Without successful marketing, you’ll struggle to succeed at any dropshipping based business model. To fend off competitors, you’ll need a brand people can trust. And to build a good brand, you will need to excel at dropshipping marketing.
This post is here to help you get your arms around everything you’ll need to do in order to make it work. These tips are approved by marketing pros and proven by many successful dropshippers who’ve already figured it out.
Dropshipping Marketing: What It Is and Why Bother?
Dropshipping is a type of eCommerce business that carries no inventory, i.e. the seller doesn’t physically possess any of the products they are selling.
In this model, the suppliers hold all inventory. The dropshipper simply acts as an intermediary between the customer and the supplier.
When a customer buys something from a dropshipper, the order processing platform forwards the order and shipping details to the supplier.
This type of business has become a rather hot topic in recent years. It is one of the easiest ways to start a business with minimal financial investment.
Easy right? Not so fast.
You can’t just start any business in any niche. You need to find a niche you can do well in, and then find a way to stand out among the competition.
The first step is to decide what type of marketplace platform will provide the best structure for dropshipping in your niche.
In an ocean of available products, you have to select products better than an average consumer. Once you’ve settled on the products, you can communicate what you found and recommend to them.
So it’s true that you won’t have to rent a warehouse or deal with complicated logistics. But you will still have to research products and build a brand to succeed.
Therefore, every dropshipping business owner should take marketing seriously if they want to survive and thrive.
Remember, you won’t be manufacturing nor will you be delivering the products. Your entire business will depend on branding, trust, and customer service.
The insurance industry follows a very similar business model, and we can learn a lot from them. Agents never take possession of the policies they sell. They normally do so from an home or other remote office.
In the digital world, insurance marketing is a predecessor of dropship marketing.
Dropshipping Marketing Tips and Tricks
Now, let’s get to the point: tips and tricks for you to execute on a profitable dropshipping marketing strategy.
Remember: Knowledge Is Power
Don’t go into dropshipping unless you are willing to do some extensive research. You will have to regularly monitor many things such as:
- The performance of your website and marketing
- Your suppliers
- Finances
- Current trends in your niche
- Marketing trends
You should plan to make time for consistently learning the latest about trends in dropshipping. But you should also keep in mind that marketing channels such as search engine optimization (SEO) are also requirements.
But no worries — you don’t have to be a scientist to be successful in dropshipping marketing. You can find all of the information you’ll need online, often at no cost.
There are plenty of courses, tutorials, and testimonials online, all of which you can use to learn about the market and shape your strategy accordingly.
Know Your Niche Inside Out
If you want to do well in marketing, no matter what niche you pick, you have to know exactly what you are selling and to whom. You have to be able to recognize the pain points, needs, values, and aspirations your customers have.
Therefore, pick a niche that is personally close to you. You don’t have to be passionate about it (although it is highly recommended), but you should at least be familiar with it.
If that is not the case, and you want to enter a niche only because you think it might pay off, there’s nothing wrong with that either. Just make sure you do extensive niche research before you start selling.
Investigate Your Competition
Dropshipping is becoming a common career choice because it has proven to be a good business model. In turn, you’ll have to face a lot of competition.
What is the best way to beat the competitors? First, find out what they are already doing well. Then, research what their biggest failing points or disadvantages are in the niche.
You can figure out most of this via publicly available information, such as their website, social media accounts, and customer reviews.
You can even subscribe to their newsletter or buy some of their products. Both of these options will provide you opportunities to check out their customer support and get a notion of the overall user experience.
Provide Helpful Customer Service for Dropshipping Marketing Benefits
When it comes to customer support, don’t leave any room for error. It is a great venue to show your clients how just how much you care.
To do so, you’ll need to put forth a lot of effort and dedication. It will pay off in long-term customer loyalty.
Software can help you manage this well. For example, AI technology can provide your website with a chatbot.
Or, those who use Gmail on their desktop can incorporate all of their messenger apps into one program, such as Mailbird. That way, any incoming message, whether it is from email or social media, will be easy to locate and respond to quickly.
Other than that, try to respond to all reviews (both positive and negative), be responsive to email queries, and provide enough educational material to keep your customers happy.
