Tag: lead conversion

How to Improve Your Dropshipping Store: Our Animated Lure Analysis

by Peter PruDropshipping Case StudiesLeave a Comment on How to Improve Your Dropshipping Store: Our Animated Lure Analysis

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

Screen grab of Animated Lure's long purchase process through product clicks

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

Business owner testing out how to improve their dropshipping store

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

Online shopper leaving reviews and ratings as social proof

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

If you would like to learn more about how to create the perfect dropshipping store that makes it easy to generate a full-time income online, reserve your free spot at the Ecommerce Empire Builders masterclass today! Also, visit our YouTube channel for more insights into building your ads and stores.

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How to Automate Ecommerce Email Marketing and Sell While You Sleep

by Peter PruSystems & ProcessesLeave a Comment on How to Automate Ecommerce Email Marketing and Sell While You Sleep

Welcome back, Empire Builders! Today we’re going to go over how to make sales while you sleep. Most people who start dropshipping think the only way to do that is to drive more advertising. Today, I’ll be showing you a completely different strategy. With a solid understanding of how to automate ecommerce email marketing, you get more ROI for your time investment. I’ll also go over how to set your business up in a way that doesn’t require spending more on ads. This will allow you to make money 24/7, even while you sleep.

What You’ve Been Missing About How to Automate Ecommerce Email Marketing

Most of you are driving traffic to your site and then relying on people to make a purchase on the spot. There’s no follow-up sequencing in place. I don’t mean retargeting campaigns. I’m talking about email marketing. 

There should be consistent emails going out to both customers and leads convincing them to make a purchase.

When you drive traffic to your site, most people aren’t going to buy right away. While they’re on your site, though, they give you their email address. Then you can send follow-up emails to bring them back to complete their order. That’s called the abandoned cart sequence. Many of you are doing this part right. The part you’re missing out on are the ones who do make a purchase. What you should do is have something else to sell them afterward and send emails to them, too.

Screen grab showing the missed value of marketing to customers

These are what I call money lines. They’re small things you can do that make a drastic difference. The best part is that you only have to set it up once, and it immediately starts increasing revenue and working for you. So, let’s go over, step-by-step, exactly how to automate ecommerce email marketing.

1. Set up ActiveCampaign 

To put this together, we’ll be using ActiveCampaign. There are plenty of other email marketing providers out there. But personally, I’ve been using ActiveCampaign for years, and I love it. I can’t recommend it enough. If you use our affiliate link to purchase ActiveCampaign, email [email protected] afterward. As a way of saying thank you for supporting the channel, we’ll give you 8-figure funnel templates, all the emails written out, and everything you need to plug and play with this yourself.

When you go into ActiveCampaign, you’ll want to start by creating lists. On the sidebar to the left, click “Lists” and add a new list for non-buyers. Then create another one for buyers. No matter which platform you’re using for your business, they all integrate well with ActiveCampaign. So, go to your ActiveCampaign integration and add anyone who hasn’t made a purchase to your non-buyers list and anyone who has made a purchase to your buyers list.

Then, I like to take it a step further by going to contacts and adding tags for buyers and non-buyers. After the initial setup, your integration will allow you to set it so that visitors automatically get tagged when they join and either make or don’t make a purchase. Keep it simple and organized to get the most out of it. Once you do this, it’s on autopilot.

2. Create Your Email Types

There are two kinds of emails you can send in ActiveCampaign: broadcasts and automations. 

The first type is broadcasts for promotions. This is under the “Campaigns” tab on the sidebar. If you click “Create your first campaign,” you can make a standard one called “Promo [Date],” and next, it will ask which list you want to send it to. Click on non-buyers. 

After that, you can choose one of the templates and just fill out the subject and body using the templates we’ll give you so that it’s all done for you already. That’s all you have to do to send emails out manually with ActiveCampaign.

The second type is automations. This is going to be very similar to campaigns. Go under “Automation,” choose the option to start from scratch, and create. Then you’ll see it on your dashboard with a red dot, meaning it’s inactive until you’re done setting it up. On the right side, you’ll see how many people are in the automation, how many emails or “campaigns” it has, and the “Goals” button.

