Top 8 Rewarding Marketing Strategies for Dropshipping for 2024

Dropshipping continues to explode in popularity due to the lowered financial risk on the part of business owners. There are an estimated 26.5 million eCommerce stores around the globe. This makes it really important to have workable marketing strategies for dropshipping.

However, you don’t need just any ol’ strategy, but premium tactics that will drive your eCommerce business forward and ensure success.

Where do you find ‘em? Why, right here, of course. In this blog post, we’ll cover well-known and lesser-explored marketing strategies for dropshipping, especially for growing eCommerce brands like yours.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

The best marketing strategies for dropshipping businesses use email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, SEO, and advertising.
Experimenting with the above strategies to decide which works best for your eCommerce business (and your audience) will yield the most consistent results.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Let’s start with the foundation of your business: your audience.

The value of niching down

You must identify your niche before you can dig into customer demographics.

Every business needs a niche; otherwise, you enter an overpopulated market where it will struggle to survive. I’m not saying that for dramatic emphasis, either. Data has emerged reporting that 90% of eCommerce businesses will fail.

If you want to be in that upper 10%, you need a niche.

The key to selecting a niche is finding the middle ground. If your niche is too known, it will be like the situation I described before, where you will never be able to make an impression because the market is flooded with eCommerce brands.

If you go too little-known with your niche, you won’t have any competition, but you won’t have customers.

Building customer profiles

As your eCommerce store attracts customers, you need to capitalize, using tools like Hotjar, Tableau, Kissmetrics, or the famous Google Analytics to understand who those people are.

Where do they come from? What products interest them the most? How much money do they spend on average?

Answering these questions will set the stage for building customer profiles.

As you get to know your customers better through email marketing, you will gain more insights into them, including information like what kind of industry they work in, approximately how much they earn per year, their marital status, how many children they have, and what their other preferred brands are.

And yes, this stuff matters in marketing!

Mapping out customer personas

The more customer data you have, the easier it will be to build customer personas or avatars.

Since marketing to 16 different audience segments is a gargantuan task, businesses create avatars or audience segment traits amalgamated into one fictional character, like Spendthrift Steve.

It’s far easier to sell and market to five avatars than those 16 segments. You can tailor your message to an avatar’s needs, ensuring you hit on more pain points and your marketing campaign connects.

2. Leverage Social Media Platforms

Social media is your best friend for building awareness of your dropshipping business and strengthening your brand.

From Facebook to TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, you have many ways to connect with your audience and solidify customer relationships, building loyalty.

Here are the best practices for each social media platform.

Facebook

Post daily, with the recommended allowance of up to twice a day. Research when your audience is most active on the platform and plan to post around those times.
Share content, including text posts, images, videos, and graphics.
Find your target market and work to get your posts in front of their eyes by using keyword optimization and posting valuable content.
Use Facebook Ads, a paid advertising system, to spread brand awareness.
Go live occasionally, sharing your industry thoughts and insights, dropping new products, or making a special announcement.
Track your Facebook Business account metrics to determine which posts gained traction and which didn’t.

TikTok

Post at least once a day, but up to four times daily. Review audience data and the TikTok algorithm to select optimal times to post, tweaking your times until you hit paydirt.
Keep your videos short so they’re engaging. Stick within 34 seconds.
Make the content enjoyable to view. Shoot in portrait mode rather than horizontally, use high-quality media, and change your backgrounds to keep them interesting.
Use hashtags in your comments (and in your bio) and add a CTA. Your CTA can also appear in the video.
Seek out influencers interested in trying your eCommerce products and reviewing them or otherwise collaborating.
Above all, be yourself and have fun with it.

Instagram

Since Facebook owns Instagram, a posting schedule once or twice a day also works on this visual platform. Posting regularly will keep up engagement and elevate you in the Instagram algorithm, so your content will appear in people’s feeds.
Don’t bury the lede when posting on Instagram, whether going live, uploading a video, or adding a reel. Begin with the most important information. Everything else is secondary.
Keep your content branded and high-quality.
Accompany your posts with text CTAs, but simplify them so more people will take action.
Go live, but plan what you’ll say beforehand so you don’t get nervous in front of the camera.

Twitter

Post twice to three times daily to stay fresh in your audience’s feeds.
Use hashtags, but do so properly. Commandeering a hashtag for your own use will cause your post to get ignored and possibly reported.
Create your own hashtag, but triple-check before it goes live that it’s SFW. We’ve all seen a few unfortunate hashtags in our day, like “susanalbumparty,” a Susan Boyle hashtag that went horribly wrong.
Retweet your audience’s insights as appropriate, and comment on their posts.
Invest in Twitter Ads to promote your eCommerce brand on the platform with native ads.
Keep your content short, as Twitter has a 280-character limit. If your content is too long, you won’t be able to post it until you shorten it.

