As You might already know, building a dropshipping website is only the first step of dropshipping, and it's often considered as the easy part. To actually start making money with dropshipping, You need to be an expert in digital marketing.

As time goes on and more people start dropshipping, it is only going to get more and more difficult to make sales in ecommerce. This is why You need to stand out from Your competitors with A-level marketing. 

In this article we are going to cover the first things You should do after receiving Your Pre-Made Shopify Dropshipping Website from Adsellr, and the top 5 marketing strategies You can use to get Your first sale with dropshipping.

 

Short Term or Long Term: Consider Your Plan

You should take into consideration whether You want to build a long-term, or short-term online business, as it's going to affect the strategies that you should use. 

For example, if you want to build a sustainable business that's going to be around in 10 years from now, you should put a lot of emphasis on technical SEO, content writing, link building, Etc.

However if you are building a short-term seasonal business and you just want to make some quick money, you might want to stick with stick with paid media, such a Tik-Tok ads, Facebook ads and Google ads.

 

Setting Up Your Pre-Built Shopify Store

The first thing You need to do after receiving Your pre-built Shopify store, is set it up.

Here is a checklist of the first things You need to do after receiving Your pre-built Shopify store:

 

Purchase a Domain and Connect it to Shopify

Shopify Domains

Obviously, you are going to need a domain. Luckily, You should be able to get a .com domain from Shopify for about $14 per year. It's a very straightforward process and should only take You a couple of minutes to do. If your desired domain is already taken, then You can simply choose another domain suffix, such as .co, for example.

 

Third Party Domains

If you want to purchase a third party domain, You can head over to NameCheap, however, you should have the budget since some premium domains can go for up to $1,000.000.

To buy a domain from Shopify, navigate to Shopify Admin - Settings - Domains - Buy Domain

 

Connecting Your Domain to Shopify

For domains purchased in Shopify, there is no additinoal set-up needed. You are all set!

To connect a third party domain to Shopify, You are going to need to edit Your domain DNS settings.

 

Build Your Social Pages & Social Sales Channels

Instagram, Facebook and TikTok

This should go without saying, but Your new online business should also have a social media page on Instagram and Facebook. If possible, even TikTok. Make sure to post some content and properly brand Your social pages so You can be proud of them. 

If You purchased the general or 100 product pre-built store from Adsellr, then You already have the Instagram page with 10 000 followers set up for You. Congratulations!

 

Optional: Buy Instagram Followers

If You want to stand out from competitors, then also consider to buy Instagram followers for Your dropshipping store.

 

Buying instagram followers will help You build social proof. Having little or no followers on Your Instagram account can be a red flag for many buyers nowadays, which is why You might want to give Your social pages a little boost.

 

Social Sales Channels

Don't forget to set up Facebook, Instagram and TikTok sales channels through Shopify. These will allow You to integrate Your store to Your social media pages and improve Your sales through organic social media channels.

 

Set up AD accounts on Tiktok, Google and Facebook

TikTok, Google and Facebook AD Accounts

Next, You should set up Your AD accounts on TikTok, Google and Facebook. This will allow You to start running paid AD campaigns and driving traffic to Your store. Most of these are going to be pretty simple and straightforward, and it should not take You more than 15 minutes.

 

Pixels

To actively track Your customers' activities and start collecting data on Your website, You need to install a pixel. This is going to be different for every AD platform, however, again, it should not take You more than 30 minutes.  Here's a complete guide on how to set up and connect the Meta pixel to Your store in 2023.

Optional: If You are serious about collecting Your visitors' data, You should also set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics for Your Shopify store.

 

Connect a payment processor to Your store

To actually start collecting money from Your visitors, You need to set up a payment processor, such as, for example, Shopify Payments or Stripe. This will be different for everyone, as Shopify Payments, for example, is only available in selected countries. Here's a list of all Payment Providers available in Shopify.

 

That's it! You have now completed the basic set-up for Your pre-built Shopify store. We can now move to the money making part, also known as marketing.

 

Determine Your Marketing Strategy

Before You get started with marketing, it's important to determine the exact marketing strategies that You are going to use to start driving traffic to Your website. This way You can avoid making any costly mistakes and You also have a specific plan to follow.

Again, you should take into consideration whether you want to build a long-term business or a short-term business. If you are focusing on short term business, I would suggest sticking with paid ads, influencer marketing as opposed to content marketing and SEO which are more long-term marketing strategies.

 

With that said, let’s get right into the marketing strategies.