3. Set up an Automation for Your Non-Buyers

Screen grab of how to create lists and actions in Active Campaign

Let’s get into the technical steps for automating your process. First, go into your newly created automation and start by naming it “Non-buyers” to make it easy. Then click “Add a start trigger,” make it “Subscribes to list,” and select the non-buyers list. 

Then, since you probably have abandoned cart emails, add a wait time of 3 days. After that, click “Add” again, navigate to “Sending options,” and add an email. Name it “Email #1.” 

Now you’re ready to actually create the email content. I usually start from scratch instead of using the templates found in ActiveCampaign. You can then use the email templates we’ll send when you use our link to sign up. 

Choose another waiting period of one day, and then add another email. This will build a continuous chain of emails. You can’t have too many emails here. You don’t have to send one every day, but if you have three or four months of emails two or three days apart, you’ll vastly increase your likelihood of converting the leads. Even if you’re just starting, have at least five emails over a week or two. Focusing on converting your non-buyers will really make your email list work for you and grow your business into a full-time operation.

3. Set up an Automation for Your Buyers

Now that you know how to automate ecommerce email marketing for your non-buyers list, go through the same process for your buyers list. The first “yes” is the hardest to get. So once you have that, it’s much easier to sell to your buyers. 

This time, as you’re creating your list, name it “buyers list,” and wait at least five days (or more if you want them to receive the product before getting any follow-up emails). Then start adding those free emails we gave you. Again, there’s no limit to the number of emails you can add.

Learn More About How to Automate Ecommerce Email Marketing and Grow Your Dropshipping Business

Dropshipper working hard to create his templates and automations

If you want to learn more, sign up for my masterclass where I’ll teach you how I made a full-time income online with a 5-page funnel — without touching a product, building a site, or investing in ads. I’ll even give you the $100k funnel template free, just for showing up! Get ready to build your empire.

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From Selling Gag Gifts to Earning $1,000,000 as a Successful Dropshipping Store

by Peter PruDropshipping Case StudiesLeave a Comment on From Selling Gag Gifts to Earning $1,000,000 as a Successful Dropshipping Store

Empire builders, are you ready to create your own $1,000,000 dropshipping store? To help you speed through your dropshipping learning curve, check out the case study I did on an extremely successful dropshipping store below. In this case study, I’ll take you through the inside of a business that is making millions each month. You can use these key takeaways and implement them into your own eCommerce business today.

Manscaped 

The dropshipping store that we will be analyzing today is Manscaped. When this store came out two to three years ago, it was a joke that just sold gag gifts. However, the store has now transformed from gag gifts to a million-dollar business. 

There are a ton of things I love about this store and a few things I don’t. Today, I will clue you in on what I think Manscaped gets right and a few things I think they could work on. However, at the end of the day, money talks. This store has proven to be extremely profitable, so they’re doing something right. 

Ads Are the Bread and Butter of Every Successful Dropshipping Store

In the dropshipping industry, ads are your bread and butter. One thing that Manscaped has perfected is their ads. So, what can you learn from them? First things first, you must do your research. Research is key when it comes to creating a profitable dropshipping business. Always research what types of ads your competition is running. This is free market research, so don’t miss out on this opportunity. If you really want to geek out on marketing, I recommend reading Breakthrough Advertising. 

For now, head over to the Manscaped Facebook page. There, you can see the types of ads they are running right now. Manscaped runs a variety of ads on Facebook, something that I think every dropshipping business needs to do if they want to be profitable. 

Remember, not all ads are created equal. 

You can’t run the same ads you do to loyal customers as you do to people who have never heard of your brand. You have to understand the temperature of your traffic and cater your ads to the specific type of customer you are targeting. The two main types of advertisements that Manscaped runs and that you need run for your own business are cold traffic ads and retargeting ads.   

1. Cold Traffic Ads

woman scrolling through ads on social media

Cold traffic ads are the ads you run to people who have never heard of your brand before. They don’t know anything about your product yet, so you have to highlight the solution that your product will bring to them. 

2. Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads are the ads you run to customers who have already bought from you or those who already have a sense of what your brand is all about. In these types of ads, you highlight your products while keeping your brand at the forefront of potential customers’ minds. 

