Today’s article on How Smart Dropshippers Test Products Quickly is brought to you by Pete Boyle – Chief Copywriter at jumper.ai.
Let’s welcome Pete in our blog, and learn from his invaluable experience!
On my way to the office this morning I listened to a Eugene Schwartz speech. In it, the famous copywriter covers the nature of copywriters.
He says copywriters are a rare breed, only ever trying for the big win. They’re people who aren’t interested in an extra 0.5% here and there.
They want to land the whale.
They want to earn enough from each letter to cover a year’s expenses.
They are overly ambitious.
It’s this ambition that keeps them doing one thing other marketers don’t.
They’re forever testing.
It means they fail a lot, but those failures are stepping stones to that huge success.
It’s a concept I 100% agree with. However, it applies to more than just copywriters.
The internet’s caused a huge increase in the number of entrepreneurs whose sole focus is to find that single big win. People who are testing over and over again.
And one of the key groups who fall into this entrepreneurial mindset of finding that big win are dropshippers and ecommerce professionals.
These are people constantly testing new product ideas. Forever tweaking their funnels and advertising. They, like every entrepreneur out there, are looking for the product and approach that could transform their life.
So the question is, how can you quickly find the idea that could transform your life?
The Secret to Entrepreneurial Success in Dropshipping and Ecommerce
We all dream of that core product offering that generates 80% of our revenue. The kind that will turn our brand into the next Dollar Shave Club or Beardbrand.
Thing is, we’re all so focused on the outcome that we often overlook the process and journey to get there.
If you look at the history of any successful store you’ll see multiple tests into what their audience would most like to purchase.
Beardbrand, for example, launched their store off the back of a blog. A blog which brought in potential customers and allowed them to find which areas of their audience felt underserved and which products they were interested in.
In this interview, the founders mention;
“Beardbrand fosters style for the urban beardsman. We noticed a trend with men growing their beards out, however companies that served beardsmen tended to gravitate toward the hippies, outdoorsmen, or bikers.
We noticed there was a more white collared beardsman that was not being served and with that we launched Beardbrand.”
Great little story right?
But these guys had a popular blog they could turn to for advice and guidance on their product offering. What if you don’t have this?
If you’re just starting out you likely won’t have an established audience to ask for guidance. So what are the options to find your next killer product?
Well, it goes back to Eugene Schwartz and his idea of relentlessly testing ideas.
You have to put as many ideas and products out into the world to see what sticks. Then, you discard what isn’t working but retain what is.
It’s not a new idea and this concept has been the driving force behind many of today’s biggest businesses.
In fact, it’s the reason Jeff Bezos attributes to Amazon’s success. He’s been quoted as saying,
“Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day…”
He goes on to explain that if you have a 10% chance of a 100X payoff then you should take that chance every single time – because in the long run, it’ll pay off.
Here’s a cool little depiction of that concept in action.
Those little failures aren’t the career-ending missteps many seem to believe. They are, in fact, the stepping stones to that one big win.
You have to be willing to fail hard if you want to win big.
If you want to start your dropshipping store or want to branch out into a new product line but aren’t sure where to start, stop worrying.
The key thing you need to do is test various different products and see what gets the most traction.
The concept is hardly rocket science. However, the steps needed for such an aggressive product testing schedule are.
So, to help you find your next 100X win, I’m going to run through the simplest way to blast out numerous products across any social network.
Aggressive Testing to Find Your Perfect Product
Each failed product test is nothing more than a step toward that 100X win. The more tests you run, the shorter your journey to success.
But there’s a problem, right? You can’t keep throwing up new product pages, ad campaigns, optimize numerous funnels, and stay on top of your nurture when trying to test dozens of different products.
So what’s the solution?
Sell directly through your social media channel posts and updates.
Remove the store, the product page, the checkout, and abandonment campaigns. Give yourself a direct method of selling to an audience where they’re hanging out – on social media.
By removing those stages the friction is almost eradicated, creating a faster feedback loop on what people are looking to buy.
Thanks to the advancements in tech and with the growing popularisation of Messenger marketing you can effectively turn any of your social media accounts into an automated checkout. Here’s how.
Turning Your Social Accounts into Automated Stores
You’ll want to set this method up on whichever social network you’re most active on, however, I’d also recommend setting it up on one or two other complementary networks too.
For the purposes of illustrating the concept, I’m going to run you through how to set up an automated checkout bot on Facebook – again, it’s pretty much the same process on any other network.
I’m assuming you already have your business account set up on your network. All you now need to do is set up your automated checkout bot for which we’re using jumper.ai.
