Social media is your best bet for promoting your brand and store. Here are some of the ins and outs of social media marketing.
Social media platforms that were once used for entertainment and socializing are now often used to reach new audiences and sell products. Marketing is vital for a dropshipping business because in many ways you are selling your brand more so than your products.
For this guide, we’ll be focusing on Facebook and Instagram. Let’s dive into the world of SMM!
Getting Started with SMM
First and foremost, you need to understand that running a basic social media marketing campaign doesn’t require you to be an SMM guru. The most important thing is to get your products up on social media platforms and redirect customers to your website. Most website builders will allow you to sync your products with social media accounts as long as you have a business account set up on that social media platform.
Advertising on Facebook
There are over 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook and around 2.1 million daily active users. In other words, one quarter of the world’s population goes online daily and are all users you could potentially reach through Facebook's Ads system. Online businesses - especially small to medium-sized ones - have a lot to gain from this giant social media platform’s ability to drive traffic, generate sales, increase brand awareness, and encourage user engagement.
Creating a Facebook Business Page
To start running Facebook and Instagram ads, you need to create a Facebook Business Page. Start by logging in to your personal Facebook account and going to facebook.com/pages/creation. Fill in your business information and choose a category from the drop-down menu. We recommend selecting ‘eCommerce Website’, but you can choose up to three categories, so choose any category that applies.
Once you’ve created your page, you’ll need to upload a profile picture and a cover photo. We’d recommend using your logo as the profile picture, and something simple or related to your business for the cover photo. Next, go to the ‘about’ section and fill in any additional or helpful information about your dropshipping business, including your company description, contact information, and website URL.
Once your page is ready, you’ll need a Facebook Business Manager account to monitor and improve your business’s page and ads. Go to business.facebook.com and create a business manager account. Enter your business details and paste the link for your new business page. Next, Facebook will direct you to the Facebook Business Suite, which will give you an overview of all the data generated by your business page. This is extremely useful information, but first, you will need to finish setting up your business manager utility. Go to ‘more tools’ and click on ‘business settings.’ Scroll through the categories, add information about your business and business page, add a payment method, and so on. The final step is to navigate to the Ads Manager and create an ad account, which you should also connect to your page.
If you get stuck at any point, make sure to check out the resources and guides Facebook offers. The Facebook Business Help Center has further information and can help if you encounter difficulty.
For further assistance, refer to the Facebook Business Help Center.
Adding Facebook Pixel to Your Site
Before creating any ads, we recommend installing the Facebook Pixel on your website. The Facebook pixel is a specific line of code that is placed on your website, allowing you to monitor conversions and make your ads more effective over time. It will show which Facebook users respond to which ads and will help you retarget those ads if needed.
To set up the Pixel, navigate to your Facebook Ads Manager, select ‘all tools’, click on ‘pixels’, click ‘create a pixel’, name it, and hit ‘create’. Facebook will then ask how you’d like to install it. If you’re using a website builder, it will be fairly easy to copy the Pixel ID and paste it on your store via your platform’s dashboard.
Getting Started with Facebook Ads
Before learning how to create Facebook ads, it’s essential to understand how the platform works and what it has to offer. When you start creating ads with Facebook, you will notice this specific hierarchy:
- Campaigns - focused on a specific advertising objective
- Ad sets - ads classified by audience
- Ads - individual ads displayed to users
When it comes to targeting, there are many options to experiment with, so consider setting up different audience groups and various campaigns. If you haven’t dealt with many customers yet, you can obtain valuable information on your future customer demographics while setting up Facebook ads. To determine your audience, we recommend creating a series of ads derived from different sets of interests, after which you can narrow down those interests and pay attention to other target audience traits like age, gender, location, and more.
For a start, treat Facebook ads as a free space to experiment. Even the most successful online businesses have to try, fail, and try again when they first launch ads, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t generate much traffic or sales with your first advertisement. Experimentation and determination is key.
Finally, keep in mind that since Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, you have the option to control ads for both platforms from your Facebook Ads Manager.
Now that we’ve covered how to start your Facebook Business page, let’s take a look at the kinds of ads you can run.
