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While other ecommerce businesses have to deal with things like shipping logistics and inventory storage, dropshippers only worry about one thing: making the sale. And no sale is harder than your first. 

Of all the home business opportunities online, dropshipping relies the most on marketing and outreach. That’s the trade-off for not handling storage and shipping. If you’re new to dropshipping or otherwise struggling to build a customer base from scratch, here are 5 techniques to help you make your first dropshipping sale. 

1. Build a social media community

Social media can be your best friend when setting up an ecommerce business — it’s more trusted than advertisements, it facilitates finding your target customer group and, the icing on the cake, it’s free. (Social media ads cost money, but we discuss them below.) If you’ve just started an online store and don’t have much money for advertising, social media is perfect. 

Here’s some tips on how to develop an online community: 

• Post regularly, and at times of the highest traffic, which is different for each platform. It’s hard to cultivate loyalty when you post erratically and at unpredictable times. 
• Follow the 70-20-10 rule: 70% of your content should be entertaining and about your brand’s theme or niche, 20% should be shared content from other related brands or your followers, and 10% should be self-promotional, i.e., new product releases. 
• Use the same hashtags as your target customers. There’s a lot of variation in hashtags like plurality or alternate spellings, so double-check which are the most popular in your field. 
• Participate in trends and challenges. These topics are intrinsically high traffic, at least for a period of time, so tap into that publicity. 
• Stick to one or two themes related to your niche. If you dropship tents and camping equipment from Triangulum, for example, you should post about camping, hiking and outdoors topics to attract people who are interested in those things. 

Remember that each platform works differently, and with different user groups. Snapchat marketing techniques wouldn’t work on older Facebook users, so approach each social media channel with its own strategy. To see what we mean, check out our guide to selling on Pinterest, one of the top recommended platforms for dropshippers. 

2. PPC advertisements

Setting up an ecommerce business requires pinching every penny. If you do have some cash to spare for advertising, PPC (Pay Per Click) ads deliver more for your money because you only pay when people actually click on them. 

Search engine PPC ads like Google Ads work well for a few key reasons:

• You can target certain keywords relevant to your products.
• People who use specific product search terms are usually ready to buy. 
• You can lead searchers directly to the product page of the item you want to sell. 

The most important factor in the success of your PPC ads are which keywords you use. If there’s too much competition, you’ll have to pay more for every click to stay in the running. 

Rather than get bogged down in a bidding war, it’s better to target keywords that are less popular, but still produce an adequate amount of traffic. In particular, you’ll have greater success using what’s called “long-tail keywords”: longer, more detailed search phrases. 

For example, if you’re dropshipping pet products from Grey Milo, vague keywords like “dog toys” or “dog collars” are far too competitive. Try narrowing down the search terms, like “blue bow-tie dog collar” or “pink harness for small dogs.” 

3. Advertise on social media

The other efficient way to spend your advertising money is social media ads. Practically every social media platform offers paid advertisements, and if you know which ones your target customers use, you can avoid wasting money on advertising to people who don’t care. 

The first step is knowing which platforms are popular for which user groups. For example, Facebook is popular for older users, Instagram for Millennials, and Snapchat for Generation Z. Depending on whom your ideal customer is, you’ll want to spend more on different platforms. 

Then there’s the advertising strategies for each platform. Some social media sites let you feature multiple products with carousel ads, others let you use video, and some you can run both simultaneously. 

Source

We don’t have time to get into all the specifics here, but you can read this Hootsuite guide for more thorough advice on social media advertising.