 

1. Paid Advertising

The first marketing strategy, and perhaps the most popular one in dropshipping is going to be paid advertising. After setting up your pre-built shopify store, you should learn about google ads, tiktok ads and facebook ads, which are the main three platforms used for marketing in ecommerce.

Which AD Platform is the best for dropshipping?

You should test out all three different platforms, since again, there is no definitive answer to what is the best AD platform to use and it is going to be a little different for everyone, depending on what product you're selling.

For example if you're selling high-ticket items, it might not make sense to use TikTok advertising, but rather go with Google Ads since TikTok is better for low ticket sales which are usually based on emotion and do not require as much consideration from the customer as high-ticket items.

How much money do I need for paid advertising?

After you have determined the best AD platform for you to utilise, you need to take into consideration your monthly budget for paid advertising. I would recommend having a budget of at least $500-$1000 per month to spend on advertising as it'll allow you to quickly start collecting customer data, and it will also drive initial traffic to your store so You can get Your first sale as soon as possible.

Your First AD Creative

Once you have your budget and the AD platform figured out, you need to get your first creative for advertising. The rule of thumb is that the best AD format to use for most dropshipping products is most likely going to be user-generated content, as opposed to traditional video ads.

User Generated Content

User-generated content is content that is made by real people using your product and it's great for building trust with your customers as well as social proof. User-generated content also has the highest conversion rate, highest average watch time and the highest return on ad spend. It’s also relatively cheap and does not require a very big investment which is why it’s so great to use. If you want, you can get multiple different UGC ads to test which creative will work the best for your product. 

How to Get User Generated Content?

There are a few different ways you can get user generated content.

The first method is going to be by contacting influencers on social media, shipping them Your product in exchange for a quick testimony video or user generated content.

However, with this method, there is always some risk involved, for example, the influencer You are working with might start ignoring you, or they might be too lazy to deliver the user generated content.

To avoid having to deal with such problems, you can simply purchase user generated content online. For example, you can purchase user-generated content from adsellr. You just need to fill in the requirements, choose Your creator, video language and then ship Your product. Once the product has arrived, we will deliver Your UGC AD within 5 days which You can then upload directly to TikTok or Facebook Ads.

Why is User Generated Content so Good?

User-generated content is native to almost every social media platform, such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, so it's naturally going to perform a lot better as opposed to standard commercials which you would see on TV for example.

Scale Your AD Campaign

Once You have Your video AD ready, you're going to want to test the creative by first targeting a cold audience, and then building lookalike audiences based off your pixel data and then scaling the winning adset to a profitable return on ad spend. Obviously this is a very complicated process, and You need to spend hours learning each ad platform and spend money collecting data before it will become profitable.

Google Ads

With Google ads, you don't need a video creative. You just need to find low-hanging keywords related to your products for which there is a lot of demand, and then you just create Google ads around those specific keywords and then use the break down tool to narrow down your audience and find the winning adset. 

2. Search Engine Optimization

The second thing that you should do after setting up Your pre-built Shopify store is to start improving your search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO, or search engine optimisation means optimizing your website for Google search so that your customers will be able to find your website just through a Google search, without you having to spend money on ads.

Purchase Intent

SEO is especially great, because most people who search for a product on Google will already have a purchase intent, so the conversion rate is naturally going to be a lot higher than it would with paid advertising, or paid media. SEO basically consists of three things - technical SEO or on page optimization, link building and content writing.

Keyword Research

First off, however, You will need to do some keyword research. You will need to find low-hanging keywords with high search volume and low keyword difficulty that are relevant to your niche and to the products You are selling. To determine the keywords You want to rank for, you can use tools such as Ahrefs for example.

How to do Keyword Research using Ahrefs

For example, if You are selling cat beds, You can use AHrefs to find the best keywords to rank with. In Ahrefs, type in “cat sofa” into the keywords explorer, and then You can see a list of all the keywords that people are searching for.

You need keywords with high search volume, but with little keyword difficulty. For example, as of writing this article, "Cat Sofa Bed" is a great one since it has 0 keyword difficulty while also having a search volume of 250. These are the types of keywords that we are going to want to look for. Typically, the more specific your keyword is, the easier it will be to rank with it on Google Search. These keywords are usually referred to as long tail keywords.

SEO mainly consists of three factors.