Image and Video Ads
You have probably already encountered these types of ads while scrolling through your Facebook news feed. The reason these ads remain popular is that they resemble organic posts from other users and feature an image or video with a call-to-action (CTA). Common CTAs include Shop now, Learn more, Watch more, Book directly, Send messages, or Contact us. Regardless of what you write, the text should be encouraging users to take a specific action related to getting them involved with your business.
Carousel Ads
These are similar to image and video ads, but carousel ads feature a slideshow that users can scan through to view multiple images or videos. Facebook allows you to add up to ten images or videos per post. You can also include individual links under each slide in the post to direct users to different pages. One example of how you could use carousel ads is uploading 10 new bags featured in your online store. You can include a link for each bag so if any user is interested, they can immediately visit a page where they can make a purchase.
Story Ads
These ads pop up in full-screen view in between Facebook Stories or Instagram Reels. They are big, bold, and attention-grabbing, so if you opt to use this type of advertisement, you should have some striking imagery or video to go with it. Story ads also feature a CTA button at the bottom of the screen.
Using Facebook Ads Manager
The first thing you’ll want to do with Facebook Ads Manager will be to set a target audience. Go to ‘plan’ and click on ‘audience insights’ for a greater understanding of audience traits. If you’re selling swimwear, you can go to ‘interests’ and select ‘swimwear’ to identify your biggest market segments.
When you have gathered a list of potential interests, hit ‘save’, name your audience, and click ‘save’ again at the bottom of the page. Your audience will be saved in the ‘audience insights’ tool and will be accessible in the ‘audiences’ section.
To create an ad campaign, open the ‘campaigns’ tab in the Facebook Ads Manager and click ‘create’. Next, choose from the list of campaign objectives; if you have just opened your dropshipping store, consider setting ‘conversions’ or ‘store traffic’ as your objective. Consider using the ‘Campaign Budget Optimization’ feature, which helps you allocate your budget at a campaign level instead of on an individual ad level, sending your budget to the ad sets that perform better.
After that, you need to choose a ‘conversion event.’ We recommend selecting ‘view content’, which will show your ads to users who are most likely to click on them. Next you will choose an audience. You can either use a saved audience you specified earlier or create one from scratch. Lastly, set up your campaign by selecting a budget and choosing a schedule. Keep in mind to:
- set your bid strategy to ‘lowest cost’. This will help you get the most clicks at the lowest price and will instruct Facebook to spend your entire budget.
- click “show more options” and select ‘link click (CPC)’ under ‘when you are charged’. This will instruct Facebook to only charge you for a link click and not an impression.
- that you can always alter the schedule and dates for your campaign.
When designing your ad, you can either choose to use an existing post on your page or schedule an ad from scratch. Let’s say you want to create a basic image or video ad from scratch. Choose ‘single image or video’ and upload your files. After that, fill in:
- the main text of your post.
- your website URL (or specific webpage URL).
- the headline text.
the CTA button text.
Consider experimenting with special offers that give your users ‘50% off’ or ‘free shipping.’ Deals like these usually perform well on Facebook.
When it comes to selling products and directing traffic to your site, make sure that you are directing the traffic to a product page instead of your homepage.
Tracking Success
After you finalize your ads and send them into the wild, let them run for a few days and then check the results. Your Facebook Ad data will help you create better ads in the future and run more focused campaigns.
Facebook provides certain metrics that can help you understand how your ad is performing.
- Reach - how many people saw your ad at least once.
- Impressions - how many times your ad showed up for the first time on someone's screen.
- Frequency - a division of the number of impressions and the total unique user views.
- Link clicks - number of times someone has clicked on a link included in your ad.
- CTR (click-through rate) - The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked it.
- CPC (cost per click) - what you pay for each link click, on average.
You can check how your ad is performing by going to the Campaigns tab. Facebook will show you these results in different breakdowns, such as age, gender, and location. Note what went well and what didn’t, and use this data for your future ad campaigns.
