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Marketing
Marketing can be compared to an intricately woven spider web. It involves every
aspect of your business and it must all come together to enhance your online
presence, broaden your customer base to improve your profit margin. Many
aspects and forms of marketing is detailed in the paragraphs below, so here we
will focus on other important aspects of marketing not mentioned.
Demographics and Psychographics
Google Analytics is the place to start to gather information and your customer
demographics, as well as psychographics. These statistics are used to focus your
marketing; otherwise, your marketing will be random, hit-and-run, and not
effective at all.
Demographics statistics give you information on the age groups, family
background, level of education, and income as well as the location of your
customers. Psychographics give you answers as to the motivation of your
customers – why are they specifically interested in the products that you offer?
All these statistics allow you to build what is called a customer persona of what
makes your potential customers tick. Google Analytics offer a huge range of
statistics analysis and you can add more to give you the tightest possible focus
for your marketing efforts.Customer Reviews and Ratings
Adding a feedback page to your website and your online store is the best way to
build trust. Humans are not very trusting, and when shopping online, they often
have reason for this skepticism. Use this scepticism as a marketing tool by
having a section for testimonials and ratings by customers and, most
importantly, have a section where customers can leave reviews on your products
and services.
Potential customers can read the reviews plus your feedback on the reviews and
how you resolved any problems. This customer interaction is the fastest way to
build trust and shows customers you are prepared to be completely transparent.
Marketing Trends
Look into marketing strategies that are trendy and very popular for getting your
marketing message across to the widest customer base for your niche.
All the major social networks allow entrepreneurs to interact with their
customers via private messaging. You can converse directly with potential
customers on all the social media platforms that you subscribe to. Regularly
check the private message on your social media pages and answer questions in
the shortest possible timeframe. This provides a channel for both marketing and
customer service.
Live chat is another marketing trent to investigate. Shopify assists users through
several live chat bot options available in their extensions library. This option
may not be best for a startup business that does not have the manpower available
for live chat, it is an option to keep in mind for when your business has grown to
accommodate this.
Chat bots is a marketing strategy that does not need manpower. The bots can
answer basic questions for customers without you being there.
Display Ads
A low-cost marketing option that is very popular is display ads. Display
advertising has grown and improved tremendously over the past decade. This
type of advertisements are now focussed on your target audience with much
better results than in the past.
Display advertising works in two ways. You go to the top websites that represent
your niche and see if you can buy ad space on that website. This brings you advertising straight to the people who are interested in your niche products. The
second option is to work through an established ad network that will handle your display ads and placement.
The goal of display ads is to bring your brand to the attention of potential
customers that fall in your niche instead of having your display ads reach a large
portion of people who are not interested in your niche products.
Be Where Your Niche Gathers Online
Search to see where the people gather on the internet that would be your niche
customers. Wherever there is a niche, there will be blogs and groups on social
media. Join these groups and become part of your niche. See what they discuss
about your niche products and what their needs and wants are.
This is subtle marketing as you do not bombard people with your business and
ads. You are an expert about your niche and can answer questions, give pointers,
and advice. Most bloggers and social media groups will be happy to use input
from you and include posts you make and give credit to your business.
Retarget
Statistics show that up to 98% of people do not buy when they visit a website for
the first time as people love to window-shop before making any decisions.
Instead of being despondent about the low conversion rate for first time visitors,
see it as an opportunity for another marketing strategy. Statistics show that when
you retarget customers with display ads, the potential conversion rate goes up to
70%.
Currently retarget marketing is extremely underutilized for various reasons.
Some businesses feel they don’t have the time to try and retarget potential
customers. Many, especially entrepreneurs starting out in the dropshipping
business model, simply are not aware of this marketing strategy. This means
now is the perfect time for you to start using retarget marketing as it puts you
ahead of your competition.
Cross Sell and Upsell
Cross-selling and upselling is one of the top marketing strategies to engage
impulse buyers as this type of buyer is the easiest to convince to make more than
just the one purchase they originally planned on.As a dropshipping business, your store and website is silent. Your potential
customers are not confronted with eager sales people giving helpful advice to
upsell your products or to cross sell by suggesting other products that go well
with their choice. You can do cross-selling by bundling groups of products
together that compliment each other.
It does not matter whether you have an online store on a retail platform or
whether you sell directly through your own website, there are great plugins
available for cross-selling and upselling. There is a variety of plugins available
for Shopify, WooCommerce, and WordPress, as well as independent plugins
available for this marketing technique.