• Technical SEO
• Link Building
• Content Writing

SEO = Long Term Growth

SEO is more tailored for businesses who are focused on long-term growth as opposed to short-term, because it will take many months for Google to crawl your website, and for the SEO optimization to gain fruition, however, it's a crucial aspect of every online business, as having good SEO optimization will allow you to make money in 10 years without ever having to spend money on paid advertising. 

Stand Out From Your Competitors with Good SEO

I would even go on to say that SEO is the most crucial factor to building a profitable online business nowadays. In my opinion, it's also the easiest way you can differentiate yourself from competitors and build a profitable sales Channel just using Google search. SEO is also the one aspect of ecommerce that is most commonly overlooked by beginners in dropshipping.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO, also known as on-page SEO is how Google indexes your website. On page SEO mainly consists of having relevant keywords on Your website, correct meta titles, correct meta descriptions and also image optimisation.

Content Optimization

You should make sure that the content on your website includes keywords relevant to Your products, for which You want to rank with on Google Search. You also need to have correct meta descriptions and meta titles on your product, collection and home pages.

Image Optimization

You need to make sure that that each picture that you upload to your website, such as product images and collection images are all under 100 KB, and have the proper correct, relevant name and alt text, otherwise it's going to negatively affect your websites loading speed and decrease your ranking on Google search

Link Building

Link building is another important cornerstone of SEO. Link Building means having backlinks on other high authority websites. For example, if you are selling pet products, you would want to acquire back links or link insertion on other pet and animal related websites.

Do-Follow Links & Non-Follow Links

You should always make sure to have a balance of around 60 and 40 percent between do-follow links and non-follow links.

Do follow links are the ones which will increase your ranking on Google Search. non follow links are going to be the ones which are not going to increase your ranking on Google search, however, if you only have do-follow links, Google might recognise your website as spam and penalise your ranking on Google search because of it.

High Authority Backlinks

You should also try to only acquire backlinks on websites with good domain ranking, as those will be the most beneficial. Link insertion usually goes for around $100-$1500 per link.

HVC Strategy

For example, You might want to get a backlink for a pet product, such as a cat bed sofa. You would then find articles on websites with high domain authority, and send them an email offering to purchase link insertion from them. You could try to find an article which compares the top 10 cat bets to buy and then purchase a backlink for Your "Cat Beds & Sofas" collection page with the anchor text “cat bed sofa”. 

Content Writing

And finally, another big aspect of SEO is content writing. Your website should have a lot of blog posts and articles which are relevant to your target audience. Each article should include keywords for which you want to rank with on Google search.

Correct Blog Structure

Now it is very important to have that correct structure on each blog post and a healthy amount of words in every article. To determine the correct structure, word count, and the keywords You should include, you can use tools such as SurferSEO, AHrefs, or other SEO related tools.

You should also make sure that each of your blog posts include a table of contents, frequently asked questions and pictures with alt text and correct file names. Again you need to make sure that each picture that you upload to your website is under 100 KB otherwise it's going to negatively affect your website speed and decrease your ranking on Google search. 

If you are unsure on what to write about, then again, you can use SEO tools such as Ahrefs to define the most commonly searched for questions on Google search regarding your niche.

For example, if you are selling cat sofas or cat beds, you can use Ahrefs to find some relevant questions. For example, “how to clean cat pee from sofa”. This is a great topic for which you can write a blog post about. “Will cat scratch leather sofa”, “how to stop cat scratching sofa”, “how to get cat pee smell out of sofa”, these are all great examples as they have high search volume but low keyword difficulty. By writing articles around these topics, You are going to rank on Google Search and You will be able to drive traffic to your website just using Google Search.

To determine which topics are the best ones to write about, You need to look for questions with a good balance between search volume and keyword difficulty, as those are going to be the easiest ones to rank with. 

3. Content Marketing

The third marketing strategy that you can use to instantly start driving traffic to your dropshipping store is, you guessed it, content marketing.

Often overlooked by beginners in dropshipping, content marketing is a great way to stand out and differentiate yourself from competitors. Content marketing will allow you to earn free traffic from social media without having to spend money on ads.

Content Marketing on YouTube

One of the easiest ways to start content marketing is by publishing videos on YouTube. For example, if you are selling pet products, you could make a video reviewing Your pet products. 

There's a lot of opportunities here, and you need to think of what are the most commonly asked questions that your customers might have regarding your products, and then create a video around that question and upload it to YouTube.

Your videos will automatically start ranking on YouTube and driving traffic to your store. Keep in mind, though, that the videos should not feel commercial, but rather they should be helpful tutorials and instructional videos which are going to provide value for Your customers.