Manscaped does a good job of running both cold traffic ads and retargeting ads, as you can tell from their Facebook ads library. They also make their advertising fun. Their slogan is, “Over 1 million men trust Manscaped tools for their family jewels.” This is a fun advertisement that uses a play on words to draw customers into the brand. 

Use Manscaped’s slogan as inspiration to create a fun and captivating slogan for your business. The thing about ads and marketing is that you can’t just copy and paste someone else’s copy. Great copy and ads are assembled like a puzzle. You take inspiration from multiple sources and then create something unique for your brand. 

Perfecting the Landing Page for a Successful Dropshipping Store

Once you’ve learned how to create ads that send traffic to your store, your landing page must be set up to make the sale. If your ad did a good job advertising the product, you can go right in for the sale. 

However, if your ad didn’t do a good job of pre-framing the product, then you have to sell the customer on the product. Manscaped’s landing page has a mixture of both. They are telling you about the product, while also selling you on it. 

What I Don’t Like About Manscaped’s Landing Page

discussing the multiple product offers on Manscaped's landing page

What I don’t like about Manscaped‘s landing page is that they seem to have too much going on. But a confused mind does not buy. The Manscaped landing page has tabs to other products. This adds confusion for the customer. 

People want to be told what’s best. So tell them by focusing on one specific offer. Make this offer clear, and don’t try to showcase every product you sell. 

Confusion over this concept is why a lot of dropshippers have great site traffic but poor conversion to sales. They try to sell the customer on a hundred different products at once. Remember, a confused mind will never buy. You can offer different products on your store, but you must only highlight one specific offer when trying to get that first sale. The big takeaway is to always have one clear offer on your landing page. Tell the customer what they want and make the sale. Even if you don’t make the sale immediately, you can keep reaching out with the strategies I discuss here.

What I Do Like About Manscaped’s Landing Page 

What I do like about Manscaped’s landing page are its layout and its imagery. They have a scrolling CTA, which is a nice touch. They also have premium images depicting their product. You must have premium images in your store if you want to make big money. This doesn’t necessarily mean professional photographs. 3D rendered images are all you really need to have premium images on your dropshipping site. 

Manscaped also does a good job of highlighting their product’s most significant benefit. That’s what a successful dropshipping store does. People don’t need the nitty-gritty information about your product; most of them don’t care. 

Highlight the one huge benefit your product has to offer a potential customer. If you don’t know what that one big benefit is, consult with the consumer. Listen and talk to customers about your product. By doing this, you will see a recurring theme about what customers like about your product. This is your selling point. Overall, I love the Manscaped site. The only thing I would change would be to focus on a single offer, rather than trying to sell multiple products at once. 

Consult With the Pros 

screen grab of Manscaped's Facebook page for analysis

So, how will you implement these knowledge bombs into your own successful dropshipping store? If you’re looking for some more guidance with building your eCommerce business, we can help. At Ecommerce Empire Builders, we can help you build, launch, and scale your own profitable dropshipping business. Sign up for access to our exclusive free webinar today. Be sure to check our YouTube channel for even more free resources and insights into the dropshipping industry. Remember, your empire starts now. 

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How to Scale Your Dropshipping Business to $20,000/Month

by Peter PruDropshipping Case StudiesLeave a Comment on How to Scale Your Dropshipping Business to $20,000/Month

When the excitement of opening your ecommerce store and selecting your first products begins to wear off, the real excitement begins. You are ready to scale your dropshipping business up with more sales and profits. You are ready for what we call ecommerce empire building.

Unfortunately, scale-up also is where a lot of us get stuck. The effective scale-up of sales and profits demands not only marketing strategies and sales techniques, but also adapting them to new technology and new online buyer habits. Let’s start by getting the big picture clear and our basic strategy solidly on track. Tactics do matter, of course, but tactics can’t save a flawed strategy.

The classic sales funnel (or buyer journey) is still the best framework for thinking through how to convert buyers at each step. That requires attracting initial contacts, informing them and gaining credibility with them, presenting your products, employing a pricing strategy, getting the shopping cart to the check-out, and working payments. Then, at the end, there’s another whole vista called “follow up.”