I won’t run you through the whole process because you can read all about how to sell through Facebook in this piece on the jumper blog.
Once you log in to jumper you’ll see the below dashboard. From there, you’re just going to need to follow the prompts to set up your business and payment details.
After that, you’ll just need to sync the relevant networks along with Messenger before adding your products.
What this will do is give you the ability to sell directly through your social media by adding a relevant hashtag to your posts.
If a member of your audience responds with that hashtag, then they’ll kick off an automated checkout bot via Messenger.
And that’ll allow you to sell directly through social media.
All that’s left is to find a range of products to test. If you’re looking for a little guidance, check out this piece by Adrian here on the Beeketing blog.
However, you can’t just run any sort of product through these sort of campaigns. So before I sign off this piece I want to outline a couple of different tactics to ensure success.
The Secret to Effective Social Selling
I could lie here and say social commerce is the single most effective way to increase your sales. That within weeks you could be sipping cocktails on a beach.
But that would be bullshit, and you’d know it.
Social commerce is a great way to reduce the friction in your funnel, but it’s often based on a 1-2 purchase funnel.
Step 1 – The user sees your awesome post on FB/Insta etc
Step 2 – They check out
It’s a super short sales cycle.
You’re not going to have much luck selling high-end products like a $4000 3D, smart TV through social media alone.
That’s a very considered purchase. People spending that much want to compare products, read over key features, and make sure they make the right purchase which takes time.
This very direct method using extremely short form copy isn’t going to remove their primary fears.
For those big-ticket items you need to warm the prospect over multiple touchpoints. So what is social commerce good for?
Well, it’s incredible at getting people into a longer funnel and warming them to your brand which is key in getting those higher ticket sales later on.
It’s no secret that it’s more expensive to attract new customers than hold onto those you already have. Its also no secret that existing customers are much easier to sell to.
Social commerce is an easy way to bypass the high costs of customer acquisition and kicks off the customer journey from low-cost product to high-ticket item.
It moves people from your purchase journey into your customer journey.
Your goal isn’t to sell outrageously expensive items, but to get people to try your brand. Then you wow them with your incredible products and awesome service.
With that in mind, here’s a few reminders for effective social commerce.
Stick to Low-Cost Impulse Purchases
Mobile usage is off the charts right now. Overall, people seem to prefer using their smartphone to access the internet over their desktops.
The same is true for social media browsing. People favor their smartphones over anything else.
Your customers browse your store from all sorts of crazy places. But wherever they are, they’re looking for a quick fix.
They’ve not got time for a considered purchase when they’re browsing Instagram – so reduce any barriers to a successful sale.
Make it easy to buy not just in the method, but also the price of the product. If someone sees an awesome post on Instagram that costs them $10, they’re gonna buy right then and there. If it’s $100, they’re gonna walk away.
Social commerce is an impulse buy medium. Price your campaigns accordingly.
Keep the End Goal in Mind
You want to sell the $4000 product right? But you can’t do it through social commerce. So what should you do?
Keep relevant upsells in mind throughout.
If your big ticket item is a TV, don’t use social commerce to push a phone charge cable. Work backward from the big-ticket item to a relevant small impulse purchase.
Ask yourself what someone who wants your big ticket item would also need and perhaps be keen to buy at a lower price.
This way, you’re only attracting users who have an interest in your end goal product. Which leads us to the next point.
Branch Down from that End Goal
Working your way from the high-ticket offer backward is only part of the equation here.
You also want to branch out with those backward paths. Instead of coming up with one low-cost item that could lead to the high-ticket offering, try to devise 3-4 different retreating paths.
Not only will this give you more customer entry points, but you can also cross-sell some of those products to increase the number of touchpoints all within your social media accounts.
Social Commerce is Key to Growing your Brand
Testing multiple products is the fastest way to find out what your customers want to buy. However, to do it at the scale you need to quickly find what works is too much work for any small growing brand.
Social commerce, and the ability to sell directly to your customers through your social media accounts, is the easiest method of testing multiple products to see what sticks.
It’s akin to a survey of your audience. However, instead of amending your strategy to fall in line with what your audience says they want, you’ll be aligning it with their actual purchase behavior.
The proof here really is in the pudding. There’s no better indication of purchase intent than an actual purchase.
If you want to find what works with your audience, test as many low-cost products as possible and monitor what’s selling.
Then, build up from there.
We feel honoured to have Pete Boyle’s insights featured in our blog, and we are incredibly thankful for the knowledge he has shared with us.
Author bio here:
Pete Boyle is Chief Copywriter at jumper.ai – a tool that makes selling through social as simple as possible.
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