4. Influencer Marketing

The fourth marketing strategy that we are going to talk about is going to be influencer marketing.  Again this will vary a bit for everyone, as influencer marketing is going to make more sense for some products, than it is for others.

Consider Your Cost Per Influencer

For example, it is not going to be cost-effective to do influencer marketing with low-level influencers in the jewelry niche, because each product that you are going to ship to your influencers is going to be very expensive, so it's going to be difficult to maintain a good return on investment.

However, if you are selling low ticket items, such as fitness products, for example, it's going to be a lot easier to make a profit with influencer marketing. 

How to Find Relevant Influencers

You are going to want to find influencers that are relevant to your niche and DM them, offering to ship them a product in exchange for a user-generated content video ad, instagram story tag or a tagged instagram post. If possible you can ask them to do all three.

Also, keep in mind that You do not want to spend a lot of money per influencer, as the more influencers you can get, the better your social proof is going to be. For most products, the goal should be to work with as many influences as possible, rather than work with one or two big influencers since influencers with many followers are going to be more expensive and more difficult to reach.

Influencer Marketing = Social Proof

Imagine a visitor will come to your website and they want to buy your product. But before they place the order, they are going to want to check your Instagram page to confirm Your legitimacy.  If your Instagram account is empty, they are probably going to be a bit concerned and will not purchase from you, however, if your instagram is full of posts which show people using your product, and you have Instagram highlights full of story tags and people using your product, then the likelihood of that visitor making the purchase is going to be a lot bigger.

You can also build social proof yourself, by having your friends or family tag your business account on Instagram and then posting each of those stories on your highlights in Instagram.

The main goal is not going to be to get sales but rather to build social proof and customer Trust on social media. However, if you do it the right way, and work with influencers who are relevant to your niche,  you are most likely also going to get some sales just through influencer marketing.

5. Organic Social Media Marketing

Now, the fifth and final marketing strategy is going to be organic social media marketing. This one is probably the easiest to do, and it does not require any money, but it’s also the least effective method as it will take a lot of time before You are going to make any money.

Follow-Unfollow Method

To do this, you just need to have an Instagram account with your website in the bio and start doing the follow-unfollow method. Find a popular Instagram page in your niche and open their followers, and just follow all of their followers. You can follow about 100 people everyday, and then unfollow them the next day. Then just repeat the process every day. Be careful, though, since if you follow and unfollow too many people in one day, Your Instagram account will get limited!

By doing this method, you should be able to build up around 10K organic followers within a few months. It does take some patience and consistency, but if you do it every day you will soon have a big Instagram page and you will be able to attract customers just through your Instagram account and gain sales without having to spend money on paid advertising. 

For example, if You are selling fitness products, You could go to La Fitness’s Instagram page, and simply follow their followers. Or You might find a personal trainer on Instagram, or a competitor who is also selling fitness products and simply follow and unfollow their followers every day.

You should also keep in mind that you need to make Your account look like instagram and worth following. You can do this by posting stories and posts every day on Your account. If you don't have a lot of creative content about Your products, then you can just post memes that are relevant to Your niche as memes usually have a very good engagement rate and it’s an easy way to get new followers quickly.

This is an age old method that has been used by dropshippers since day one, and it will continue to work just because of how simple it is. If you want, you can one day even convert the Instagram account to some other niche, or you can just sell the page online on Fameswap.

Summary

We went over the top five marketing strategies that You should do to start driving traffic to your pre-built shopify dropshipping store. Obviously there is a lot more to marketing, but if you learn about these things yourself, you will soon understand marketing on a deeper level and if you devote your time into learning ecommerce, you will become profitable very quickly.

I would also recommend opening Reddit and joining different subreddits related to dropshipping (e.g. r/Dropship) as they are all great forums to connect with other like-minded people and learn about ecommerce and ask for help with any problem You might have. 

Don't Get Discouraged

Remember, Every single problem You might encounter has already been solved by someone else before You. There is not a single problem that has not already been solved by someone else on the internet. All You have to do is look for the answer and be creative.

Dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick scheme

It will take a lot of time and effort to start making money in e-commerce, however, if you dedicate Yourself to improving Your skills every day, then I am confident you will be able to become very successful.

Why Buy A Pre-Built Shopify Store?

Getting a pre-built store is one of the easiest and quickest ways you can get started with dropshipping without having to spend hundreds of hours learning web development, doing product research eccetera.

If you have any questions just drop a comment below and I will make sure to get back to you.

Thank you!