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A significant advancement in e-commerce is drop shipping. For the uninitiated, drop shipping is an order fulfillment method wherein an online store doesn’t carry its own inventory but rather buys a product from a supplier that has it in their stock. The supplier would then deliver the product themselves to the customer who bought it from the previously mentioned online store. Drop shipping has been gaining traction that more than one out of four online retailers have already switched to using drop shipping as their main order fulfillment method.
Like them, you can also use drop shipping for your online retail store. But how do you successfully market your drop shipping business and make money out of it?
- Choose a niche that you have a huge interest in and can make money from at the same time.
When you’re setting up a drop shipping business for the first time, you might be tempted to sell various products, some of which might not have anything to do at all with each other. Opening a drop shipping business that sells general merchandise can turn into a nightmare for you, especially if you have to buy your products from several suppliers operating under different niches. Your potential customers would also get confused as to what kind of drop shipping business you’re running.
Therefore,even before launching your drop shipping business online, make sure that you’ve already figured out which niche you think you have a firm grasp of. For example, if you’re into music way more than most other people, you can open an online music store.
Moreover, you should determine which products under your chosen niche would generate a sustainable profit. Using the example above, you might want to sell records, turntables, and related productsin your online music store as there has been a recent resurgence of vinyl and you can use that boom to make money. On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t make as much money selling musical instruments in your online music store as the demand for them right now is lower compared with that ofrecords and turntables.
- Sell productsthat your supplier can deliver to your customers easily.
You’ve already decided which products to sell in your drop shipping business, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. For your drop shipping business to generate enough loyal customers, you’ll have to make sure that each order in your online retail store can befulfilled without any problems at all.
To ensure that not a single customer would want their money back or give negative feedback about your drop shipping business, you should sell products that whoever supplies them can easily ship without incurring irreparable damage. To use the previous example, you might want to scratch turntables out of the list of products that your online music store should carry as they’re bulky and any of their components can be damaged duringshipping.
- Take high-quality interactive images of your products and upload them to your online retail store.
No one in their right mind would ever want to buy a product based only on its description that you posted in your online retail store no matter how detailed it is. Customers of your drop shipping business would want to see what your products look like first before deciding whether o to buy from you or not.
You should thus put pictures ofyour products in your online retail store. However, you shouldn’t use stock photos and claim that those are what your products look like once delivered to your customer’s doorstep. Do not fool your customers into buying a product from your online retail store that looks drastically different from the actual item. This will lead to disaster.
Take some time to head over to whoever supplies you with your products and buy some for your own use. Then, shoot photos of theproducts in multiple angles and upload them in your online retail store so that your customers will have a more realistic idea of what to expect when buying from you.
- Leverage the power of social media to promote your products online.
Most people have at least onesocial media account nowadays. It’s safe to assume then that most – if not all – customers of your drop shipping business use social media to share stuff that they find interesting.
Spread the word about yourdrop shipping business on social media by running ads there, opening business accounts, and even actively participating in community groups that have to do with your chosen niche.
- Be easily reachable in case a customer has questions about your products.
Just because your drop shipping business isn’t directly involved in stocking and delivering products doesn’t mean that you should distance yourself from your customers and let your supplier deal with them. Your customers might not even have any idea at all as to who supplies the products, so they’ll naturally want to talk to you as the owner.
When putting up a drop shipping business, you should provide your customers with your contact information, namely, business phone number and email address. Make sure to respondto each customer who contacts you either thru phone or email in a timely manner. In case you aren’t feeling well to answer phone calls or emails from your customers concerning any of your products, you should assure them that you’ll get back to them as soon as you can by leaving them a message.
The traditional way of doing online business is to make sure that you don’t run out of stock too often so that you can fulfill customer orders and generate income. On the other hand, drop shipping lifts the burden of managing product inventory from your shoulders so that you can focus on other more important aspects of your online business. You may have chosen the latter order fulfillment option for your online retail store – although you’ll still have to market your drop shipping business for it to become a profitable endeavor for you by applying the above-listed tips. If you want more information on how to drop ship, journalreview.org has everything you need to know about it.
