The Definitive Guide to Dropshipping Ads

The inception of dropshipping has allowed many potential entrepreneurs to open business world-wide. If you have basic design skills, can write appealing product descriptions, and can run the business as per the industry trends, you’d make a good earning in the dropshipping world.

The only issue that arises is, how will you spread the word about your online dropshipping store? Marketing or advertising is where many dropshippers fall short of money. They don’t know the power of advertising which causes them to lose a huge chunk of revenue.

But the good news is, you don’t have to be an advertising guru to finesse your dropshipping ads. With the guide below, you would learn to run dropshipping ads in no time.

Why are dropshipping ads important?

Many people are opting for a dropshipping business because it is one of the easiest ways to earn passive income without dealing with the main hassles of an e-commerce store: inventory and shipment.

Dropshipping works when the customers place orders on your website and you send the information to the suppliers so that they could send the parcel directly to the customers while you get your profit.

However, the only aspect that you need to pay attention to is the advertisement. You need dropshipping ads to attract a cold audience. You must know how to use your dropshipping ads and convert the cold audience into sustainable yet ever-green revenue.

Dropshipping ads beginner guide 2021- How to begin dropshipping advertisement?

How successful your dropshipping ads will go depends on the accessibility of the resources. Fortunately, you can run incredible ads even if you have a little money in your pocket. Your writing skills are the only talent that this campaign requires.

Can you write appealing product descriptions for the ads? Can you edit short clips of the products for the ads? Can you pitch to the cold audience by writing a great sales note? If yes, advertising your dropshipping store might be as easy as eating a cake.

Steps for preparing dropshipping ads in 2021

As much as you want your dropshipping business to thrive by the ads, you can’t run the ads without devising a proper plan/strategy. Every entrepreneur needs to bear certain aspects in mind when preparing a dropshipping advertising strategy, such as:

Keywords in the dropshipping ads

Adding keywords is not necessarily associated with adding technical jargon related to your product. Keywords are simple phrases, words, and even sentences that people type on the search bar when looking for a particular product.

Let’s suppose you sell mobile phone covers. Potential customers needing covers would type the word, mobile covers, on the Google search bar. Even though, there would always be variations with what the potential customers’ type, it is your job, as a dropshipper, to add to know the relevant keywords. These phrases and keywords allow you to target the right audience and increase ROI on your dropshipping advertising campaigns.

Dropshipping advertising goals

Are you preparing dropshipping ads to improve website traffic, brand awareness, or sales? The purpose of the advertising strategy allows you to target the right audience. The goal of any dropshipper is to target the people who actually buy rather than individuals who only click on the ads.

If your target is to increase sales, running the dropshipping ads on various platforms will definitely work out for you.

Target audience

All the advertising platforms, be it Instagram, Fiverr or Facebook, need to know about the people you plan to target for sales. For example, if you have a dropshipping store selling shoes, targeting ads towards people looking for shirts will be senseless. The better you can identify your potential customers, the more ROI your dropshipping ads will return.

Dropshipping advertising platforms- Where to advertise your dropshipping store?

One good thing about the advertisement industry is that dropshippers have the opportunity to select any platform for advertising: from Facebook and Twitter to big video search engines like YouTube.

However, the advertising options don’t just end on social media platforms. Before moving on to the big social media networks, we have a general advertising method, PPC or pay-per-click.

Dropshipping PPC (Pay-per-click) ads

The foundation of online advertising has laid on pay-per-click or PPC. This model for dropshipping ads is quite simple. The businesses pay a small fee to the browser each time a person opens up the dropshipping ads. PPC is so popular among businesses that the biggest search engine, Google, has its own PPC advertising model.

Among the Google PPC ads, the sponsored search result is the most common type. Note that when you search for something on Google, the first three results are always based on ads.

What is the advantage of the PPC advertising model?

One advantage of running PPC ads through Google is that you don’t need compelling product videos or pictures. Just a little money and stellar copywriting skills.

Now, the main reason why PPC works across the globe is because this model involves the use of keywords. Whenever a potential customer writes a keyword, the search engine targets it and displays the PPC ad relevant to it.

How can you Copywrite for your dropshipping ads?

Once you have found the right keywords to target the audience, it is time to put the pieces of information together and create a dropshipping ad. For example, if you are targeting the word cover, the PPC ad might read something like ‘teen mobile covers.

The PPC ads include the keyword in the meta description as well as the title.