Cherish A Good Supplier When You Find One
A dropshipping business largely depends on suppliers. However, most dropshippers find it hard to identify the manufacturers with the best prices, top quality, and the ability to communicate any issues and changes in a timely fashion.
Therefore, try to perform regular supplier audits. Figure out whether or not customers are getting what you promise them.
Then, ask yourself if you are satisfied with your supplier’s conduct. If you keep having problems with any supplier and cannot manage to get them fixed, you’ll need to move on to a more dependable option moving forward.
Ensure Your Website is Flawless
Most dropshipping businesses will be fully online. If this is you, you won’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront where you can meet clients and charm them in person.
Your only option is to optimize your ecommerce website. Be sure that your online store is as appealing and easy to use as possible.
For example, be sure to implement the latest encryption standards on your ecommerce website. This will ensure visitors that their data is safe. You can acquire an SSL certificate from a number of places, so be sure you’ve got one in place from the start.
Be sure to have a modern design that appeals to your target audience, but also work to balance the design with user experience and search engine optimization best practices.
Take Advantage of Automation Software
Most dropshipping website owners use some kind of software to conduct their business. These tools can literally save the day.
For example, there are automation platforms that can send email messages on your behalf based on triggers, saving you the time and effort it would take to do so manually.
These platforms can also track social media engagement, website traffic, perform inventory management, and more.
And most of them will provide interesting data / analytics about customer behavior, which will be useful for you for you to develop even better marketing strategies in the future.
Customize Everything You Can
With so much competition in nearly all niches, you’ll need to stand out as much as possible. Be sure you have a strong brand – dropshipping businesses can turn nearly anything into an opportunity for building brand awareness.
But even more importantly, you can’t just copy and paste everything from the manufacturer just like the competitors do. Not if you want to stand out.
Shoot your own custom product images. White label some items if they are available as such. Choose unique product names, and write your own product descriptions for your ecommerce store.
Heck, you could even create special shipping bags. Feel free to be creative at every step of the way, and always be thinking of how you can be a unique, engageable brand for your target audience.
Bonus Dropshipping Marketing Tips
If you get all of the above right out of the gates, you’ll be ahead of the average person who delves into dropshipping.
Sooner or later, you’ll want to take it another step further. So here are some additional actions you can take to build a bigger lead against your competitors:
Test Products Before Selling Them
Of course, you likely can’t test every single product you’ll ever sell. But if there is one particular product you need to see, feel, or use firsthand, go ahead and order one for yourself. If it’s as good as advertised, you can decide to proceed from there.
Start a Blog
Social media posting and interaction can drive traffic to your website if managed the right way. But you’ll benefit even greater by blogging. This traffic can be more sustainable and much more likely to convert into paying customers.
Embrace Video Marketing
Videos are great marketing tools. You can use videos to do product tours, or explain how to set up / use the product after purchase.
You can also insert videos into blog posts, which will boost the quality and engagement of your content. Plus, you’ll get an added benefit of improved SEO, because Google loves video content these days.
Perform A/B Testing
As with any conversion-focused business or marketing campaign, you should be open to learning how to improve your results via trial and error.
A/B testing is one of the most proven techniques for determining what does and doesn’t work. Since marketing is about knowledge as it is about practice and experience, take every opportunity you can get to learn better methods.
Capitalize on Word-of-Mouth
Existing customers are your best marketing tools for convincing new prospects to buy.
Because of this, you should absolutely use word-of-mouth to your advantage. Be sure your website allows ratings, reviews, and comments on the various products. This will not only help you sell, but it will boost customer loyalty in the long run.
Don’t Forget Email
Although many marketers may think otherwise, email marketing is far from dead.
Sure, it may seem old-fashioned in light of the newer channels we have at our disposal. But it still works, especially for automated messages about orders, shipping, and customer service.
Email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to promote yourself, so be sure you include it in your strategies.
Regularly Calibrate Your Pricing
Your business stands to suffer if you overprice or underprice your products, in one way or another. Take time to evaluate where you stand in comparison to the competition, and do it on a regular basis.
Feature Image Credit: Pixabay Free for Commercial Use License
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Nina Petrov
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