Lessons From eBay On Location Atlanta

eBay's first 'On Location' event was held in Atlanta this past weekend. A Networking Reception was held Fri evening and the training portion took place on Saturday.

The first session, 'Strategies to Grow Your Business' was presented by Sarah Brubacher, eBay's Director of Top Seller Development. The key growth strategies listed were:

• leverage the new fee option
• maximize search visibility and sales
• delight your customers
• optimize effectiveness with tools & resources

Leveraging the new fee option included information on eBay stores and how to determine the right subscription level. Maximizing search visibility included information on choosing the right listing format, optimizing item prices, earning/maintaining Top Seller status, writing great listing titles and offering free shipping. Various ways to use 'Best Offer' was an interesting part of the discussion.

The next talk was called 'The Art of (Customer) Attraction.' Mike Michalowicz, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, gave a lively and informative talk about finding and keeping repeat customers. He discussed loyalty programs, email marketing and how to create great buyer experiences.

Next was the 'Top-Rated Seller Secrets' portion of the day. This was a panel discussion moderated by Griff. Panelists Cindy Shebley, Jordan Insley and Lynn Dralle were quite candid in answering a wide range of questions that had been submitted by the audience.

After lunch Sarah Brubacher returned to the stage to present 'The Power of Productivity' - talking about how to reduce costs and grow sales volume. This is what was covered:

Next up was a presentation by Rieva Lesonsky, former editorial director for Entrepreneur magazine. Unfortunately I did not attend this session as I was in a break-out session with Griff called 'Know Your Numbers.'

Griff's talk was all about the numbers that are important in running a business on eBay. To quote him "you can't manage what you do not measure." He went over Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), Costs, Net Profit, Average Selling Price (ASP), Conversion or Sell Through Rate (STR) and Sales Velocity and Price Balancing Act. An interesting part of the discussion was about 'Who Sets the Price' and how frequently you might want to check up on your competition.

The final presentation was 'I Just Tweetered on FaceSpace' by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. He defined social media and reminded us that eBay pioneered social networking. After describing the pillars of a social media system as listening, optimizing your assets, using content for lead generation and managing it all, he showed examples from various social sites as well as a variety of useful tools. This talk ended with a list of action steps: Set up Google Alerts, Create a Content Hub, Grab 2-3 Profiles and Create 1 Outpost.

There were additional Break-Out sessions during the day. They included 'eBay Seller Tool Demos,' 'New to eBay Stores' and 'Shipping Q&A.' These sessions had limited seating and tickets to attend were distributed in the early morning on a first-come, first-served basis.

Sponsors of this event included the USPS, endicia, PitneyBowes, eBay Giving Works, ProStores, eBay AdCommerce and eBay Green Team. All had space in the exhibition part of the venue.