Godiva chocolate to the audience who has never heard of Godiva.  Do you think they will pay $100 for chocolate?  Chances are pretty small, I guess. 

I have been experimenting mixture of advertisement, and what I realized is following: for selling items that require very specific audience, eBay will not be a good place to sell such items.   Google AdWords is a very powerful tools to target specific audience by selecting keywords etc (You can read my other posts for my experience with Google AdWords).   If you are selling an item on eBay that require such specific audience, I suggest that you could combine Google AdWords to promote your items.