Creating an Instagram Business Profile
For Instagram Business Profile, it is best to create a new page with a new business email address rather than your private one. After creating a new email address, download the Instagram application and sign up with your new email for a Business Profile (if you forget, you can go to the settings and click on ‘Switch to Business Profile.’) Instagram will ask you to connect to your Facebook Business Page before finalizing.
Next, it’s time to customize your page.
Your profile should include:
- a profile picture (you can use the logo).
- a descriptive bio that tells users what you offer.
- a link to your dropshipping store.
Tracking Performance with Instagram Insights
Like Facebook, Instagram provides free analytics and metrics to track your ad campaign performance.
- Activity - user actions on your profile.
- Content - how well your content is performing, like your posts, promotions, stories and reels.
Audience - what type of audience your profile is attracting.
You can view these metrics by going to your profile, tapping on the top right corner of your screen, and selecting ‘Insights.’ Similar to Facebook ads, you will need to experiment with your campaigns and promotions in order to decide what parameters work best.
Using Instagram Ads to Promote Your Products
The most basic way to advertise on Instagram is through post promotion. You can promote existing posts or upload new ones to promote. Select an uploaded post and click ‘promote’ on the bottom right-hand corner. Instagram will ask you to set a goal such as:
- more profile visits.
- more website visits.
- more messages.
Let’s say you selected ‘more profile visits.’ Instagram will ask you to choose an audience (which can be automatic or custom), a budget, and duration. On the final screen (the one that says “You’re all set”) will let you double-check the details of your promotion, attach a payment method if you haven’t done so already, and create your promotion. You can change the budget and duration later, but this can negatively affect the ad performance. To track performance, click on ‘view results’ on the bottom left-hand corner of your ad.
Another way to advertise your brand on Instagram is through story ads. Similar to Facebook, Instagram story ads will appear between the stories of people you follow and are great at capturing the user’s attention. Story ads will also have a call to action at the bottom. They can be in image or video format, but videos are more effective at capturing user attention.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a powerful way to gain exposure for your business and bring traffic to your page. On Instagram, people with a large following and loyal audience are perfect for collaborations and sponsorships. Collaborating with influencers provides the unique opportunity to connect with a highly engaged audience and build mutual trust. Influencers working in a particular niche tend to have extremely loyal followers, responsive to anything they promote, and willing to try new products.
When it comes to budgeting, you don’t have to shoot for the moon. If macro-influencers are too much for your budget right now, consider working with micro-influencers who have followings in the 1,000 - 100,000 range. Not only will it be cheaper, but this category of influencer tends to have a more personal relationship with their audience than those with over 100k.
Tips for Creating Effective SMM Content
As our Dropshipping SMM chapter comes to a close, we would like to share some further tips for creating SMM content that is engaging and effective at promoting your brand.
- Maintain consistency across your posts. The tone of voice, color themes, design approach, and other artistic aspects should be relatively similar to help make your brand stand out and seem familiar. You can change your SMM tactic later, but make sure you do not transition often or you risk alienating your current users.
- Pay attention to spelling and grammar when writing. Well-written copy and captions indicate professionalism. Typos and bad grammar can harm the legitimacy of your brand in the eyes of current and potential users.
- Develop a schedule for your posts. You do not have to post every single day, but every other day is a good start for an SMM campaign. Stay consistent with your schedule too - your followers will get used to regular updates and if it falters, it makes your brand and company look disorganized and untrustworthy.
- Balance your organic and paid content. Audiences will get annoyed if you bombard them with too much sales-focused content, so consider posting engaging content such as advice, company news, questions to your audience, light-hearted humor, memes, and polls.
- Do NOT buy fake followers. Period. It will put your credibility at risk and yield very low engagement rates. Do not do it.
SMM is not something you learn overnight, but these steps are enough to get you started. Don’t be disheartened if your early SMM campaigns aren’t as successful as you would like them to be. Make sure to experiment with different promotions, audiences, and posts. Just treat SMM as an interesting experiment rather than an obligation, and you’ll be surprised how many people can relate to your content. Good relationships yield engagement rates, which eventually put you at the top of everyone’s feed.
Good luck and happy sales!