Fancy making a living from your digital marketing skills? Dropshipping is a great way for marketers to run an e-commerce business. It takes the burden of order fulfilment and inventory storage away from you, allowing you to focus on what you do best: getting your brand heard. This dropshipping guide for marketers will help you get up and running with your own online store using a dropshipping business model in no time.

Decide on your products & profit margins - Start with the products, build your brand up from there

Dropshipping opens you up to a world of opportunity in terms of product offering, but it’s more important than ever to ensure that you can sustain healthy profit margins, whilst simultaneously building a credible brand. Retailing cheap products that are widely available and are already flooding the market — not such a good idea. You want to find unique products that lend themselves to clever marketing and PR campaigns.

1. Your target audience is always a good place to start. Be specific and consider the finer details, such as level of education, purchasing habits, content interests, values, and device usage in order to fully ‘get under their skin’. You need to adopt their mindset and think about products or services that would improve their daily lives — whether that’s in a literal or figurative sense

2. Back up this information with niche research from Quora, Google Trends and keyword research tools. From this data, you can learn what your target audience is searching for online, and identify any pain points you could solve with your products. Beware of niches that seem ‘gimmicky’ or have low search volumes

3. Sourcing items to dropship can seem like a daunting task, but it’s best to start big and then start negotiating with individual suppliers as you get deeper into dropshipping territory. AliExpress is a popular product/supplier platform — get familiar with how to work the system with this AliExpress dropshipping guide. Don’t always go for the ‘top’ search results for your chosen products — delve deeper, and keep an eye on minimum order quantities

In terms of profits, you need to make sure that your pricing structure covers your overheads and marketing budget (a profit margin of between 40 to 70% is advisable). Remember that you there are plenty of other ways to offer value other than price — including your brand, content, social media, and customer service. Use your marketing arsenal to your advantage.

Key points and pitfalls to avoid with dropshipping

Though dropshipping may seem like the perfect business model for a savvy marketer, it isn’t without its pitfalls. Here are some of the key points and pitfalls to bear in mind when getting set up with your first dropshipping store.

Visibility and communication are must-haves

Dropshipping works on the basis of an integrated relationship between merchant and supplier. When an order has been submitted by a customer, you must know whether the dropshipping product supplier has received it, whether it is in stock, and when it will ship.

In some unfortunate circumstances, retailers can be left in the dark about the status of orders, and therefore are unable to give their customers accurate information. This can make it difficult to provide a great customer experience, and it may make your first precious few customers wary of using you again.

The best way to ensure that you have no communication problems is to be upfront with your customers regarding shipping costs and schedules, so they aren’t disappointed if a product takes longer than anticipated to arrive. You should also liaise with your suppliers and establish a solid relationship with them, so the lines of communication are open and you have a point of contact if there are any unforeseen delays.

The way to win at the dropshipping game is to use data systems in order to track and manage orders, eliminating any potential human error from the picture. You’ll want a fully joined-up information and shipping system that allows for label customisation and parcel tracking.

Wholesale price issues

For the dropshipping mode to work, you need to make sure that you fully understand your wholesaler’s pricing structure. This includes the price of the product, minimum order quantities, and shipping and labelling costs.

Some dropshipping companies attract sellers with low wholesale prices for goods, but then make their money back with unreasonably high shipping charges. Doing your research and maintaining transparent communication with your supplier will prevent this from happening to you.

Suppliers running out of stock

Your suppliers may sometimes run out of stock. This happens frequently with popular, low-ticket items, and it is often out of the seller’s control.

While the dropshipping supplier should keep you updated, it is ultimately up to you to ensure that your customers can receive their products (or a suitable substitute) because answering to the customer is your responsibility. Regularly check your supplier’s stock levels to see whether they have ever bottomed-out before, and always use an online store solution that integrates with your dropshipping carrier for automatic stock updates.

Don’t become a dropshipping dodo

As a marketer, this part should be the most exciting: getting your brand out there, and differentiating your dropshipping venture from all the other generic stores that are clogging the digital airwaves. With so many entrepreneurs jumping on the dropshipping bandwagon, it’s a competitive landscape out there right now. You want your store to NOT look like a ‘just another dropshipping store’ — you need to give your venture credibility and longevity.

Showcasing your brand’s personality (the art of brand storytelling) is a fantastic way to make a bold statement, and give your dropshipping store a human face. It’s probably the key differentiator between generic stores that don’t stand a chance, and household e-commerce ventures that go the distance.

The simplest way to engage in storytelling is by investing time and effort into your online content : from blogging to social media — really get out there and be brave with what you share. Aligning your store with values and a specific lifestyle is a quick way to create a community around your products.

Take a leaf out of Natural Force’s book, and consider revealing to your target audience what exactly got you started in the first place, and what elements of the market you are hoping to ‘speak’ to. Their story makes it clear that this brand supplies only the highest quality natural supplements, and that the brand was fuelled by both passion and frustration. Whatever your story is, don’t be afraid to tell it.

  

By Patrick Foster, e-commerce consultant

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus