Advertising your dropshipping business is essential for its success. It lets existing and potential customers know what you have to offer and entices them to buy from your store.
The trick, however, lies in creating dropshipping ads that draw customers to visit your online store. It can be a daunting task if you are not well-versed in marketing.
Fortunately, in this all-inclusive guide, we let you in on all the secrets of creating and posting winning dropshipping ads.
Ready? Let’s get to learning then.
What Is a Dropshipping Ad?
A dropshipping ad is a media presentation that is created to promote your dropshipping store and or the products you are selling.
It can be in the form of an image, a series of images, or a video.
What Information Should Dropshipping Ads Contain?
The content in dropshipping ads should primarily be based on the goals you hope to achieve. Your ads should also suit the platform where you are going to run them (we expound more on this below).
That said, some key details to aim for in a dropshipping ad include:
- An introduction to the product/store– this can be presented using photographs, graphics, video, or text. It should draw the attention of your audience to your store/product and what it can do for them.
- Description/Demo- using a series of images, text, narration, or demonstration, try to provide customers with more details about the products you offer and how they work (where necessary).
- Price details- pricing is an optional detail but it is something most customers may appreciate if it is presented upfront. If you have any sales or promos, you can also include them here.
- Keywords- Keywords are a selection of terms that shoppers often enter when they are looking for various products. Including such words in your dropshipping ads increases the odds of them popping up when customers search for items in your product niche.
- A call to action- it is best to always offer your customers a way to access the product you are advertising by including your online store address. This greatly increased their chances of clicking through to buy or learn more about the product.
What Are the Benefits of Dropshipping Ads?
The direct benefit associated with dropshipping ads is that they promote your dropshipping store but there’s more.
Dropshipping ads can help you:
Drive Traffic to Your Store
The more people visit your online store, the higher the likelihood that you will make more sales. This goes a long way in ensuring you earn healthy profits.
On the other hand, it means that more people know about your brand and what it has to offer. The best part about this is, even if they are not willing to buy, they can easily recommend your store to friends or family that may be interested in your products.
Introduce New Products and Product Offers to Customers
Customers tend to be drawn to online stores that offer them fresh trendy solutions. Therefore, it is essential that you keep up with product trends and refresh your inventory from time to time.
Discounts and sales are also a great touch as they are often irresistible for most shoppers.
Dropshipping ads ensure that your customers stay informed about such changes in your online store so that they can take advantage of them and shop. In this case, the ads are a win-win for both you and your customers.
Identify Avenues For Growth
Winning dropshipping ads can generate interest from different groups of people in different locations.
As more people visit your store, they may request or inquire about various items or whether you dropship to their location. This type of information is important because it helps you:
- Identify what your potential customers need
- Learn about new geographical markets that you could venture into based on the number of inquiries you receive from that region
Factors to Consider When Creating Dropshipping Ads
To create successful dropshipping ads, consider key factors such as:
Your Goals
What would you like your dropshipping ads to achieve? Are you looking to drive traffic to your store? Would you like to boost sales or introduce new products?
Identifying these objectives early on helps you structure and target your ads accordingly. Further, if you identify different objectives, it is best to create different ad sets to cater to each of them separately as opposed to lumping everything in one ad.
The Product You Are Advertising
The perfect dropshipping ad is one that portrays the product you are advertising at its best. It should highlight its main benefits and features such as size, materials, and color options.
For products such as clothes, shoes, and accessories, quality product photos may suffice. However, for more practical products like unique exercise tools and other lifestyle gadgets, demonstrative ads may have a better impact on customers.
Your Target Audience
For a dropshipping ad to be effective, it should reach your target audience.
To this end, consider demographic factors such as the age, gender, or race of your target audience. They will give you an idea of the social platforms and types of media that you can use to reach them.
Facebook, for instance, is highly preferred as it is accessed by people from all walks of life. In contrast, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok can be more ideal if you are targeting younger audiences.
Relatability
Demographic factors could also guide you on how to structure your ad to make it relatable to your target and audience.
If, for instance, you are marketing hair care products for African hair. The messaging would have to be different than if you were selling products for Asian or Caucasian hair textures because the challenges that each group faces are different.
Suffice to say, you are likely to close more sales if potential customers can relate to the solutions you mention in your dropshipping ads.
The Advertising Rules and Features of Your Chosen Platform
Every social media platform or advertising media has unique advertising rules. Before you begin to create a dropshipping advertisement for any of them, take some time to read and understand what rules you should adhere to.
