How to Promote Your Dropshipping Store on Instagram
While starting a dropshipping business, the setup is the easy part as there are so many ecommerce platforms that automate dropshipping. You are just promoting products someone else has created.
The home page and landing page can be installed with easy to use themes and landing page builders. There are also apps that let you instantly import product images, prices and copy. You can set up your store in under a day.
But after that comes the hard part of driving traffic and generating sales. There are so many options on how to go about this, from Instagram promotions to using more traditional coupons and discount codes. It can be confusing on which to choose. If you are looking for something quick here too, I recommend that you start with Instagram.
Among the top social networks, Instagram drives the highest engagement and the average order value on Instagram is $65 (more than Facebook and Snapchat). Also, Instagram is introducing features like checkout that make it much easier to sell online.
Therefore, today I am going to show you the various techniques you can use to promote your dropshipping store on Instagram…
Set up a powerful Instagram account:
The first thing you must do is set up an account for your dropshipping store. The better your account looks, the more relevant Instagram followers you will attract and the more traffic and sales you will be able to drive.
Start off by creating an account that includes your logo, business name, and unique username. You can use this name generator or this checker to find a perfect name for your domain or social media. Then write a short bio where you describe what you sell on your store and what you share on the account. Also, add a link that goes directly to your store’s homepage or your bestselling product’s page.
Here’s a good example of a well set up ecommerce Instagram account from Nordstrom.
As you can see, they branded it properly with their logo, business name, and username. They also wrote a good bio and the link goes to a special page that promotes the products they post on Instagram. You can also share a link to a squeeze page where people can sign up with a business email if you prefer a lead to a direct sale.
Share relevant content:
Sharing posts promoting products on your Instagram account will help drive the sales for your dropshipping store, but before you do any of this you must first share a lot of relevant content. As helpful and entertaining content gets more engagement than promotional posts.
And engagement increases your Instagram reach/edgerank, which results in future posts getting more engagement. Therefore, before you post anything promotional, you should post some helpful content, boost your reach/edgerank. This will ensure that your promotional content gets seen by more people and drives more sales.
For an example checkout Nordstrom’s Instagram posts. They sell clothing and accessories and they do publish posts promoting those products. But along with them they also publish posts that don’t sell anything. Like the below quote image.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByxwGGilMVX/
Posts like these will boost engagement and help him build a better relationship with their audience. Therefore, when they share those promotional posts later, they will drive more sales.
So, have a good think about the type of free content your audience wants and create it. It could range from something as simple as quotes to more sophisticated videos.
Plan all the posts together and develop a schedule so that they work together to drive the best results. Here’s a great guide on how to schedule Instagram posts. There are a lot of good tools to help you plan and schedule posts better. There are also several dropshipping tools that can help you dropship better.
Share promotional posts:
For the promotional posts, you mainly want to share clear photos that display the product you want to sell. So, go through the photos the manufacturer already supplied, find the best ones and post them on Instagram. You can play around with the pictures and create a collage like this one from Seven Kingdoms Mart…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhVe1guhsrP/
They also wrote a really good caption to promote the content and product. The name of the product is clearly written, the price is included and they also added the call to action ‘Active link in BIO’ to make it easy for people to find the product. And they finally ended it with a lot of hashtags as they can drive engagement.
If you feel that none of the pictures are Instagram worthy you should ask the manufacturer to send you more.
Another option is to order the products and take photos yourself. This can actually help you stand out from the other dropshippers who are selling the same products you are and make dropshipping worth it. You can add these photos to your product pages as well.
So, if you have the budget, hire a photographer and a model and take some quality unique photos of your product.
Team up with influencers:
The above organic methods will take time to work. At the beginning stages, you will only sell a few products as you will have a small number of followers. You will need to build a following of thousands of followers to consistently generate a decent number of sales ever time you post.
This is why along with promoting products through your own Instagram account you should also team up with influencers. They have already done the hard work of building a following and they can help you get your products in front of your target audience and drive sales instantly.
An example is this team up between Bobsweep and Tucker.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqSIJVPhMbR/
The Bobsweep account has less than 15,000 followers. So, they teamed up with Tucker who has over a million followers on Instagram. As it helps them get their product in front of a lot of people they wouldn’t reach by only posting on their account.
Instagram influencer marketing can bring in great results, but you have to be extremely careful while looking for influencers as you can always end up with a mess like this.
Therefore, to find influencers who will get you results for free checkout my How to Get Free Instagram Shoutouts.
And to find influencers who accept paid posts checkout How to find Instagram Influencers.
These two will help you find influencers who will help drive engagement, followers, and sales.
If you want to find influencers quickly, you can use ShoutCart instead. You can find influencers here for as little as $10.
Conclusion:
These are the different tactics you can use to promote your Instagram account. Start off by setting up your own account and promoting your products on it. While doing this you can team up with Instagram influencers with tons of followers and engagement to drive up the efforts.
Another paid option that could work for you is Instagram ads.
How do you use Instagram to promote your dropshipping store on Instagram? Which tactic has worked best for you? Please leave your comments below.
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