Let these plugins be the voice of your business with subtle pop ups based on the
items visitors are browsing with pop ups to alert them to more products that they
might be interested in.
Try out several of the upsell and cross-sell plug ins available to find which of
these fit your marketing needs the best.
Costly Marketing Strategies
With all the options for low-cost and cost-effective marketing available, it is not
an absolute necessity to use costly marketing strategies. If you are able
financially to use high cost marketing, then there are two very popular strategies
you can look at for your business.
Promotions and giveaways have always been popular with all types of
businesses and you can draw a lot of attention to your dropshipping business
with these tactics. It is worth it to think about this and see if you can work this
into your budget.
Social media has brought about what is called influencer marketing. With the
global popularity of social media, these influencers can wield a lot of power, and
if any of them promote your products, it could drive sales tremendously. Should
you be interested in this type of marketing, it is worth spending time researching
which influencers would benefit your niche on the different social media
platforms.
Branding
Branding is an important part of a drop-shipping business often neglected. Some
feel that having their drop-shipping store on Shopify or listing on the online retail
platforms is enough and give them adequate online presence.Branding makes your store stand out from countless others. When you dropship
on the retail platforms, you become invisible without branding. Yes, building
your own unique brand takes effort and time, you have the choice to be faceless
in the crowd, or stand out, to be remembered. Your branding on the retail
platforms and branding on your own website goes hand in hand.
Creating your own brand builds trust; customers see you as trustworthy because
they can identify your business with your unique brand. This works as a great
marketing strategy as well.
Branding for the drop-shipping model works different from branding other retail
businesses as you do not physically stock the products and your suppliers handle
storage and delivery.
Branding flows through your website, your online store on the retail platforms
and social media. Your goal with branding it to make sure people will recognize
your logo and associate it with your business in as many different places on the
internet as possible. Branding gives your drop-shipping a distinct and personal
identity.
It is important to realize that branding must grow with your drop-shipping
business from the start. To try and do branding when you have more time, or you
feel financially more secure does not work very well. Trying to retroactive with
your branding does not work very well. You have lost too much ground as all the
customers who bought from you in the past has nothing specific to remember
you by and will have moved on.
Social Media Advertising
Social media was born roughly four decades ago as newsgroups where people
could communicate, and we all know the huge influence social media has on just
about every part of people’s lives. Taking your branding to social media gives
you access to a huge audience to be exploited with your branding and
advertising. Make your presence known on every available social media
platform with ad campaigns and your logo on everything.
Using social media as a marketing tool for branding benefits you in another way
as well. Every time you post on your Instagram account or your Facebook
account brings you organic traffic at a much lower cost than the more traditional
forms of marketing.
Here is a short list of the benefits of using social media to improve your brand:
● Organic traffic at very low cost.
●Very little competition as the majority of businesses neglect social
media marketing.
●Pictures really do speak much louder than the written word. Post
videos and images that relate to your business and your niche products
as this gives people a much better insight into what you are selling.
● Easy to set up accounts on social media and easy to use.
●None or very low advertising costs. Most of the social media
platforms do offer paid for advertising, but this is not a necessity. You
are able to successfully advertise on social media and reach a large
audience. Should you at a later stage decide to boost your branding even
more, you can opt for paid for ad campaigns.
White Labeling
Everyone knows how incredibly competitive the world’s marketplaces have
become. White labeling is such an effective branding strategy that Amazon has
pushed into white labeling and has started offering their own white-branded
products to increase profits.
It is a simple concept that works very well for a drop-shipping business. You
negotiate with your drop-shipping supplier to white label the products that you
order from him with your own white label and logo instead of his own company
labels. By switching labeling, the supplier re-brands the product for you and it
becomes “your” product. Many drop-shipping suppliers are happy to do this as
they still sell their products, just with a different label. The important thing for
the suppliers is that no changes are made to their products, only the label
changes.
Extra Marketing Strategy with White Labeling
You can negotiate with your suppliers to enable an extra marketing strategy
when they rebrand your orders to include a packing slip with your contact
information, your logo, and your company policies.
Packaging and Delivery Marketing
Another option that benefit your branding is to have a brochure or mini-
catalogue included to introduce customers to more products that you offer.
Blogging
Blogging is big business today and a vital part of your online presence that
benefits all aspects of your drop-shipping business. To fully realize the importance of having your own blog