YouTube

Your posting schedule varies depending on the length of your video. If you post Shorts, which are short-form content generally about 30 seconds, post thrice a week. If your videos are full-length, posting weekly is fine.
Select your video title carefully, incorporating relevant hashtags. You can be sensationalistic in your title but don’t mislead people. Consider adding emojis to the title.
Use custom thumbnails rather than the YouTube default thumbnails from snapshots of your video. This will increase engagement.
Insert relevant hashtags in your description box and add your CTA there.
Ask your viewers to like, subscribe, and share. You should also cross-post your videos to other social media platforms.
Livestream on YouTube periodically.

Craft an active LinkedIn presence by posting two to five times per week.
Upload a professional business photo, such as a company logo.
Participate in LinkedIn groups, answering questions, offering information, and generally being helpful.
Post high-quality visuals, including videos and images.

3. Focus on Email Marketing

Your dropshipping marketing campaign is coming along well, but it must have email marketing to succeed.

With more than 361 billion emails projected to go out in 2024, you’d miss out on a large portion of your potential audience without utilizing strategies like the following.

Segment your email list

Your dropshipping products appeal to a specific audience segment, which you should have identified already as part of your target market. Likewise, you must divide your email list according to demographics, psychographics, and geographics.

The segments you build will receive emails tailored to their needs and interests to increase the chances of making a sale. Remember to continually segment your list, as you should have an increasing number of leads subscribing. Existing customers will have changing needs over time and may also need re-segmentation.

Craft compelling newsletters and promotional offers

EngageBay has a series of email newsletter templates you can rely on for your first campaign. The newsletters include several styles to suit your eCommerce business.

Also, here are some best practices to keep in mind as you begin sending newsletter content:

Use whitespace in your design, especially if you have a lot of images and videos. The extra space allows those media elements to stand out.
When designing an email newsletter, ensure it’s mobile-optimized. More than 40% of consumers open emails via mobile devices versus 16.2% on desktop.
Consider a theme for your newsletter, whether centered around a holiday, a season, or a business milestone.
Insert calls to action above the fold.
Promote good readability using legible fonts, a legible font size, and a suitable text color (including the background color).
Write a subject line that inspires people to open your emails, using elements like curiosity or FOMO.
Add alt text to all images in your email newsletter.
Test your emails before sending them.

You can use the above strategies when crafting promotional offers as well.

Automate email campaigns for cart abandonment recovery

Email automation is one of your most valuable tactics in minimizing abandoned carts, as you can ensure your messages go out at the precise moment the lead begins losing interest.

The faster you can re-engage them, the more likely they will make a purchase.

Besides cart abandonment recovery, you can also rely on email automation for welcome campaigns, follow-ups, announcements, and product drop emails.

Automation is valuable as your audience grows and you have customers and leads in different time zones. You can keep up with the right email volume for your audience size without the manual effort.

While you have so many email marketing and automation tools to try, EngageBay’s is one of the most highly regarded. Our free, startup-friendly software has low-cost pricing plans if you need more features.

4. Improve your SEO

While marketing is an efficient way to gain new customers and drive goals for your dropshipping business, you need SEO for your eCommerce company to succeed. Otherwise, your website might as well be invisible.

Considering you rely exclusively on an online presence for sales, you can’t help but follow these SEO strategies.

Keyword research specific to dropshipping businesses

Researching keywords relevant to dropshipping is your first order of business in your quest to elevate your rank.

Keywords can be short- and long-tail. The former refers to generalized and shorter-form search terms, whereas long-tail keywords are more specific but longer search terms. For example, if you specialize in sweatshirts, a short-tail keyword would be “sweatshirts eCommerce.” A long-tail example would be “sweatshirts eCommerce fast shipping.”

Here are some more pointers for identifying and using dropshipping keywords:

Don’t think like a search engine when researching keywords to use in your SEO campaign. Think like a human. What kinds of terms would they search for?
While specific keywords are useful, if you’re too specific, few people will search the terms, and your site rank won’t increase.
Rely on keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner to help you brainstorm which terms to focus on.

On-page SEO tactics for product descriptions and blog content

On-page SEO, which refers to the SEO measures you implement on your website, will help your eCommerce store attract more leads and customers. Here are some on-page tips:

Use internal links to provide more relevant information to your readers.
Write meta descriptions for blog content.
Sprinkle your keywords into your page titles, URLs, meta descriptions, and throughout the content.
Make your content more readable with short paragraphs and bullet points.
Introduce a content hierarchy with H1, H2, and H3 headers.
Add alt text to your images.
Prioritize fast site loading speed, with an average of two to eight seconds recommended.
Ensure your site is mobile-optimized.
Create a website hierarchy to ensure it’s easy for website crawlers to do their jobs.

