A drop shipping business allows for a streamlined and smooth selling experience. You can partner with external support for managing the logistics and supply chain.
With a drop shipping business plan, you can market products from different brands. And the best part is, you get to save a lot on expenses that would otherwise have been incurred. You need not spend on storage and inventory, shipping and delivery etc.
This means that you also do not need to worry about sourcing the products you are selling through your platform, managing the stocks and inventory, or handling the entire shipment and delivery process.
For your convenience, here is a set of steps to follow, for you to get started with your first drop shipping business:
Pick A Niche
It is best to go with a particular niche and offer products that fall within that niche. Offering a range of products from a particular niche becomes easier as it allows you to market the products more efficiently. Moreover, because you will specialize in a particular niche, you will have a market of customers ready to buy your products.
A tip here would be to go for products that are priced high. You can opt for a niche of products for which there is great demand. Using Google Trends as well as Adwords Planner, you can find the most searched terms associated with your niche.
If there is a demand for something in a particular region, but isn’t easily available locally, then that could be a potential product for your drop shipping business.
It would make sense to opt for products that are not too costly to ship and deliver. By doing this, you will avoid losing out on your customers.
Analyze Your Market
When we say ‘Analyze your market’, we are talking about analyzing the competition in your market. If you think a product for which there is no competition in the market can make for a good product to sell through your platform, then you may be mistaken.
This could also mean that there is less demand for such products in the market. You must ideally opt for products for which there is competition in the market.
High competition also means that there are greater chances for the business model to sustain, as demand is high and this has been pre-validated by competition.
Build Your External Business Support- Suppliers, Logistics etc.
When you have a drop shipping business, you hand over the responsibility of execution and management of shipment and delivery of the products to a third party. This means you have to find a suitable supplier service. Make sure to find a supplier service which offers services at reasonable rates. It is also important to ensure that the communication with the supplier is smooth and streamlined.
Build Your Website
You will need a website to showcase the products that you will sell. Building a website for your drop shipping business becomes simplified with the help of easy-to-create and run websites. Shopify, for instance offers ecommerce website solutions. It helps cut down on the cost of hiring a website developer and designer.
If you are not strapped for cash, such options make for a better, cheaper and quicker alternative in the nascent stages of setting up a business. ExchangeMarketplace takes this a step further by offering a fantastic platform to buy a pre-existing drop shipping business across a wide variety of product categories. This way entrepreneurs can work with a business that has traffic, products, processes and revenues right from the get-go.
Build Brand Awareness
Do you know what the best way to cut costs on marketing and advertising your business is? Social media is the answer to this question. With a huge user base of over 3 billion people on social media, it is just the perfect platform for marketing your brand. Moreover, it costs nearly nothing compared to other offline marketing and advertising efforts. You can set up your business page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms to build a presence on social media and reach out to a billion people.
These social media platforms also offer lucrative advertising options. There is a huge competition among brands and businesses for visibility on social media. In this sense, paid reach or ads make for a sure-shot way of building brand awareness. With the help of ads, you can also increase the chances of getting more conversions via social media by diligent testing.
Track And Improve Your Performance
Now that you have a website and your own business profiles on the various social media platforms, this is not the end of it. You will now have to monitor and track your performance. Using analytics tools such as Google analytics traffic, Facebook analytics, Instagram insights and so on, you can analyze your performance along the various important parameters or metrics.
With the help of insights that you draw from these tools, you can find out your e-commerce business’ strengths and weaknesses. You can take these insights and information to build future strategy and campaigns as well.
