It may seem in your best interest to continue using a winning dropshipping product that’s previously gotten great results. But that’s not always the case. There are certain situations when it’s ideal to cut your losses, drop the product, and move on to new products.
If you stick with a product that’s no longer generating the kind of income you want, you may wind up losing money if you don’t switch to a new source of revenue. So much of people’s success in dropshipping comes down to momentum and the encouragement it brings. But businesses lose drive when they’re bleeding money. This is why it’s important to know when to make the necessary transition to maintain that momentum.
In this post, we’ll go over when you should move on to new products as your current products begin losing momentum.
Test Your Facebook Ads to Determine Their Effectiveness
First, it’s important to know how often you should test your ads to determine their effectiveness in the sales funnel. This can help you gauge when it’s time to move on to new products — or a new strategy.
Here we’ll be strictly referring to Facebook ads, which are commonly used. As an example, we’ll use an ad with a “free plus shipping” offer, which we recommend using when you’re just starting out as a broke beginner. Even if you make some mistakes with this offer, you can still make money.
For a typical ad with a “free plus shipping” offer, we would start with a budget of $250, which we spread to $30 per day across a six- or seven-day period. One mistake we see a lot of people make here is that they’ll spend around $30 on ads for one day. But they won’t make any money on them, so they turn them off entirely. Unfortunately, this is the mindset that many beginners have in dropshipping, which keeps them from being able to test ads effectively.
What you really need to do is invest a full $250 in a single week. This will more accurately show you how effective your campaigns are as you test your campaigns. Within a week, you can begin to see certain trends that stand out. For instance, you’ll likely find that certain days perform better than others. This can help you schedule your ads and determine when to expect sales.
Here’s why we recommend you give your ads seven days to work their magic or encourage you to move on to a new online business strategy.
Your First Three Days Will Be the Most Crucial
As we explore the first week of an ad campaign, the first three days will be the most important. The first day will be the day you launch your ads, followed by the next two days, all of which will have ads running for $30 per day. Throughout these three critical days, it’s important not to touch anything as you let your ads do their job.
During this time frame, you’ll want to keep an eye on a few key elements, including:
CTR
The first item to look at is your click-through rate (CTR) for each day, which should be around 2%. If your CTR falls around that mark, this indicates that people are actively interested in your ads. If your CTR is too low, you may need to change the ad creative to entice more people to click, be it a modified image, video, or text. Ideally, you should run ads using three different pieces of creative material to see which performs the best.
We suggest you look at the CTR regularly on days one and two. This can help you determine if it’s likely to continue increasing or remaining steady. After two days, if some ads still see low CTR, turn them off. Also, if ads don’t see more than a 0.5% conversion rate on day one, chances are this won’t increase through day three.
Landing Page Stats
Once you’ve determined that your CTR is where it should be, it’s time to look at your landing page, at which point you’re looking at your funnel stats. Are people opting in? If not, this could indicate a problem with your landing page and the value of the offer. Your ideal opt-in rate should be at least 25%.
If your opt-in rate is below 25%, you may need to modify the offer to encourage more people. Generally, try modifying your current offer before you move on to new products entirely. In this case, we recommend using an offer stack image that serves as a visual representation of what you’re offering. Testimonials and lifestyle photos can also help enhance your opt-in pages.
Order Form Stats
If your ads and landing page seem to be functioning optimally, a problem could lie with your order forms. For a beginning offer, you should see a minimum conversion rate of 5%.
For order forms that dip below that minimum conversion rate, there are a few ways to improve it.
One way is to make sure you offer quantity break discounts for products of 2x to 8x. Here, you should highlight the 4x quantity break and autoselect it for the customer to encourage them to convert.
Second, you have to name your product something unique and catchy that differentiates it from other more generic options. All of this can increase the perceived value of your product to get more people to purchase.
It’s worth noting that if you do not see the numbers you want on a small scale, they won’t likely improve on a larger scale. This is why you need to make the necessary changes early on if your campaigns are underperforming. If your ads don’t culminate in a high CTR, you need to focus on your marketing. This will drive more people to your sales funnel and purchases.
Look Ahead to the Rest of the First Week Before You Move on to New Products
Generally, if your CTR is low and you’re not making any sales in those first three days, it’s often best to go back to the drawing board and tweak your ads, opt-in pages, or order forms. However, if you are making a few sales, the next several days will be important to monitor.
For example, your CTR may be over 2% and your opt-in rate may be around 25% by day four. Your order form might also be seeing a 3% conversion rate. These are all good numbers when starting out with your ads.
It’s also important to keep in mind that early on in your campaigns, the Facebook algorithm will still be adjusting the targeting for your ads as it attempts to identify your customers. Because of this, your stats could potentially double later on as you feed the algorithm more customers.
Throughout the last four days of that first week, you’ll want to figure out ways to optimize your current ads. You might introduce new ad creative on day five as you remove ads that aren’t yielding good results. Some ad creative is likely to do better than other images, videos, or text. So remove ineffective assets and replace them with ads that are similar to the ones getting results. You can also target new interest groups based on interest groups that responded favorably to your previous ads.
Based on your campaign’s performance during the first seven days, you can truly get a sense of how well your ads, landing pages, and sales pages are doing. From there, you can decide what needs work and revamp your strategy accordingly.
Determine When to Cut Your Losses or Keep Moving Forward
In the first week of advertising, keep an eye out for issues during those first three critical days. If you’re making sales and seeing decent stats by day four, you can continue monitoring them for the rest of the week and optimizing your campaigns.
Your CTR simply might not be cutting it in those first few days. So it may be time to optimize your existing ads or try new ones. If you’re not seeing any opt-ins or sales by the third day, you may need to try an entirely new offer or price point. You might even move on to new products if adjustments don’t seem worth the effort.
To learn more about how to succeed with your dropshipping business and develop a winning funnel, register for my free eCommerce masterclass today. You’ll find out how to use ads and other fundamental elements to make a full-time income online, whether you’re new to dropshipping or looking for a way to improve your efforts. Also, subscribe to my YouTube channel for more insights, whether you move on to new products or stick with your current item.