Building backlinks through guest blogging and partnerships

The best backlinks aren’t bought but earned.

That will require you to put time into seeking suitable partners for backlinks. Once you do, ask them for a guest blogging arrangement. You can also write lists and recommend your favorite brands to generate backlinks.

5. Understand Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

With your SEO taken care of and your eCommerce site beginning to rank, it’s time to augment your strategy with advertising.

One of the most cost-effective types is pay-per-click or PPC advertising, as you pay a publisher for each click you receive.

However, PPC ads can be a touch confusing to the uninitiated, and even though they’re low-cost, they can become expensive without understanding how they work. Here’s your primer on PPC ads.

Google Ads

With a global reach of 90%, most people learn how PPC ads work through Google Ads. Beginning a campaign is simple, especially if you have an existing Google Business account.

Here’s how:

Log into your Google Ads account.
Select the Campaigns icon, which looks like a loudspeaker.
Go to the section menu, and under the dropdown, choose Campaigns.
Click the Campaigns option, then the Plus button.
Select New Campaign.
Choose a campaign objective, then click Continue.
Select the type of campaign, with these options available:
- Performance Max
- Smart
- App
- Demand Gen
- Shopping
- Video
- Display
- Search

Facebook Ads

Facebook still has the most users on social media in 2024, so it’s worth trying their ad platform to grow your eCommerce business.

Among the best reasons to use Facebook Ads besides their huge audience reach is the segmentation possibilities. Facebook lets you divide your audience by very specific criteria, including:

Recent life events
Languages they know
Political affiliation
Income
Recent purchases
Education level
Behaviors
Interests

Further, Facebook Ads are inexpensive.

While Meta, which owns Facebook, did away with the traditional Facebook Analytics, you can use a tracking pixel known as a Facebook Pixel instead. The Facebook Pixel provides details about the success of your Facebook ad campaign.

Lesser-known platforms for PPC

Don’t forget to look into Snapchat and Pinterest for your PPC ad campaign.

Snapchat PPC advertising can assist with many dropshipping marketing campaign goals, from more leads to more subscribers, views on Snapchat, better lead awareness, and sales. Further, Snapchat integrates with Shopify, a major dropshipping platform, making it even more efficient.

Pinterest Ads can reach up to 400 million monthly users, making them a cost-effective part of your PPC ad campaign.

6. Go Beyond Blogging for Content Marketing

I’m sure blogging is the first thing that comes to mind when discussing content marketing, right?

While having a blog is an important part of building your dropshipping brand and business, content marketing can and should go so much further, especially for eCommerce companies.

Here are some other strategies to build into your content marketing plans that are suited for eCommerce.

Video content

As an eCommerce brand, you’re all about the visuals. Don’t only describe your products through your blog posts but also upload images. Show them through videos!

You can make interesting, product-focused video content in all sorts of ways. For example, why not record an unboxing? That kind of content is very popular nowadays, as people love to see what’s behind those cardboard flaps.

Video reviews showing the product used resonate with people, as this content can drive purchasing decisions.

You can upload video content to YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as less video-centric platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Other ways to use your video content include inserting it into landing pages or other website content and injecting it into your blog posts to make them more interesting and informative.

Podcasting

Did you know that 135.4 million Americans in 2024 listen to podcasts once a month? That’s 59.2% of the US population. Podcasts are at their zenith right now, so you might consider starting one, especially if your eCommerce brand is about niche products.

After all, part of buying a niche product is loading oneself with information, which is much easier when you regularly upload a podcast.

Interactive content

Engaging users is as easy as crafting interactive content such as polls and quizzes. You can post this content on your social media feeds, insert it into your newsletters, and add it to some blog posts, especially if you write monthly roundups.

7. Utilize Analytics for Marketing Optimization

You did it! Your first marketing campaign is in the books. Hopefully, your dropshipping brand benefited, but the only way to be sure is by measuring the metrics.

I’ve got all the guidance you need to do that efficiently, including tool recommendations.

The most important metrics for a successful marketing campaign

Without further ado, here are the KPIs you must measure as your campaign begins and especially after it ends:

Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC, tells you if your customer acquisition methods are cost-effective.
Return on investment or ROI, a top metric for measuring campaign profitability.
Conversions from lead to customer should be higher than before you launched your campaign.
Average Engagement Rate or AER tells you in a percentage how many people engaged with your social media content compared to your overall followers. Engagement counts as shares, saves, comments, and likes.
Quality Score as measured by Google. You can use this information to determine how your landing pages, keywords, and ads perform.
Cost per click or CPC is a great KPI for measuring your advertising spend and how cost-effective your ad campaigns are.
Social media shares will help you determine if your content is gaining traction.
Follower counts so that you can track its growth over time.
Podcast or video plays to reveal whether people watch your video content.
Return on Ad Spend or ROAS, which tells you how profitable your PPC ad campaigns are.
Open rate, which displays how many people open the emails you send.
Click-through rate measures whether your audience clicks the links in your email content.
Search engine rankings are measured by tracking your search engine results page or SERP position.
Resource downloads if you offer resources on your website.
Email subscriber growth should be on an upward trajectory.
Bounce rate tells you how long people spend on your website before leaving.
Customer satisfaction rating ensures you have happy customers ready to buy more.
Cost per mille or CPM to calculate how much you spend on advertising per every 1,000 ad impressions.
Website traffic tells you whether your site is getting traffic and how much it has increased or decreased over time.
Sales close rate to help you gauge whether your team is closing enough deals.
Organic sessions tell you how long your audience uses your app or website.
Net Promoter Score or NPS is a 10-point scale that identifies detractors and promoters, as well as those ambivalent customers. You ask your audience how likely they are to recommend your products on a scale of 0 to 10, then tally the scores and determine how best to approach your audience.
Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV, helps you predict how much revenue you can acquire from each customer in your sales pipeline.
The number of leads that should have increased through your marketing efforts.

Tools for tracking and interpreting marketing campaign data

How do you capture the above metrics? You need tools like the following:

Google Analytics
SEMrush
DashClicks
Buffer
Matomo
Kissmetrics
EngageBay
Sprout Social
Oribi
Ruler Analytics
TapClicks
Adobe Analytics
Leadfeeder
Buffer
Domo
Mixpanel
Heap
Ninjacat

Adjusting your strategies

As your marketing analytics insights come to light, you may decide to retool or finetune your ongoing strategies. That’s normal, especially if the results of your campaign were less than you anticipated.

Continually measure the KPIs after adjusting your campaign, as you’ll know sooner than later whether you’re on the right path.

8. Step Up the Game With Advanced Tactics for Seasoned Marketers

Now that you have a few marketing campaigns under your belt, for better or for worse, it’s time to crank it up a notch, taking your dropshipping marketing to the next level.

Retarget strategies across platforms

A cross-channel remarketing campaign could be just what the doctor ordered. Pixel-based retargeting is your best bet if you want to use platforms like Facebook and TikTok to reach your audience and get them to change their minds about your product.

The pixel tracks the user as they browse the internet, then sends signals to relevant platforms, such as Google Ads, to change the ads to showcase your products.

Implement A/B testing for ads and landing pages

You already use A/B testing for your website copy and email marketing, but what about expanding its usage?

For example, you should begin testing different versions of your ads, especially banner ads.

Everything from the background color you select to the CTA button color, shape, and placement influences the success of your ad. That also applies to the typography you use and how much white space your ad has.

Testing will ensure your ads are optimized to appeal to your target audience.

Don’t stop there. You should also A/B test your landing pages so they’re ready to perform. Landing pages are one of the most valuable tools in driving conversions, so you need to know if yours are effective as is or need retooling.

Explore dynamic pricing strategies

It might also be time to reconsider different pricing. Dynamic pricing doesn’t use fixed costs.

Rather, the prices are variable and can be adjusted depending on the audience group. This pricing model considers economic factors such as competition and demand.

Dynamic pricing strategies can elevate your bottom line and help you manage your inventory more efficiently.

Conclusion

Effective marketing plays a major role in dropshipping success, as you can spread awareness, strengthen your brand, uncover lead gen measures, and convert customers for more sales.

While these steps will help you begin your eCommerce marketing, remember that marketing approaches always change.

You must also be ready to evolve, updating your tactics to meet your audience’s needs continually.

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs. You get email marketing, marketing automation, landing page and email templates, segmentation and personalization, sales pipelines, live chat, and more.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is the best social media platform for marketing a dropshipping business?

That would be Instagram, a highly visual social media platform that supports media from text to videos, images, and animations. You can go live, post stories, save stories, and pin posts to strategize what you want your audience to see first.

2. How can SEO improve my dropshipping store’s visibility?

SEO determines where your website ranks among the other dropshipping businesses in your niche. The better your rank, the more visibility you have for online searchers, who will choose your website over the competition.

3. What are the initial steps in setting up a PPC campaign for my products?

First, you must choose a PPC ad campaign tool, such as Facebook Ads or Google Analytics. Next, sign into your account (or create one if necessary) and start a new campaign, selecting your ad type.

4. How often should I send marketing emails to my customers?

You should communicate at least once a week, with three to five weekly emails appropriate for some businesses. Your audience will let you know when enough is too much.

5. What are the benefits of using analytics in my marketing efforts?

Analytics paint a picture of success or failure for your marketing campaign. Even if you didn’t get the desired results, measuring KPIs can help you discover valuable learning opportunities to minimize future mistakes.