What is the advantage of using PPC ads?

Even though there’s not a big disadvantage of PPC ads but the keywords you would use might end up in your competitors’ PPC ads as well. Hence, your PPC ads lose ranks.

What is the solution to reserve keywords for your dropshipping ads?

When you can’t make sales due to an overly-used keyword, that’s where the bidding comes in. Bidding refers to using reserved keywords to ensure that your dropshipping ads will show up on the result page and get clicks.

However, you have to make sure that the following aspects are in order:

Creative ad copy

It is necessary to create a plagiarism-free yet unique ad copy from your competitors. What are selling points that will intrigue the customers to buy from you? high-quality? imported? Fast delivery? How does the copy make your dropshipping ad stand out among the other ones on Google?

Quality of the landing page

Is your landing page for dropshipping business working? When the customer clicks through the ad, he ends up on the landing page. Therefore, the dropshippers have to ensure that the call-to-action is clear and the content is persuasive enough for the customer to purchase and make a sale.

 Score

The Google rating of your dropshipping store’s advertising campaigns, PPC ads, the relevance of phrases/keywords, and the quality of the ad copy is quite important. A better score means less cost of PPC ads and more click-throughs.

Keyword quality and relevance

How much is the keyword related to the ad? Is the service or product you are advertising good enough to deserve click-throughs on your dropshipping?

Instagram dropshipping ads

Instagram is great for engagement and thus, a great advertising platform for dropshipping ads. Even if you have a small audience, you have a great possibility to get maximum likes, comments, and story shares.

It is a great social media tool for improving brand awareness, creating brand identity, and cultivating a community with potential customers.

What new features of Instagram allow dropshipping ads?

Two great features of Instagram, the shop tab and the product tagging allow your followers/potential customers to shop and check out through the dropshipping ad.

Before the introduction of these features on the Instagram app, the advertising on the social media platform was limited to bloggers and influencers only. The sponsored posts are still prevalent on the app but the new features, the in-app shop tab allows the followers to purchase something with just a few taps on the screen.

What is the advantage of the new features on Instagram for dropshipping ads?

It frees the customer of every hassle that came with the influencers’ sponsored posts. There would be no negotiating with the influencers. Moreover, the influencers won’t be held responsible if your or any dropshipping store decides not to deliver the product.

The self-learning advertising platform allows every dropshipper to create and run as many dropshipping ads as they want. Unlike PPC ads, you’d have to use the images for picture dropshipping ads and videos for dropshipping story ads.

What are the types of Instagram ads that you can use for your dropshipping store?

There are five types of ads that you can use on Instagram for your dropshipping store:

Story dropshipping ads

The newest of the dropshipping ads on Instagram, story ads play as the user switches the stories of other people. Dropshippers are allowed to share their products’ photos and videos for a limited amount of time.

All the dropshipping story ads are placed strategically by the Instagram algorithm so that they appear local and friendly to the users. However, dropshipping story ads are great for product recalls.

 Slideshow ads

Like sponsored ads, slideshow dropshipping ads also appear on the user’s feed. While the video dropshipping ads contain a video, the dropshipping slideshow ads on Instagram contain still pictures in the video. It gives dropshippers similar benefits as the carousal dropshipping ads.

Carousel dropshipping ads

Carousel dropshipping ads can be swiped through, by the user because one ad contains 2 to 10 pictures of the product. Each picture in the carousel ad has its caption. They are great for dropshippers who want to introduce the whole range of products from their dropshipping stores. The call-to-action at the bottom of the carousel ad makes it more beneficial to the dropshippers.

Dropshipping photo ads

Photo ads are one of the simplest of Instagram ads. They can be displayed to the users in square orientation, portrait, or landscape. The dropshippers have to feature a single photo and link the product to the main product page on the dropshipping website.

Video dropshipping ads

Video dropshipping ads are often played in square orientation or square mode for about 60 seconds. Most dropshippers split the 60 seconds or the orientation for the product video as well as the text. The video dropshipping ads are played to promote hot deals, sales, combo deals, and even memberships.

 Facebook dropshipping ads

Outside the world of pay-per-click advertising, Facebook is one of the most effective social media advertising tools to run dropshipping ads for increased sales and website traffic.

Facebook is comparatively preferred over Instagram due to its variety of users and wide reach world-wide. Conversions and click-through rates are higher on Facebook as compared to Twitter and Instagram.

