Introduction
Dropshipping is a very viable and effective business model these days that is catering to millions of dropshippers and Shopify store owners around the world. What makes it so great is the convenience it has, all you need to do is to gather a suitable amount of investment, a trusted supplier, know how to get your product to the public, and really understand the mechanics of a solid and successful dropshipping store, it really doesn’t matter where you are, you can do e-commerce from anywhere around the world. However, to many people, it seems that just placing products on your store and doing good on-page SEO with a few tweaks is going to land them clients and that’s far from the truth. Even if you’re invested in amazon’s FBA program which is another alternative for dropshipping, you might think that amazon’s vast and large marketplace is going to greatly influence your sales, that is very much possible but taking extra steps to build your brand integrity and reputation as an e-commerce seller will greatly safeguard your future as a brand or business and help you land more clients than none.
Importance of video content on Facebook
Studies have shown that more than 4 billion people watch Facebook videos every day whether that's scrolling past them or actually engaging with them and we all can agree including me that video content consumption on Facebook is unanimous.
As a dropshipper, you and I need to understand how we can harness this facebook power and actually convert it into meaningful engagement that will lead to buyers reaching out to us and eventually buying products off of our Shopify or any e-commerce store.
Understanding the buyer psyche
Let's now focus on why people trust video demonstrations of products more than just an image. The reason for that is it removes any doubts, loopholes, or any false sense of a thought that they might have regarding your business. When you run ads for your Shopify business or any e-commerce store by putting out ads that are video-based which actually show what your product can do is more than helpful for a potential customer to understand the product and what they can expect to get and it immediately registers in their mind.
Let's consider this watch product you see on the diagram as an example. If you were to just post an image as an ad with little information and slapping your branding on it you wouldn’t get a ton of engagement and your CPC(cost per click) would be higher but on the other hand what I noticed was substantial and my cost per click using a video was significantly less compared to that when I used an image. What I noticed was that the CPC was 1.5 with 8000 impressions using an image as my Facebook ad creative but when I placed a video I got almost the same amount of impressions but the CPC was considerably lower at 0.47, so you all can see how effective it really is.
WHY USE SHORT VIDEO ADS FOR YOUR E-COMMERCE OR DROPSHIPPING BUSINESS?
Source branding has this valuable article on why you should use short video ads for your business and you can check it out here. But let me give you my end of the piece, when you say ’’Short” video ads, that means no more than 2 minutes and no less than 1 minute. This gives the end-user the perfect amount of time to spend on your ads because let's face it, people won't spend 10 minutes watching a video of your product, they are in a hurry and they need information fast and accurate. If you are short on skills or resources you need in producing video content, you can always hire someone to create an engaging video ad for you and that's what i did too because I rarely have the time and experts in this field can help you get a professional end product. I highly recommend this service if you want to get your job done in no time and I can speak for myself that it does help significantly and forging extra cash to invest in something that will produce better results for your business is definitely worth it
Running targeted video ads on Google or Facebook
One of the most effective strategies to boost your online dropshipping store sales is to immediately start putting out quality targeted ads on platforms such as Google, Instagram, or Facebook. The idea here is to cleverly target people with a very similar interest in your product and its useful to take a look at audience insights or demographics inside for e.g in Facebook, by typing the interest that’s very specific to your niche or product, and then you can find pages that you can target and from their keep on adding into the list you want to target and you can pretty much do a similar action when you head inside the campaigns in Facebook and can also cleverly use the suggestion for targeting to send out to that audience. Once you understand how detail targeting works you can add your video ad and expect to see many improvements that will allow traffic to come into your site. If you want to understand more about Facebook ads targeting you should check out a piece by BigCommerce that goes over it in more detail and will help you understand the basics and tricks you can implement in Facebook ads manager.
Advantage of short video ads on smartphones
Another study has clearly shown that more than 60% of users are watching short videos on their smartphones whether that's on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or youtube and that presents a wide opportunity for my fellow dropshippers out there to capitalize upon. People are watching such videos insanely quickly and scrolling past tons of others at a fast pace as well so taking advantage of such a metric is necessary to bring large amounts of traffic to your website so it can translate into sales. Another thing you can do is choose a video ad that's much more engaging and less obvious in terms of looking like an infomercial because people on social sites like Facebook or Instagram are not out there looking to buy your product or even searching for one, so its your job to lure them in through an engaging ad so that they end up hitting the Add to cart button.
Additional Tips and tricks
- Make sure your short video ad has subtitles.
- Always prefer to include background music.
- Make it between 1 and 2 minutes long in duration.
- Make the video helpful in understanding how your product can benefit your client.
Conclusion
Lastly, I would conclude by recollecting all of my thoughts and urging all you dropshippers out there to take advantage of video to transform your business because I've seen many a times dropshippers or online marketers neglect and ignore using video to market and advertise their business and they are missing out on a lot here. Statistics don't lie, my experience doesn't lie and i’m hopeful that by implementing the strategies I’ve told you here, you will most certainly see positive results in your dropshipping business.