The “Moving Pieces” of a Sales Funnel

We want to focus here on a few of the moving pieces of the sales funnel that you may not be using optimally. At each step along the sales funnel, you might offer a one-time offer, or OTO. For each OTO, you will have a certain success rate, of course, and that is what we want to increase.

At the same time, however, our priority is not the number of sales. Our priorities are your average profit per sale and your customers’ lifetime value to your business.

Both priorities are addressed most profitably near the end of the sales funnel. Once the customer is in your online store and has been converted to making a purchase — or declining to make a purchase — some valuable strategies can come into play.

There is a cardinal rule here: If possible, you do not want to lose either a buyer or a non-buyer. 

You probably paid for that first customer contact. In many cases, in making that first contact, you will have obtained an email address and possibly other information. (We will talk in a moment about response automation by email.) But after your customers at OTO2 have either made a purchase or declined to purchase, they are still in the store and you have new and crucial information about them. Right here is a significant, immediate opportunity with non-buyers.  OTO3 should be a follow-up offer that is less expensive, less of a commitment, easier for the customer to accept. We call this “down selling.”

How to Convert a Non-Buyer

non-buyer debating whether to purchase another offer

For example, if you are selling an annual membership but a customer rejects this option, you can offer a one-month trial membership. If you make a sale, you have made a customer at OTO3. The trial memberships will have a cancellation rate after the month, of course, and the profit is far less than on the annual membership. Therefore, your crucial step is to follow and convert this new customer to higher-priced purchases.

At OTO3, which is a price offer, you once again see customers divide themselves into buyers and non-buyers. If their answer is “yes” (a purchase), the customer goes to your thank you page.

Email Automation Is Indispensable

Engage with your non-buyers, not just your buyers, to scale your dropshipping business from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands.  For almost all stores that I see, this is a great missed opportunity. Again, you probably paid to get that customer to your store. So don’t just throw that money away — use the connection.

For easy and highly effective email automation, check out the Ecommerce Empire Builders website for a program called Active Campaign. It largely automates your email follow up to both buyers and non-buyers. 

You want to reach out to non-buyers again and again. 

After all, you know that they are aware of your store, have some knowledge of your product, and considered a purchase. Timing, new products, new offers, and increasing knowledge and familiarity with you and your store all can factor into a purchase by that customer in the future. You will use automated email to approach these customers at intervals say of one hour after leaving your site, one day later, two days later, and beyond.

Customize Your Emails Based on Their Purchase Behaviors

email automation workflow for interacting with non-buyers

Your priorities, as mentioned above, are profit per sale and the lifetime value the customer brings to your business. Automated email works in part by segmenting your customers into categories to guide customized messages to them.

You will sell far more to your list of existing customers than to any list you probably can purchase. You usually can count on a buyer’s excitement with your product to be highest immediately after the purchase and in the days following. So that is the time to introduce related products, “step-up” offers, and bargains.

It should go without saying that when you are drafting the email messages to flesh out your active campaigns to buyers and non-buyers, differentiate the messages. Speak to segments of each group, and feature different intervals and offers.

Remember: you are writing directly to the customer, as an individual, in a friendly tone. Any other approach wastes the most important advantage of automated email responses: the connection.

The Sales Relationship Gets Longer

The real money in ecommerce is achieved by buyer evolution through successive points in the sales funnel. When you make that first sale, your customer has only completed the first leg of the buyer’s journey. Scale your dropshipping business by continuing the interaction. Your more expensive products are where the big profits are made, and these purchases rarely come from first-time, one-time buyers. The most profitable sales funnel represents your entire — sometimes your permanent — relationship with a customer.

Succeed With Ecommerce Empire Builders

As you strive to scale your dropshipping business from one level to the next, consult with the experts. We offer presentations, classes, and the spectrum of related materials available at Ecommerce Empire Builders, and we’re ready to help you at every step.  Be sure to check back here for information, insights, and updates. Right now, sign up for our exclusive free webinar. We’ll introduce you to the simple five-page ecommerce funnel that works.   

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