All the dropshipping Facebook ads fall into two types:

• Video dropshipping ads
• Photo dropshipping ads

Therefore, you’d need great snaps and videos of your products to stand out on Facebook. You can create, run and manage your dropshipping ads through the advertisement manager feature. Upon entering the ads manager tool, you’d come across a pyramid for running dropshipping ads.

The pyramid of dropshipping ads is as follows:

• The top stage for campaigns
• The middle stage for sets of dropshipping ads
• And, the third or bottom stage for making sets of dropshipping ads

What are the ways to advertise effectively for your dropshipping business on Facebook?

Here are the different ways to advertise effectively on Facebook:

Target the right (cold, too) audience

The number one reason for failed dropshipping businesses is not detecting the right target audience. How can you expect people from buying your phone covers when they came looking for a patio cover? If you are well-versed in your dropshipping niche, targeting the right audience would be a piece of cake. Otherwise, it would lead to disastrous results for your dropshipping business.

Target the occupation, interest, and location

It is obvious that teenagers won’t buy the same products on Facebook as veterans. However, you can use Facebook Audience Insight and detect your target audience.

By using this extension, you’d be able to distinguish the audience with respect to their:

• Purchasing frequency
• Interests (comments, likes, shares)
• Life events
• Hobbies
• Profession
• Age
• Location

If you are selling funky mobile covers, Facebook will only direct the dropshipping ads to people who have purchased the mobile covers in the past. The tool will also direct the dropshipping ads to people who have shown interest in similar businesses.

Geography

The concentrated the target audience is, the better the success. The first thing to look at before running the dropshipping ads on Facebook is the location or the geography of your target audience. Target the locations where you can offer fast delivery to potential customers.

The budget factors

Expert dropshippers always suggest going slow with the Facebook ads. Spending a lot of money on advertisement, especially if you have a tight budget is not wise.

With the Facebook advertising tool, you can pay on a daily basis for dropshipping ads. You don’t have to go for a lifetime budget or the one-time investment, as they call it.

Facebook spends money on dropshipping ads in two ways:

• Impressions or CPM
• Pay-per-click or PPC ads

Both have different working models. Therefore, it is best to explore both options using a part of the little money you have for advertising.

The custom audience for dropshipping ads

Advanced Facebook marketing tools show your dropshipping ads to custom audiences as well. Dropshippers are allowed to customize their advertisement viewers’ lists by using their Facebook names or email addresses.

Anyone could be added to the custom audience: from positive reviewers to your previous customers. You could also add the people who have contacted you for your product prices earlier.

YouTube ads

YouTube dropshipping ads are quite expensive as compared to Instagram or Facebook ads. However, they are worth spending money on.

Video advertisements never fail, especially on YouTube because they allow the dropshippers to gain massive revenue.

How is bidding done for YouTube dropshipping ads?

YouTube’s bidding advertisement system is quite like any other advertising platform. However, you can pay for only two types of dropshipping ads:

• CPA or cost-per-acquisition
• CPV or cost-per-view

The CPA takes into account the four factors:

Website traffic campaigns

Based on the CPA model, this ad type allows you to improve the traffic to your website.

Brand and product consideration campaigns

The following ad type is used to create awareness about your niche, business, product, and services. It is based on the cost-per-view ad model.

Leads campaign

One of the ad types of CPA, which allows dropshippers to generate prospects and quality leads

Brand reach and awareness

Based on the CPV model, allows dropshipping businesses to create awareness about their niche and new products.

What are different types of YouTube dropshipping ads

After you have pointed out the objective, you can create and run the following types of YouTube dropshipping ads: 

• Sponsored cards
• Overlay
• TrueView
• Pre-roll
• And, bummer

Conclusion

Dropshipping advertising is a fine art and the only way to improve your sales and traffic through dropshipping ads is to tweak your campaigns consistently. In short, trial-and-error is the best approach to run successful yet reachable dropshipping ads.

Create multiple ad copies and videos and determine which one works best for you.

Sell The Trend is an all-in-one dropshipping platform that helps you find trending products, order fulfillment, and targeting the right audience on Facebook & Instagram. The Influencer Engagement Calculator, Facebook Audience Builder, and Video Ad Creator of Sell The Trend can save you a lot of time and money.

The Facebook Audience Builder helps you define and build an audience for your product – minimizing your advertising budget.

In case of further questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to leave a reply or contact us.