You may have seen the company Animated Lure featured on the “Shark Tank” television show. There, they advertised a robotic fishing lure that features lifelike movement to attract fish. The product itself is impressive, but it’s important to remember that marketing is what will ultimately sell it. Improve your dropshipping store by seeing how Animated Lure runs their marketing efforts.
As Kevin from “Shark Tank” himself has said, many of the products on that show wouldn’t have been successful if it weren’t for the publicity that the show provides. Animated Lure experienced a particularly notable amount of success following their “Shark Tank” appearance, and we wanted to find out whether that success came down to their publicity through “Shark Tank” or their own marketing efforts.
Here, we’ll review what Animated Lure is doing to sell their products and determine what they’re doing right and wrong. In turn, you can apply some of what’s working in these strategies to your dropshipping business.
What Animated Lure Is Doing in Their Ads
Looking at the Facebook Ad Library, we were able to gain some insight into what Animated Lure was doing to sell their products using social media ads. We were able to focus on one ad that launched on November 6. This ad featured brief, concise copy and a demonstration video. It’s worth noting that demo videos are great for warm traffic. People likely came across this product on “Shark Tank,” which led them to find out how the product actually works.
The video ad features someone fishing with the lure, throwing the lure into a pond and catching a large fish with it. While it doesn’t show the actual act of catching the fish, only the result, it’s effective enough to show that the product works. The ad also shows the lure while used in a pool. This allows you to see its movements, which are as realistic and lifelike as advertised. Overall, it’s a reasonably effective ad that shows the lure in use and highlights the “animated” element that makes this product stand out.
At the time of this review, that ad is the only ad that Animated Lure is running on Facebook. Ultimately, it takes people to their website with a CTA directly below the video.
Navigating the Animated Lure Store
The store that their Facebook ad takes you to is a very basic store. At this point, people can choose from several variations of the Animated Lure product. Now, there’s one problem that we noticed with this strategy so far. Generally, after showing an ad with a demonstration of a specific product, you would simply link to the specific product shown in the ad. Instead, Animated Lure links to their main store page. This forces the customer to choose between different options, potentially leading to indecisiveness and uncertainty that turn people away.
Audiences want to be told what’s best when shopping for products. While options can be great, they may not know which to choose. They might not even be open to experimentation because they lack familiarity with the product. In a product demonstration that shows a product in action and resulting in success, people want to know which specific product is used and buy it. An easy way to always improve your dropshipping store is by clearly directing your customers to the product shown in your ads.
Improve Your Dropshipping Store With the 80/20 Rule
It’s always advisable to go by the 80/20 rule. This rule dictates that 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your products. Once you’ve pinpointed which of your products are the money-makers, improve your dropshipping store and direct new customers to them. If you give people too many places to click, each click leads to another touchpoint. The customer can drop off. You want to simplify the process and keep your sales funnels efficient instead. So keep the number of possible clicks to a minimum for visitors from your ads. The shorter the distance you can create between your ads and the checkout page, the higher your conversion rates will be.
We believe the Animated Lure ad’s destination may have given people too many choices for initial sales. But their store, in general, is admirably simple. It’s not overly complicated to navigate, and the products have clear thumbnail images that show what people can expect.
How Animated Lure’s Strategy Could Benefit From an Upsell
Rather than sending people to a wide selection of product variations the way their ad currently does, we recommend linking to the specific product that appears in the ad. However, with so many variations, we think the sales funnel could try to upsell the other products.
An upsell would be a great way to advertise variations that may be ideal for certain fishing conditions. For instance, a customer may buy the Gizzard Shad variation. Then, the site might upsell their Bluegill lure, claiming that it’s best when used in certain weather or when the water is murkier.
By pushing that popular item based on the 80/20 rule and upselling others, you can significantly boost sales, improve your dropshipping store performance, and maximize your average cart value. Even better, you can use a subscription to keep people paying while sending them different variations. This will be perfect if your customers like their initial purchase.
Inadequate Product Pages Could Further Hinder Sales
When looking at individual products on the Animated Lure website, we discovered a disappointing lack of listed benefits. There are some brief product descriptions. But if someone comes across the store who hasn’t seen the company’s “Shark Tank” episode, that absence of information could keep them from buying.
Another issue we noticed was the quality of the images that the website uses. Some of the images are not appealing and don’t do their products justice. They have plain white-gray backgrounds and nothing to make the product stand out. In addition, we also wondered where any testimonials and reviews were that could convince people to make a purchase.
Ultimately, it seems to us that Animated Lure relies mainly on their “Shark Tank” publicity to sell these products. As a result, the company is offering nothing really concrete and persuasive for people who might be entirely unfamiliar with their brand and products.
In your product pages, you should improve your dropshipping store by:
- Highlighting benefits
- Using high-quality images
- Showcasing reviews
- Providing enough details about features that can collectively convince people that your products are worth buying
Looking at Animated Lure’s Social Proof at Improve Your Dropshipping Store
Another big contributor to a business’s success is good social proof. We found plenty of videos on YouTube showing Animated Lure’s products in action. But we were a bit disappointed to find that they had a mere 3,000 or so followers on Instagram. Their YouTube profile was also underwhelming. It has only around 800 subscribers and a handful of videos, the most recent of which was uploaded a year ago.
In a niche like fishing, it should be easy to get hundreds or even thousands of likes for photos on a platform like Instagram. People are always showing what they caught and sharing their experiences with different fishing gear. So it’s important to harness the power of social media if you’re in this niche. Show people using your products to catch big fish, or show the different features of your products. If you stay active on social media, you can hook (no pun intended) a lot more people through these channels.
Animated Lure is doing certain things right. They have a simple store that’s easy to navigate and ads that show their product at work. However, we believe there is a lot of room for improvement in their sales funnel and social media strategies. Although Animated Lure might be seeing around seven figures on a weekly basis from sales, much of that success is likely due to their “Shark Tank” appearance — not their overall online presence. We hope you can learn from some of the issues we found and use these lessons to build a winning dropshipping sales funnel.
Improve Your Dropshipping Store — Consult With the Pros
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