Copyright rules, for example, are commonly enforced across most media platforms. Your ad may be pulled down if you violate them and your account could also face disciplinary consequences. Awareness could help you avoid such pitfalls.
On the brighter side, various media platforms now offer helpful features that you can use to your advantage. Instagram, for example, has provisions that allow you to:
- Set a budget for your ads
- Select how long you would like the ad campaign to last
- Select the target audience you would like to reach
Harnessing such provisions could make dropshipping ad campaigns much more effective and easy to monitor for results.
Your Budget
Your budget will determine where and how long you can run your dropshipping ads. It may also determine how you go about creating the ads given that some methods are cheaper than others.
With this in mind, it is important that you set a budget early on and allocate it accordingly. Some expenses to anticipate include:
- Photography/videography
- Sample products and props for creating the ad
- Cost of running the ad
- Professional services I.e models or content creators (if you intend to use them)
Tips on How to Make Dropshipping Ads
There are 2 main methods you could use to make dropshipping ads:
- Hiring an agency to make the dropshipping ads for you
- A DIY ad-making project
Both of them can yield exemplary results, it all comes down to your capabilities, budget, and personal preferences. Let us delve into their procedures and what to expect.
Hiring a Dropshipping Agency
Hiring an ad agency is a convenient method to use if you are not adept at ad creation or do not have the time to do it. All you have to do is present the agency with a brief with your objectives and your budget.
Upon receiving your brief, the agency would proceed to create ad concepts and samples. You can then choose what you feel would work best and run it.
If you choose to work with a full-service ad agency, you could also ask the firm to handle the running of the ads. This service would entail them choosing suitable platforms and handling the campaign on your behalf.
Pros:
- It is a reliable solution for beginners who may not have any experience in creating dropshipping ads
- Professionally done dropshipping ads can be of higher quality given the higher grades of skill and equipment/software used
- It is time-saving
Cons:
- Hiring an ad agency can be expensive if you are trying to save on costs
DIY Ad-Making
DIY ad-making entails handling the entire process of creating your ads. While it may seem complex at first, creating an outline of tasks can make it easier for you to navigate. Some of the tasks to include in your planning could include:
- Planning the shoot- this involves creating a concept for what you would like your ad to look like. You can explore various dropshipping ad examples for inspiration and make a vision board of different ideas and a script or copy for the ad.
- Obtain product samples and props- once you have a vision for your shoot, you can order sample products from your dropshipping suppliers. Select and source props as well, if necessary.
- Choose a location– the location you choose forms the background of your dropshipping ad and impacts its general outlook. Aim for elegant or well-set-up areas with lots of light to enhance the quality of the pictures/video.
- Buy or rent the right equipment- shooting a high-quality ad requires equipment such as high-resolution cameras, lighting, tripods, and photography umbrellas. You could choose to buy or rent them depending on your budget.
Shooting a dropshipping ad can take time as it may take several tries before you get the money shot. Start early to maximize on natural light and be patient until you are satisfied with the content you will have come up with.
After the shoot, proceed to edit the content and insert any additional copy or voice-overs that are to go along with the ad. You can explore editing apps to ease this process or hire an editor. The latter may be best if you are not tech-savvy.
Pros:
- DIY ad creation gives you complete control of the creative process
- Doing everything yourself could save on costs
- Once you learn the ropes you will be able to keep creating your own ads in the future
Cons:
- It can be time-consuming
- As a beginner, the quality of your ads may not be as high as professional ads
- Without proper guidance on how and where to source some of the necessary items, you may exceed your budget
4 Ways of Running Dropshipping Ads
Once the ad is ready, it will finally be time for the ultimate test which is running the ad. So, let’s explore some of the platforms on which you can run a dropshipping ad.
Facebook has, in recent times, become an advertising favorite for most dropshippers. This can be attributed to:
- Facebooks’s large and highly diverse membership which makes it easy to reach different target audiences
- Facebook’s helpful advertising features and apps such as Facebook insights
Running dropshipping ads on Facebook is quite straightforward. The steps include:
- Create a Facebook account (preferably one linked to your business)
- Set up the key details of the account
- Access the ads manager; this tool will enable you to upload, run, and monitor the performance of your ads. You can also use it to run the same ads concurrently on Instagram.
Studies show that most businesses have better results when they test their Facebook ads and work with those that are most impactful. Consider taking this approach as opposed to endlessly spending more money on ads that offer little returns.
Instagram is a great app for dropshipping ads as it is a visual platform; you can display both image and video ads for dropshipping. Plus, it offers 5 different ways that you can display your ads. They include:
- Instagram stories- a sequence of images or short videos displayed at the top of users’ Instagram feed. They run for a limited amount of time.
- Video ads- these are individual posts featuring a brief video. They would be ideal for dropshipping video ads and can be accompanied by detailed captions.
- Photo/Image ads- these too are single posts that can be used for dropshipping image ads.
- Carousel Instagram ads- a carousel ad contains a series of images or videos that followers can swipe through to view more of.
- Slideshow ads- unlike carousel ads where your followers would have to swipe through, slideshow ads automatically transition from one image or video to the next.
Like Facebook, Instagram is a simple advertising platform to use. You can turn any post on your page/account by boosting it for a fee. Alternatively, you can use the ads manager tool to handle all your Instagram advertisements.
TikTok
TikTok is the new kid on the block as far as social media is concerned. Its novelty makes it a great option to run your dropshipping ads on because it is currently drawing lots of traction from millions of first-time users.
Additionally, TikTok has great advertising features, and the fast-paced nature of the app can easily pique the interest of users that see your dropshipping ads. Such curiosity is essential in advertising as it makes consumers want to learn more about your brand.
To run an ad on TikTok, you would have to:
- Set up a TikTok account
- Create a TikTok ad campaign – you will need to provide your name, the objective of your campaign, and your budget
- Create a TikTok ad group- this p will require more details such as your target audience, creative type, bidding preferences(how you would like your ads to be billed), duration of the ad, and again your budget
The upside of each of the ps you will have to fill is that they help optimize your ad campaign to make it more effective. They also provide you with options based on your budget.
Once you are done with the setup, you can either upload your own ads or allow the TikTok app to form ads based on your image and video uploads.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a good marketing tool if you are looking to drive traffic to your online store. It works based on keywords and here is how:
- You create a dropshipping ad (mainly comprising text) with top keywords in your product niche
- Potential customers run a search for products using one of your keywords
- Google presents the customer/user with search results which include a link to your online store marked as an ad
Google bills you for this type of advertising every time a user clicks on your ad link. However, keep in mind that your competitors may also be running similar dropshipping ads. To outshine them, ensure:
- You write interesting and curiosity-inducing dropshipping ads
- You use the keywords you research in a meaningful way
- That the link you provide leads to a functional and appealing landing page in your dropshipping store
In essence, the better your content and online store quality the more likely your Google Ads will rank higher than those of your competitors.
4 Things to Avoid When Creating Dropshipping Ads
Now that we are all caught up on what you should do, let us draw the line on what you should strive to avoid.
Poor Quality Images or Video
If the images or video of your dropshipping ads are hard to make out or poorly staged, they are unlikely to appeal to customers. Aim instead for high-resolution product images portrayed in neat well-lit surroundings.
Forceful or Untoward Language
There is a thin line between persuading your customers to buy and coming off as condescending or forceful. The latter is off-putting.
It is a much better approach to recommend your products to your customers while explaining the benefits they stand to gain.
Too Much Information
Too much information can be difficult to process or become too boring for your audience to focus on. Whereas if you state the main enticing highlights, customers will be drawn in and become keen on learning more about the products.
Over-advertising
Dropshipping forums and Youtube tutorials are rife with tales of dropshippers that sunk thousands of dollars into dropshipping ads that bore no fruit. This goes to show that over-advertising may not be the ideal route to take.
Tested targeted ads could save you lots of money and deliver much better results. They may not be as many or as repetitive but they effectively reach your target audience.
To Sum It Up
Creating an amazing dropshipping store counts for little if no one knows about it. Dropshipping ads are, therefore, worth investing in if you hope to boost your sales and expand your customer base.
Remember to:
- Identify your target market and a suitable advertising medium to reach them
- Create appealing dropshipping ads with suitable keywords, ideal messaging, and a call to action
- Ensure the dropshipping ads meet the standards of your chosen platform
- Run the dropshipping ads at ideal times
All said and done, we also recognize that handling all these tasks and details can be quite exhausting. More so when you just start your dropshipping business. Subsequently, at NicheDropshipping, we are dedicated to making it all easier for you.
We offer comprehensive dropshipping services including product sourcing, warehousing, and worldwide fulfillment. Our automated dropshipping provisions further free up your time to pursue managerial tasks such as advertising.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can ease your dropshipping journey.
